MLB news: Jen Pawol's umpiring debut is no stunt, she earned ut

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ATLANTA – When Jen Pawol walks onto the field at Truist Park this weekend, she won’t just be making history — she’ll be cashing in on a decades-long grind through the most thankless job in sports.

On Saturday afternoon, Pawol will become the first female umpire to work a regular-season Major League Baseball game, handling the bases in Game 1 of the Atlanta Braves-Miami Marlins doubleheader before moving behind the plate for Sunday’s series finale.

She was sitting in a Nashville hotel room on Wednesday when the news came down.

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FILE - Home plate umpire Jen Pawol takes her position during the first inning of a spring training baseball game between the Houston Astros and Miami Marlins Sunday, March 10, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla.  (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

"I was overcome with emotion," Pawol told the Associated Press on Thursday. "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."

Her path here was anything but fast-tracked. Pawol began umpiring baseball in 2016 in Rookie ball, after years of calling NCAA softball games. Since then, she’s worked her way methodically through the minors — the New York/Penn League, the Midwest League, the South Atlantic League, Double-A, and finally Triple-A in 2023. That season, she became the first woman to umpire in Triple-A in 34 years and the first to work its championship game.

"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 said. "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."

A three-time all-conference catcher at Hofstra and a 2001 world champion with the U.S. women’s softball team, Pawol first picked up an umpire’s mask thanks to a friend’s invitation in high school in the early 1990s. She made $15 per game during that gig. 

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FILE - Home plate umpire Jen Pawol calls a strike during the third inning of a spring training baseball game between the Miami Marlins and Houston Astros, Sunday, March 10, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla.  (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

"It was a one-umpire system," she recalled. "I had no idea what I was doing, but I got to put gear on and call balls and strikes, so I was in."

She’s been "in" ever since — even when then–big league umpire Ted Barrett warned her at a 2015 tryout camp that it could take a decade in the minors before she’d see a major league ballpark.

"I warned her: ‘Look, this is what you’re up against," Barrett said. "It’s going to be 10 years in the minor leagues before you sniff a big league field.'"

That prediction was almost exactly right. Pawol’s call-up makes MLB the third of the "Big Four" men’s professional sports leagues to feature a female official, following Violet Palmer’s NBA debut in 1997 and Sarah Thomas’ NFL debut in 2015. Thomas went on to work Super Bowl LV between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs. The NHL is now the lone holdout.

Jen Pawol Follows In The Footsteps Of Other Female Trailblazers

Pawol won’t be alone this weekend. The 48-year-old said about 30 family members and friends will be in the stands to witness her historic debut. Many of her fellow minor-league umpires who blazed the trail before her, including Christine Wren, Pam Postema and Ria Cortesio, have already reached out with congratulations. 

When Postema told her years ago to "Get it done!" Pawol promised she would. "I texted her yesterday and said, 'I’m getting it done!'"

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FILE - Umpire Jen Pawol takes her position during the first inning of a spring training baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Washington Nationals Monday, March 4, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

OutKick will be on the ground at Truist Park to cover Pawol's first three MLB games.

In an era where headlines often favor symbolism over merit, Jen Pawol’s journey stands as a reminder that grit still matters.

Pawol isn't here as a token gesture or a puffy PR move. She’s here because she outlasted the bus rides, the blistering summer heat and the lonely grind of minor league life. And now, for the first time, a woman has made it to the bigs.

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