Jen Pawol has made history as the first woman to umpire a Major League Baseball (MLB) regular-season game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pawol was the first-base umpire in the opening game of the double-header between the Braves and Marlins in Atlanta.<\/p>\n
There was much anticipation for her historic debut, with a crowd of photographers gathered while waiting for the umpires to walk onto the field from their entry ramp near the Marlins dugout.<\/p>\n
Pawol was set to work third base in the second game of the double-header.<\/p>\n
The 48-year-old described being “overcome with emotion” when she was informed by the league about MLB debut.<\/p>\n
“It was super emotional to finally be living that phone call that I’d been hoping for and working towards for quite a while, and I just felt super full,” Pawol said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jen Pawol was the first-base umpire in the opening game of the double-header between the Braves and Marlins. (Getty Images: Brett Davis)<\/p>\n
Pawol has been working in the minor leagues since she was assigned to the Gulf Coast League in 2016.<\/p>\n
She worked the Triple-A championship game in 2023, as well as spring training fixtures in 2024 and this year.<\/p>\n
Pawol, who is from New Jersey, had only a few days to prepare for the double-header.<\/p>\n
She was a three-time all-conference softball selection pick at Hofstra University in New York and worked as an NCAA softball umpire from 2010-16.<\/p>\n
Pawol is one of 17 current Triple-A call-up umpires eligible to substitute in MLB games.<\/p>\n
Her rise to make MLB history came 28 years after the NBA gender barrier for game officials was broken and 10 years after the NFL hired its first full-time female official.<\/p>\n
The men’s football World Cup first hired a female referee three years ago. The NHL has not had any women as on-ice officials.<\/p>\n
AP\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jen Pawol has made history as the first woman to umpire a Major League Baseball (MLB) regular-season game.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[4996,64,63,46802,41166,5882,1188,591,11368,85],"class_list":["post-56724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-female-umpire","tag-jen-pawol","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-miami-marlins","tag-mlb","tag-regular-season","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}