On Jan. 12, the Yankees of New York announced that the team's major league strike coach Rachel Balkovec had been named the head coach of the lower 1A minor league team, the Tampa Sea Carp. Thus, the first female head coach in the history of the minor league was born.
Baseball and softball have long had a concept: men's baseball and women's base. To some extent, it is well documented that most organized baseball and softball events are indeed distinguished by men's baseball and women's softball. But in fact, many softball games do not exclude men from participating, as a relative developed from baseball, the initial softball participants are also mostly men.
In the same way, baseball is by no means exclusive to men, whether it is professional, international, campus, amateur or young children, all kinds of baseball games often do not have gender restrictions. Baseball games where the eyes are all male players can theoretically participate, and female players can also participate.
Especially in the young children's stage, some highly qualified and early-developing girls are not inferior to boys of the same age, a total of 20 girls in history appeared in the Little League Baseball World Series, and in 2014, 14-year-old Mo'ne Davis threw a complete victory, which was once a good story in American society at that time.
Source: CNN
Baltvic (34), who brushed the screen this time, has 10 years of professional baseball coaching experience, and in 2019, she was promoted from the Yankees' rookie minor league team in Florida to the major league, becoming the first full-time female strike coach at MLB. In recognition of her outstanding contributions, she was invited to join team USA coaching staff at the 2021 MLB All-Star Weekend Future Star Game.
Baltvic was a varsity softball catcher in college, and after graduating with a degree in sports science and human kinesiology, she started as a physical trainer, working under the systems of the Houston Astros, st. Louis Cardinals, and the Netherlands to study biomechanics.
At the professional level, male players may have some stereotypical doubts when confronting female coaches – can she teach me well? After all, in the growth process of a professional player, even in the preschool education period, he rarely came into contact with female coaches.
Baseball is a sport that competes in intelligence and science, and even the most talented players will lack relevant scientific knowledge and cannot be separated from high-level guidance. It is true that women cannot match men in strength, but this does not prevent female coaches from telling male players how their movements can be improved. Today's professional baseball coaches are becoming more and more scientific, no longer relying on plausible player experience, and coaches with strong professional resumes like Baltvic will play a greater role.
But for professional baseball players, there are differences in the physiological conditions of men and women, and it is inevitable that female players who enter the adult stage will gradually lose the competitiveness of sharing the stage with male players. Exceptions are made for everything, with 17-year-old female pitcher Genevieve Beacom coming to the rescue in the sixth inning in a Game of Australian Professional Baseball (ABL) on Jan. 8 with three outs without points.
Source: Melbourme Aces Social Media
The 6'2-inch Bicombe straight ball reached 85 miles, and with the shift ball, she could fight back and forth against the pros. Since her exposure to baseball around the age of 10, Beckham has been competing with boys, and she was selected for Victoria's U16 baseball team three years ago, where she once had a season of zero SELF-defeat and 14 strikeouts in five innings.
Bicombe is very pragmatic about her prospects as a professional baseball player, and she hopes to take one step at a time to see how far she can go.
图源：New York Times
Since women can be competent as professional baseball coaches and can stand alone on the court, some other baseball-related jobs are even less gender-friendly. At the end of the 2020 season, the Miami Marlins announced Kim Ng as the team's general manager, setting two firsts: the first female general manager of the four largest North Americans and the first General Manager of Chinese Descent.
Image credit: UChicago Athletics
A star guerrilla as a student, Phi Ng joined major leagues after graduating from college in 1990, starting as a project analyst and rising to assistant director of baseball operations in 1995, when she became the first woman in MLB history and the youngest representative of a salary arbitration team.
In 1998, when Wu Peichen was 29 years old, the Yankees hired her as assistant general manager, the youngest and second woman to reach this level in the major leagues at the time. Since 2005, according to verifiable public records, Wu Peiqin has interviewed for the position of general manager at least five times, but has lost it consecutively. She waited from 37 to 52 and finally made history in marlins.
The 2021 MLB season saw another milestone, with the Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays playing for the first time on July 20 with an all-female team as the game commentary team, with Melanie Newman from the Orioles local broadcast unit and MLB author Sarah Langs as the live commentary team, and the sideline reporters being Alana Rizzo and Heidi Watney) and Lauren Gardner participated in the pre- and post-match commentary.
Image source: Getty Images
These five female commentators and journalists all have long experience in MLB, but the all-female team that gathered five people at once like this is not only the first time in MLB, but also the first in the history of professional sports broadcasting in the world. Rizzo said in the interview: "I've been hearing the male commentator in my headphones, so such a game with Melani and Sarah will have a unique feeling and a unique perspective, and I'm excited to join this game." ”
Since 2018, MLB has created a program "Take the Field" to promote women's employment in baseball, and since then, MLB has been a strong push for the hiring of female employees, with 40 program participants entering the industry so far.
Elizabeth Benn, MLB's senior baseball operations coordinator, said: "The team understands the value of the program and uses it as a conduit for recruiting. Now that we have female general managers, head coaches and management in supporting roles, this project has become a quality talent channel. ”
Overcoming stereotypes and breaking through ideas is also the advantage of baseball, just like baseball data science has innovated this century-old sport, as long as we break the unnecessary old ideas, I believe that women will make future baseball more colorful.
Take the Field event site
I heard that Japan also held koshien for the first time in 21 years for female players, and more and more women are walking to the front of the stadium. What do you think about the power of women on the pitch?