Breaking Barriers Across Every Corner of the Game
Baseball has always been a hard game to break into. For women, those barriers went well beyond athletics. They were professional, cultural, and in many cases, deeply personal. Yet a remarkable group of women did not just knock on baseball's doors. They knocked them down.
This is their story. Or more accurately, pieces of many stories. The list of women who changed baseball is longer than most fans realize, and it keeps growing.
The Executive Suite: Kim Ng and the Job Nobody Would Give Her
Before Kim Ng (GM, MIA) finally got her shot, she had interviewed for a general manager job at least ten times. Over nearly two decades. Ten times. Each time, a man got the job instead.
That is not ancient history. The last time it happened before Miami was 2017.
Ng grew up in Indianapolis, the eldest of five daughters. She played softball at the University of Chicago and graduated in 1990. Her first job in baseball was an unpaid internship with the Chicago White Sox. She never looked back. By 1995, she had become the youngest person, and the first woman, to present and win a salary arbitration case in the major leagues. She was 26 years old.
The Yankees promoted her to assistant general manager in 1998. She was part of three World Series championship teams in New York. Then came nine years with the Dodgers as VP and AGM. Then nine more at MLB's central office as senior vice president of baseball operations. On November 13, 2020, Miami Marlins CEO Derek Jeter called and asked if she wanted to be his general manager.
She said yes. And with that, she became the first woman to serve as a GM in any of the four major North American men's professional sports leagues. The NBA, NFL, and NHL had not done it first. Baseball did.
Her three years in Miami were not easy. The 2021 and 2022 Marlins were rough going. In 2023, though, Ng put together a club that went 84-78 and clinched a wild-card spot. It was Miami's first full-season playoff berth since 2003. She became the first female GM to lead a team to the postseason.
Then the Marlins decided they wanted to hire a president of baseball operations above her. Ng declined her contract option and walked away in October 2023. She said the two sides were not aligned on the front office structure. You can read between those lines however you choose.
Ng now serves as commissioner of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League. She also sits on the National Baseball Hall of Fame's board of directors. Baseball's loss is women's sports' gain.
The Woman Who Built the Newark Eagles: Effa Manley
Long before Kim Ng, there was Effa Manley (Executive, Newark Eagles). Manley might be the most accomplished executive in baseball history, regardless of gender.
Manley co-owned the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League with her husband Abe from 1935 through 1948. But co-owned does not tell the full story. Effa ran the business. She handled player contracts, arranged travel, met payroll, ordered equipment, managed marketing, and scheduled promotions. She also served as treasurer of the Negro National League itself.
The 1946 Eagles, managed by Biz Mackey, finished 56-24-3. They defeated the Kansas City Monarchs in seven games to win the Negro League World Series. That championship team included future Hall of Famers Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, Leon Day, and Mackey himself.
Off the field, Manley was a force in the civil rights movement. She organized boycotts of Harlem stores that refused to hire Black employees. She held an Anti-Lynching Day at Ruppert Stadium in 1939. She arranged entertainment for Black servicemen stationed at Fort Dix during World War II, men who had been barred from segregated shows.
When Branch Rickey began signing Negro League players to Brooklyn without paying their teams, Manley fought back. She lobbied commissioner Happy Chandler directly. Her persistence paid off. When Bill Veeck signed Larry Doby from her roster in 1947, he paid the Eagles $10,000 in compensation. That set a precedent. It helped protect Negro League franchises throughout integration.
Effa Manley died on April 16, 1981. On February 27, 2006, the Special Committee on Negro Leagues elected her to the National Baseball Hall of Fame alongside 16 other honorees. She became the first woman inducted. To this day, she is still the only one.
Her tombstone reads: "She Loved Baseball."
Three Women Who Played: The Negro American League, 1953-1955
Jackie Robinson's arrival in Brooklyn in 1947 changed the Negro Leagues slowly, then all at once. The league's best talent moved to organized baseball. By the early 1950s, teams were looking for anything that would put fans in the seats.
The Indianapolis Clowns found three of the more unexpected answers in baseball history.
Toni Stone
Stone played second base for the Clowns in 1953. She filled the spot vacated by a young Hank Aaron, who had just signed with the Braves organization. Stone batted .243 that season. Her most celebrated moment came when she got a hit off Satchel Paige. She was the first woman to play regularly in one of the top Negro League circuits.
Mamie "Peanut" Johnson
Johnson followed Stone to the Clowns and did something even more surprising. She pitched. The right-hander from Long Branch, New Jersey, reportedly compiled a record of 33 wins and 8 losses against professional male competition from 1953 to 1955. [Note: This figure is widely cited but sourced primarily from Johnson's own recollections. SABR has noted difficulty confirming the numbers from box scores.
Connie Morgan
Morgan replaced Toni Stone at second base for the 1954 and 1955 seasons. She was known more for her glove than her bat. Morgan was considered one of the better defensive players on the club. All three women are now recognized among the pioneers of the game's most integrated era.
The Long Road to the Umpires' Room: Postema and Pawol
Umpiring is the hardest job in baseball to break into. For anyone. For women, the obstacles have been something else entirely.
Pam Postema
Postema spent 13 seasons working her way up the minor league ladder. She reached the Triple-A level in 1983 and worked there for six years. She umpired in multiple MLB spring training games and worked the Hall of Fame Game in Cooperstown in 1988. She was, by all accounts, qualified.
