Pawol first woman to ump spring game since ’07

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — It took eight years but Jen Pawol made the leap from the minors to a major league spring training game as umpire at the Grapefruit League opener between the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals at CACTI Park of The Palm Beaches on Saturday.

Pawol’s spring training debut marked the first time since 2007 that a woman umpired a major league spring training game, last done by Ria Cortesio. With a ponytail coming out of her ball cap, Pawol was stationed at third base.

After the traditional pregame meeting with the umpires and managers at home plate, the group posed for pictures. Nationals manager Dave Martinez shook Pawol’s hand and chatted with her briefly.

Eight years ago, Pawol, a former New Jersey high school softball star who played at Hofstra, became just the seventh woman to umpire a minor league baseball game.

Across the next few weeks, Pawol, 47, will be based in Palm Beach County to work other spring games. No woman has ever been assigned to umpire a regular-season game in the majors.

MLB’s move comes 27 years after the gender barrier for game officials was broken in the NBA, nine years after it ended the NFL and two years after the men’s soccer World Cup employed a female referee.

“For any umpire, working in the pro system, this is a big, big deal,” Pawol told reporters on a Zoom call in February. “This means so much. It’s the culmination of a lot of innings. I’ve probably put in about 1,000 professional games at this point.”

Pam Postema, who worked in the 1970s and ’80s, became the first woman to umpire a spring training game.

With a rotation set for every three innings, Pawol switched to second base in the fourth. She went to first base in the seventh inning and saw her most action. She called out two straight Astros batters off groundouts in the top of the seventh. Her closest call came in the bottom of the seventh, when Pawol motioned safe after the Nationals’ Travis Blankenhorn appeared to beat out a grounder to first that was bobbled.

Pawol’s most noteworthy maneuver occurred at the start of the bottom of the fourth, when she stopped play after noticing the Astros didn’t have a center fielder. The Astros’ Justin Dirden bounded out of the dugout and raced to center field. It is spring training.

During pregame festivities, entertainer Travis Scott took part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the field to commemorate the name change of the facility, formerly known as The Ballpark of The Palm Beaches. Scott, who threw out the first pitch, owns CACTI Hard Seltzer.