MLB Promotes Jen Pawol, Its 1st Girl Umpire, For Saturday’s Marlins-Braves Recreation

Jen Pawol is about to turn out to be the primary lady to umpire a recreation in Main League Baseball when she works video games this weekend between the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves.

Pawol will work the bases in Saturday’s doubleheader at Truist Park and the plate on Sunday, MLB mentioned Wednesday.

Pawol, a 48-year-old from New Jersey, labored spring coaching video games in 2024 and this yr. She’s the seventh lady to work as an expert baseball umpire, along with her profession starting again in 2016 within the Gulf Coast League after years of umpiring in newbie softball.

In 2023, Pawol reached the Triple-A degree and labored video games in each the Worldwide and Pacific Coast Leagues, in addition to serving as the house plate umpire through the Triple-A Nationwide Championship Recreation that is performed between the winners of these two leagues. She was the primary lady to ump video games in Triple-A in 34 years, per MiLB. 

When Pawol labored as an umpire in 2024’s spring coaching, she turned simply the third-ever lady umpire to take action. Pawol returned to spring coaching in 2025, and in between was positioned on MLB’s call-up checklist.

After showing in a spring coaching recreation in 2024 – the primary lady to take action since 2007 – Pawol defined that, “It is a viable profession changing into an expert umpire – women and men, ladies and boys. I didn’t know that the primary a number of years after I obtained into umpiring in newbie ball for 10 years.”

MLB’s transfer comes 28 years after the gender barrier for recreation officers was damaged within the NBA, 10 years after it ended the NFL and three years after the lads’s soccer World Cup employed a feminine referee.

The Related Press contributed to this report.

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