Jen Pawol’s MLB debut is no PR stunt — she earned it the hard way
When Jen Pawol walked on the field at Truist Park this weekend, he will give money to a couplet that lasts for decades.
In the afternoon of Saturday, Pawol will be the first female referee to make a large league baseball match that deals with the bases in the 1st game of Atlanta Braves-Miami Marlins Doubleheader before moving behind the plate for the serial final of Sunday.
Nashville was sitting in the hotel room on Wednesday, when the news fell.
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“I’m overcome with emotion,” Pawol He told Associated Press Thursday. “It was very emotional to live the phone call that I had hoped for for a while and tried to work for a while, and I felt very full – I feel like a completely loaded battery.”
It was nothing more than following the path here quickly. Pawol, for years after calling NCAA volleyball games in 2016 began to baseball in the rookie ball. Since then, he worked methodically in the Junior-New York/Penn League, Midwest League, South Atlantic League, Double-A and finally Triple-A in 2023. That season, he became the first woman to be a referee in Triple-A in 34 years and made the first championship match.
“This has been more than 1,200 small league matches, numerous clock video reviews, which tried to be better, and all this love for this passion and baseball game.” He said. “This started as a hunter on my days and became a referee and I think it became even stronger as a referee. The referee was for me, in my DNA. It was a long, difficult journey.”
Pawol, the 2001 world champion with All-Conference Catcher and US Women’s Volleyball Team three times in Hofstra, received a referee mask thanks to a friend’s invitation in high school in the early 1990s. During this concert, he won $ 15 per game.
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“This was a single oppire system,” he remembered. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had to wear toothes and call the balls and strikes, so I was inside.”
Since then – even then – Big League referee Ted Barrett, in the 2015 trial camp, warned that he could take ten years before seeing Major League Ballpark.
“Look, that’s what you’re against,” Barrett said. “It will be 10 years in small leagues before sniffing in a big league area.” “
This estimate was almost right. Pawol’s call, MLB, in 1997, Violet Palmer’s NBA exit and in 2015 Sarah Thomas’s NFL exit, a female authority “Big Four” made the third of the male professional sports leagues. NHL now stand alone.
Pawol won’t be alone this weekend. 48 -year -old family members and friends will be at the stands to witness the historical exit, he said. Most of the small league referees who fueled the trail in front of the trail, including Christine Wren, Pam Posema and Ria Cortesio, have already reached congratulations.
Postema years ago, “Make!” Pawol promised to be. “I texted him yesterday and said, ‘I’m doing this!’ I said.”
Outkick will take part in the Truist Park to cover Pawol’s first three MLB games.
Jen Pawol’s journey of Jen Pawol is still important at a time when the titles generally support symbolism on merit.
Pawol is not here as a coin gesture or a fluffy PR movement. He was here because bus trips lasted longer than the only grinding of the small league life in the swelling summer heat. And now, for the first time, a woman did it to the elders.
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