A doubleheader between the Marlins and the Braves on Saturday will feature history, with a woman umpire officiating a game for the first time in MLB history.
And Jen Pawol was “overcome with emotion” after learning that she’d be the one to break the gender barrier.
“It was super emotional to finally be living that phone call that I’d been hoping for and working towards for quite a while,” Pawol told the Associated Press, “and I just felt super full. I feel like a fully charged battery ready to go.”
Her umpire journey began in 1990 when she was the umpire for her local high school, West Milford High, in New Jersey.
She was not just good at umpiring softball — she was also a talented player, playing at Hofstra and becoming a three-time all-conference selection.
Beginning in 2010, Pawol was an umpire for college softball games.
During her time in that position, she met big league umpire Ted Barrett at a camp in Binghamton.
With that connection, Pawol was invited to an MLB tryout camp in Cincinnati in 2015, and Barrett then brought her to a dinner with more MLB umpires and gave her a warning.
“I warned her: ‘Look, this is what you’re up against. It’s going to be 10 years in the minor leagues before you sniff a big league field,” Barrett told the AP.
But that did not stop Pawol, as she was then one of the 38 umpires invited to Vero Beach, Fla., for the Umpire Training Academy in 2016.
Her first league she covered was the Gulf Coast League in 2016.
But every year, she continued to move up the ladder.
In 2024 and 2025, she was brought up to be an umpire for spring training games.
And now, on Saturday at 1:15 p.m., her journey will reach the MLB level.
“This has been over 1,200 minor league games, countless hours of video review trying to get better, and underneath it all has just been this passion and this love for the game of baseball,” Pawol told the AP. “This started in my playing days as a catcher and transformed over into an umpire, and I think it’s gotten even stronger as an umpire. Umpiring is for me, it’s in my DNA. It’s been a long, hard journey.”
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