Jen Pawol will be the first woman to umpire MLB regular season baseball during the Marlins-Braves game in Atlanta this weekend, a move generations in the making. Here's a brief history of why it took so long and why women and minorities—including Angel Hernandez—had to keep suing professional baseball for a chance to take the field.
Bernice Gera, who in 1972 was the first woman to officiate a minor league game had to file litigation against professional baseball in order to compel the powers that be to allow her onto the field.
At the time, Hall of Fame Umpire Al Barlick allegedly said Gera "belongs in the kitchen — where all women belong, or most of them." Years later, Barlick allegedly told then-minor leaguer Al Clark, "I’ll tell you one thing. As long as I’m alive, there will never be another f*n’ Jew umpire in my league."
Barlick served as a National League supervisor after retirement from umpiring on the field and was partially responsible for hiring decisions. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989, despite his history of purportedly sexist and racist statements.
And THAT level of systemic discrimination has been baseball's rot-from-within for years and decades.
Since then, several women, including Pam Postema who made it all the way to Triple-A in the late 1980s, have been stopped short of the major leagues, though multiple sex discrimination lawsuits filed by Postema and others have resulted in settlements along the way.
When Angel Hernandez sued baseball alleging racially-motivated discrimination in 2017, it served as a turning point in how the league treats marginalized groups working their way through the umpiring ranks. In addition to promotions of minority crew chiefs Alfonso Márquez, Laz Diaz, and Kerwin Danley in the years that followed (after a decades-long gap without a non-white chief), professional baseball changed its hiring outlook, both at the MLB level and the MiLB level, with more diverse classes each year.
