Every journey begins with a single step. For women in baseball, that journey began in earnest in 2015.
That November, the Astros hired Rachel Balkovec to be the organization’s full-time Latin America strength and conditioning coordinator. She had previously served internships with the Cardinals and White Sox organizations, working in the strength and conditioning departments.
In 2020, the Yankees hired Balkovec as a minor league hitting coach. She was the first woman to be hired full-time in that role, too.
This year, Balkovec not only made history. She made national headlines when the Yankees named her manager of their Low-A Tampa affiliate. She won her debut on April 8, when she officially became the first woman to manage an affiliated minor league team.
In the span of seven seasons, baseball went from having zero female coaches to having a woman in the dugout, one entrusted with managing Jasson Dominguez and a host of other Yankees prospects.
While the minor leagues were slow to adapt to the realities of women shattering the glass ceiling, Major League Baseball took note when it assumed governance of the minor leagues in 2021. MLB introduced new provisions aimed at improving working conditions for women at all levels of the minor leagues.
For years, basic needs such as access to a bathroom and locker room had been neglected.
The last time minor league facility standards saw a major overhaul was via the 1990 Professional Baseball Agreement between MLB and the minors. MLB seized the opportunity to set new facility guidelines when the last PBA expired in December 2020, following a minor league season that was canceled by the pandemic.
Beyond requiring brighter stadium lights and covered batting and pitching tunnels, MLB, which now operates the minor leagues, instituted new facility standards that require minor league teams to provide designated spaces for female staffers.
Since Balkovec’s initial hire in 2015, the number of women in baseball grew steadily until 2019….
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