MLB Calling Up Its First Female Umpire, Promoting Jen Pawol

Jen Pawol is on the verge of history.

Pawol, a 48-year-old minor-league ump, is getting called up to become the first woman to umpire in Major League Baseball when she works the weekend series between the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves. She will be a base ump for Saturday’s doubleheader at Truist Park and then work behind the plate on Sunday, MLB told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Jen Pawol is set to become the first woman to umpire in Major League Baseball when she works games this weekend between the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves. (Photo by Rich Storry/Getty Images)

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Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred called Pawol’s MLB debut “an historic accomplishment” while adding that “she has earned this opportunity” to ump in the big leagues. “We are proud of the strong example she has set, particularly for all the women and young girls who aspire to roles on the field,” Manfred said.

Pawol, who will become the fifth umpire to debut this year, umped spring training games in 2024 and this year. “We had seen her in spring training a lot,” Philadelphia Phillies star Trea Turner said. “I don’t know much about her or statistics or anything like that, but if she’s doing a great job, I love seeing the opportunity for her, and I’m happy for her. I talked to her a little bit in spring training and she seems like a great person and I wish her all the best.”

With Pawol’s promotion, MLB will break the gender barrier for game officials 28 years after it was broken in the NBA, 10 years after the NFL hired its first full-time female official and three years after the men’s soccer World Cup employed a female referee. The NHL still has no female on-ice official.

Pawol in 2024 became the first woman to umpire MLB spring training games since Ria Cortesio in 2007. Cortesio lasted nine years in the minors, spending the last five in the Double-A Southern League, then was released after the 2007 season.

Pawol played softball at Division-I Hofstra, where she was a three-time all-conference pick as a catcher.

“I wasn’t really satisfied,” she said last year. “Coming off of a huge competitive career, just playing locally, I wasn’t getting my fix. And I remember looking at the umpire and being like, I think that’s it. I got to go for that.”

Pawol attended Southern Umpires Camp in Atlanta in January 2015. That’s when longtime MLB umpire Ted Barrett took note of her and recommended she attend a one-day MLB umpiring camp, where she won a scholarship to MLB’s umpire academy. She began her umpiring career at rookie-level ball in 2016 and has steadily climbed the minor-league ranks.

She spent the past six season at Triple-A level. But now she will become the first-ever female MLB official to umpire a regular-season game. To some, it won’t be a surprise. “She’s going to make it,” Jonathan Ortega, who served as Pawol’s crew chief in 2023, told The Athletic’s Brittany Ghiroli last summer. “I don’t know if it will be one year or two years from now, but I think she’s going to do it.”