Jen Pawol

As a girl growing up on Long Island, New York, Jen Pawol wanted to play Little League, but that wasn’t what girls in the 1980s did, so she played softball instead. In the spring of 2024 Pawol umpired her first Major League Baseball (MLB) spring training game and seemed on the verge of doing what no woman has done before: umpire a regular-season MLB game.

For Pawol, though, the most important thing is not getting in the history books but getting the job done on the field. In a February 2024 interview with MLB.com, she said: “Really, the only thing that matters is that I get the next play right. And then I gotta get the next play right after that.”

Growing up with baseball

Pawol remembers growing up in a house where baseball was always on the television. When her mother, Victoria Pawol, died suddenly, she was raised by her father, Jim Pawol. “We just pressed on,” Pawol told The Athletic, adding that after her mother’s death she and her dad, “got super close and still are.”

Pawol attended West Milford High School in New Jersey, where she was an all-state athlete in softball and football (soccer) for three years. She played catcher in softball and earned a scholarship to Hofstra University. During those college years, she began umpiring fast-pitch softball games to earn money, but even then her path was not clear. In 2001 she played on the USA Baseball Women’s National Team that won the inaugural Baseball Women’s World Series. Pawol went to Hunter College, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in painting in 2005. (Among her artwork is a series of paintings of versions of the strike zone.) Even as she taught art in Upstate New York, she continued to umpire softball games.

A big break

Several attempts to umpire amateur baseball tournaments were unsuccessful when tournament administrators made it clear that women umpires weren’t wanted. Undeterred, Pawol went to Georgia in January 2015 to attend Southern Umpires Camp. Despite having umpired by her own estimate about 2,000 games at this point, she was looking to improve her umpiring skills. She caught the attention of longtime MLB umpire Ted Barrett, who invited her to attend a free one-day MLB umpiring camp. Her response to his invitation: “You know I’m a woman, right?”

But Pawol took Barrett up on his offer, heading to the camp in August 2015, with no plans to return to teaching. She had made up her mind: she wanted to umpire for a living. She left the camp with a scholarship to the league’s prestigious umpire academy.

Those who came before her

In June 2016 Pawol made her professional umpiring debut at a minor league game in Dunedin, Florida. At the time, she was the first woman to umpire a minor league baseball game in almost a decade and the seventh woman to ever do it. Today, Pawol is very aware of those who came before her:

• Bernice Gera (1972)
• Christine Wren (1975–77)
• Pam Postema (1977–89)
• Theresa Cox Fairlady (1989–91)
• Ria Cortesio (1999–2007)
• Shanna Kook (2003–04)

As testament to how hard it was for women to break into baseball, Gera and Wren had shortened their names to Bernie and Chris, respectively, on paperwork when they applied to be umpires. Gera umpired just one game after winning the right to do so in court. Postema and Cox filed lawsuits alleging discrimination and harassment. Both suits were settled out of court. Postema wrote a book about her experiences, You’ve Got to Have Balls to Make It in This League, which Pawol read in 2018. She reached out to Postema, and the two have become friends. “The things that Pam and Ria and Chris had to deal with, they were moving the big boulders,” Pawol told The Athletic.

She has also found that much has changed in baseball since those early days, “You don’t have to change your name or pretend to be a boy. You just show up.” And she has found that players, her fellow umpires, and even some fans have welcomed her presence on the diamond. (She is an umpire, after all.) During a 2023 AAA game that featured St. Louis Cardinals star Adam Wainwright making a rehab appearance after an injury, Pawol made her way to the pitcher’s mound to check Wainwright’s hands for illegal substances. Wainwright said to her, “Jen, I have four daughters and I think what you’re doing is awesome.”

Eyes on the prize

Pawol’s rise through the umpiring ranks has been steady, and headlines about her potentially being the first woman to umpire a major league game started appearing in publications, including The Washington Post, in 2022, but it wasn’t until 2023 that she was promoted to the AAA level.

That left her one step away from the majors.

On February 24, 2024, Pawol took her spot at third base for the opening game of spring training between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros in West Palm Beach, Florida. She continued to work games throughout spring training. When she might get a call-up to the major leagues she knows is beyond her control. But that doesn’t seem to matter too much to Pawol, as long as she can umpire.

“Tomorrow I got to get out there and do it all over again,” Pawol said after the game. “Anybody in baseball will tell you…put your all into it and get ready for the next day.”