Jen Pawol this weekend made her debut as Major League Baseball’s first-ever female umpire in the regular season. Pawol took her position on the field for a game between the Miami Marlins and the Atlanta Braves, signaling a big moment for women’s representation not only in baseball, but for all women working as referees and game officials.
According to NPR, Pawol previously umpired spring training games for the MLB and began working as an umpire in the minor leagues almost ten years ago.
Pawol is used to breaking barriers. In 2023, she became the first woman to umpire a Triple-A championship, and in 2024, Pawol became the first woman in 17 years to umpire a spring training game. It was at that time that she made the MLB’s “Umpire Call-Up” list, a list of over 70 additional umpires and staff who primarily work in Triple-A, but may be called up to the MLB to fill in.
When the Braves pitching coach, Rick Kranitz, went out to the Mound at the top of the fourth, he was met with unexpected applause. "I went out there, and then I started hearing the crowd," Kranitz said. "They started [to clap] and I said 'Oh, what's going on here?' I saw [Pawol] coming out [to the mound]. We all agreed, 'Let's let her come all the way out. Let's get the crowd into this.’"
Pawol said, “It was super emotional to finally be living that phone call that I’d been hoping for and working towards for quite a while, and I just felt super full. I feel like a fully charged battery ready to go.”
She estimates that she has umpired over 1,200 games, starting in the early 1990s, by umpiring softball games. Pawol herself played softball at Hofstra University. In 2010, Pawol earned a spot as an umpire for NCAA softball and was eventually invited to the MLB Umpire Camp.
“Thank you to all the Major League umpires and the Minor League umpires (…) from our own craft have been reaching out. I've just had an outpouring of text messages from softball umpires that I've been friends with. And a notable person from another sport, [NFL referee] Sarah Thomas has become such a good friend of mine. And so she's been blowing up my phone. It's just been absolutely unbelievable,” Pawol told MLB News.
"It's always great to see things that are historic," Kranitz said. "It's only going to happen once ever in the history of this game. It's unbelievable. It's great."