She was never called up to the major leagues. In 1989, her contract was not renewed. Postema later filed a sex discrimination lawsuit against MLB and the Triple-A Alliance. The case settled out of court. She had given more than a decade of her professional life chasing a door that was never truly open. That is the only way to put it.
Jen Pawol
Pawol came to umpiring from a different direction. She was a Division I catcher at Hofstra University, a three-time all-conference player, and part of the 2001 USA Baseball women's national team. Before turning professional, she worked as an art teacher. She attended the MLB Umpire Training Academy in Vero Beach, Florida in 2016 and never looked back.
Her climb through the minors was steady and exceptional. In 2023, she became the first woman to umpire at the Triple-A level in 34 years. She worked the Triple-A National Championship Game behind the plate that September. In 2024, she served as a Triple-A crew chief.
On August 9, 2025, Pawol made her MLB debut. She worked first base in a doubleheader between the Miami Marlins and the Atlanta Braves at Truist Park in Atlanta. The next day she was behind the plate calling balls and strikes in the series finale. Pam Postema's door had finally been kicked off its hinges.
As of early 2026, Pawol continues to work as a call-up umpire. She has not yet received a permanent full-time MLB staff appointment. That fight is not over.
The Front Office: Jean Afterman and Raquel Ferreira
Kim Ng gets most of the headline attention. But two other women have spent decades operating at the highest levels of MLB front offices, largely out of the spotlight.
Jean Afterman
Afterman has served as assistant general manager of the New York Yankees since 2001. That makes her one of the longest-tenured female executives in the sport. She came to the organization with a background in sports law and international player negotiations. She has been a key part of the Yankees' brain trust for more than 20 years, through multiple postseason runs.
She is not flashy. She does not seek out camera time. She simply does the work, year after year, at one of the most scrutinized franchises in professional sports.
Raquel Ferreira
Ferreira joined the Boston Red Sox as an administrative assistant. Over more than 20 years, she worked her way up to Executive Vice President and Assistant General Manager. That trajectory is worth a moment's pause. She is now among the most powerful executives in the game.
The Red Sox and Yankees, the two most storied franchises in the American League, both have women in senior executive roles. That is not nothing.
Making History on the Baselines: Ila Borders
Borders came up through college ball in the 1990s as a left-handed pitcher. She was good enough to earn a scholarship to Southern California College. That made her the first woman to receive a college baseball scholarship.
In 1997, she signed with the St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League. She was the first woman to pitch in a men's professional baseball game. In 1998, still with the Saints, she earned her first professional win.
She faced constant attention, media pressure, and skepticism throughout her career. She pitched through all of it. Borders retired in 2000. She is now a truck driver in California. She is still, without question, one of the most underappreciated trailblazers in the game's history.
Coaching the Big Leagues: Nakken and Balkovec
Two women changed coaching in affiliated professional baseball within four days of each other in April 2022. The timing was not planned. It was simply where things had arrived.
Alyssa Nakken (San Francisco Giants / Cleveland Guardians)
The Giants hired Nakken in January 2020 as a full-time assistant coach. She was the first woman to hold that title at the major league level. She had joined the organization as a baseball operations intern back in 2014 and worked her way into the role over six years.
On April 12, 2022, regular first-base coach Antoan Richardson was ejected in the third inning of a game against San Diego. Nakken grabbed her jersey from a nearby cage and jogged out to the coaching box. She became the first woman to coach on the field during a regular-season MLB game. The Giants won 13-2. She sent her batting helmet to Cooperstown.
"This is my job," she said afterward. "I was ready."
Nakken was with San Francisco through the 2024 season. In November 2024, she joined the Cleveland Guardians as assistant director of player development.
Rachel Balkovec (New York Yankees organization)
Balkovec took the long road. She earned a master's degree in sports science in the Netherlands. She worked as a strength and conditioning coach before landing a minor league hitting instructor role with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2016. The Yankees hired her as a minor league hitting coach in 2019. She was the first woman to hold a full-time hitting coach position in the affiliated minors.
In January 2022, the Yankees named her manager of their Low-A affiliate, the Tampa Tarpons. Four days before Nakken's moment on the field, Balkovec managed her first game and won. She was the first woman to manage a team in affiliated professional baseball.
Balkovec managed Tampa through the 2023 season. Her reputation as a developer of talent remains strong across the industry.
The Voice in the Booth: Suzyn Waldman
Waldman built her career as a beat reporter before the radio booth. In 2005, she became the first woman to serve as a full-time color commentator for a Major League Baseball team. She joined John Sterling on Yankees radio broadcasts and has been there ever since.
Two decades. Yankees fans know her voice the way they know the crack of a bat off the Monument Park wall. She has called playoff runs, championships, and more than a few heartbreaks.
Getting there was not easy. She dealt with resistance in press boxes for years before the broadcast booth opened up. She has said she simply outlasted the people who did not want her there. That is one way to put it.
A Final Note
The women in this article did not get their opportunities by waiting patiently for baseball to become more welcoming. They pushed. They litigated. They took the call when the first-base coach got ejected. They moved to Europe for a graduate degree. They sat through ten GM interviews and came back for the eleventh.
Baseball is better for all of it. The game still has work to do. But the doors that were closed when Effa Manley ran the Newark Eagles in 1946 are open now. Women walked through them.