Now that baseball season is over it's time to ask a rude question about women in baseball, like where are they? Samantha Henning, writing for
doubleX, gets the answers from career umpire Perry Barber, who works high school, college, spring-training, and Independent League games, but can't move into the bigtime because, as she puts it,
"...They don’t want more than one woman at a time, because they know that singly and intermittently we don’t have any power; we don’t have any means of redress for our grievances; we don’t have any of the things that are natural and intrinsic to the boys and the men from the time they’re 6 years old. They grow up in the baseball culture. Women are deliberately excluded from that. Even girls who want to play baseball are directed to softball, because baseball is a game that boys play."
She continues: "Baseball sets itself up as embracing minorities and getting everybody into the fold: “Look, Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947, and now there are more Hispanics playing, and we get players from all stripes and backgrounds,” and blah blah blah ... and yet, what about women?"
Currently there is not a single woman umpire in professional baseball today—not in the majors, and not in the minors. WNL knows for a fact that there are a
lot of women who love baseball passionately. How about making it clear to team owners that women want to see themselves on the field along with the guys?
(Photo, Perry umpiring a Mets spring training game.)
"...They don’t want more than one woman at a time, because they know that singly and intermittently we don’t have any power; we don’t have any means of redress for our grievances; we don’t have any of the things that are natural and intrinsic to the boys and the men from the time they’re 6 years old. They grow up in the baseball culture. Women are deliberately excluded from that. Even girls who want to play baseball are directed to softball, because baseball is a game that boys play."
She continues: "Baseball sets itself up as embracing minorities and getting everybody into the fold: “Look, Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947, and now there are more Hispanics playing, and we get players from all stripes and backgrounds,” and blah blah blah ... and yet, what about women?"
Currently there is not a single woman umpire in professional baseball today—not in the majors, and not in the minors. WNL knows for a fact that there are a lot of women who love baseball passionately. How about making it clear to team owners that women want to see themselves on the field along with the guys?
(Photo, Perry umpiring a Mets spring training game.)