MLB calling up first female umpire, promoting Jen Pawol for Marlins-Braves game

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Jen Pawol is set to become the first woman to umpire in Major League Baseball when she works games this weekend between the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves.

Pawol will work the bases in Saturday’s doubleheader at Truist Park and the plate on Sunday, MLB said Wednesday.

Pawol, a 48-year-old from New Jersey, worked spring training games in 2024 and this year.

MLB’s move comes 28 years after the gender barrier for game officials was broken in the NBA, 10 years after it ended the NFL and three years after the men’s soccer World Cup employed a female referee.

Pawol in 2024 became the first woman to umpire big league spring training games since Ria Cortesio in 2007. Cortesio spent nine years in the minor leagues, including the last five in the Double-A Southern League, then was released after the 2007 season.

Pawol was an all-state softball and soccer player in New Jersey for three seasons in each sport at West Milford High School. She went to Hofstra on a softball scholarship and became a three-time all-conference pick and was on the USA Baseball women’s national baseball team in 2001.

Pawol got a master’s degree and was living in the Binghamton area of New York and taking teacher certification classes at Elmira College while still playing on the side.

“I wasn’t really satisfied,” she said last year. “Coming off of a huge competitive career, just playing locally, I wasn’t getting my fix. And I remember looking at the umpire and being like, I think that’s it. I got to go for that.”

After umpiring NCAA softball from 2010-16, she attended an MLB umpire tryout camp in 2015, was invited to the Umpire Training Academy at Vero Beach, Florida, and was offered a job in the Gulf Coast League in 2016.

Violet Palmer became the NBA’s first woman referee when she worked Dallas’ opener at Vancouver on Oct. 31, 1997, and Sarah Thomas was the NFL’s first woman on-field official when she served as line judge for Kansas City’s game at Houston on Sept. 13, 2015.

Stephanie Frappart of France became the first woman to referee a men’s World Cup game when she worked Germany’s 4-2 group stage win over Costa Rica on Dec. 1, 2022, and Rebecca Walsh became the first to referee in England’s Premier League when she officiated Burnley’s 2-0 win at Fulham on Dec. 23, 2023.

MLB has 76 full-time staff umpires and uses fill-ins on crews for openings created by injuries and vacations.