Daily Skimm

It’s officially baseball season. While professional baseball technically doesn’t have a rule banning women from playing, very few women have (see: Alexis Hopkins and Kelsie Whitmore). In the meantime, women have gained ground in the front office, on the coaching staff, and in other parts of the organization. That’s in part because of Major League Baseball’s Take the Field program. Since 2018, it has helped open the doors for women by providing networking opportunities, interview prep, and professional development workshops. 

To learn more, we spoke with Julia Hernandez, MLB’s coordinator of on-field operations and a lead for Take the Field. Here’s what she had to say…

Q: Now that the 2023 MLB season is underway, who are some of the women that fans should keep an eye on?

Alyssa Nakken is a huge name in baseball. She’s a coach for the San Francisco Giants. Rachel Balkovec is a manager in the minor leagues for the New York Yankees. And Elizabeth Benn, obviously I have to shout her out as [being part of the team that launched] Take the Field, and one of my very good friends. She’s a director of [Major League] operations at the New York Mets. And Kim Ng is the person we look at a lot, as the first female general manager.

... There’s women you can point to in every corner of the sport now that are just doing incredible things. And every single day, we’re talking with women across the league that are breaking these barriers — whether or not they want to be named a ‘trailblazer,’ they are.

Q: You mentioned Alyssa Nakken, who last season became the first woman to coach on the field in a regular-season game. What other ‘first’ are you excited to witness in the future?

Watching the first female-managed team versus another female-managed team — or just having multiple women on the field at the same time … those kinds of things, the big moments in the sport that would make headlines … They show younger girls and the women that we work with … that it is possible and there’s room for more than one.

Q: What impact has Take the Field already had on women seeking jobs in professional baseball?

I personally am a product of Take the Field ... The people that I have met, both as a participant and as a helper and now part of the team that leads Take the Field, we are so proud of all of the women who have come through and ... they come back to us and they’re like, ‘I would not have gotten this interview. I would not have been confident enough to apply for this job.’ I think that those are the big things that really pull at our heartstrings and make us want to keep going and keep growing.