How umpire at Detroit Tigers game is ready to break gender barrier

LAKELAND, Fla. — If not for the ponytail, you'd never have noticed Jen Pawol on Thursday afternoon at Joker Marchant Stadium. Or learned that she made history when she squatted behind home plate before an exhibition game between the Detroit Tigers and Florida Southern College.  

Well, her own kind of history. 

If she reaches her dream, she'll make a lot more history than that. 

No woman has ever umpired in the 140-plus years of major league baseball. Pawol aims to change that. Judging by the reaction to her work Thursday afternoon, the 41-year-old minor-league umpire may get her chance. 

"She handled herself really well," said Tigers' manager Ron Gardenhire, who has seen — and barked at — a few umpires during his four-decade long career. "She was sure of herself. There was no pissing or moaning from the dugouts. She did a helluva job." 

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Yet it was what he forgot about during the game that's most telling: Her presence behind the plate. 

"That's the way all umpires want it," he explained. " They don't want you to know they are (there)."  

Staying invisible isn't easy when you're trying to make history. Especially when you're still trying to get noticed. And that's what will have to happen if Pawol is to push through to the majors. 

At least by her supervisors, who monitor not just her strike zone and her calls at the plate — or on the basepaths — but also her interactions.  

Handling aggravated big-league players and managers is critical to surviving at the game's highest level. The pressure can be overwhelming. Though if she felt any at Joker Marchant Stadium on Thursday she didn't show it.  

"I wasn't nervous," she said.  

No, she was giddy. 

After all, she'd been grinding in all that gear in all manner of heat and humidity for more than a decade just to get this chance.  

Pawol grew up in New York and fell in love with baseball as a toddler. She told MLB.com that her parents struggled to pull her away from games when she was as young as two.  

She followed that passion onto the field, where she played softball in high school well enough to earn a scholarship to Hofstra University. When she graduated, she played baseball for Team USA and fast-pitch softball in various professional leagues for the next 10 years.  

Her primary position was catcher, and that spot laid the foundation as she transitioned into umpiring.  

"You get used to getting hit by the ball," she said. 

More critically, you lose your fear of seeing the ball hurtling toward your head and not flinching.  

Pawol bounced around amateur leagues and Division I baseball for a decade before a bit of serendipity fell her way in 2015. There, at an umpire clinic in Atlanta, a couple of major-league umpires pulled her aside and asked if she were interested in professional baseball. 

"And I said, 'Do you know I'm a woman?'" 

"And he said, 'Yeah. We've been watching you.' " 

The pros invited Pawol to a camp in Cincinnati, where she made the cut and got asked to the next round in Ft. Myers, Fla, where she would be competing for one of eight spots. She survived that, too, grabbing one a spot in the minors. 

From there, they sent her to work games in the Gulf Coast League. Last season, she moved up to short-season Single-A ball in the Penn League.  

Two weeks ago, she got the call to work the Tigers' exhibition opener Thursday and is set to umpire spring training games beginning with March 11's game between the Twins and Rays.  

In her two-plus years in the minors, she's been treated like one of the guys, save for a few amenities laid out for her in the dressing rooms. And yet, she isn't one of the guys.  

She is a reminder, a symbol, a proxy for anyone who's trying to break down a barrier. Even if she doesn’t think much about her long odds and her daily grind.   

"I heard all the stories about the ladies who came before me," she said.  

About the jokes and the harassment and the air of misogyny. Baseball, perhaps more than any other major sport, was an old boys' club. 

But something changed in the seven years since the last woman gave minor-league umpiring a shot. Whether pulled along by the larger cultural shifts or, as Pawol noted, by the game's own desire to become more hospitable, baseball changed. 

"It's spick-and-span now," she said. "It's been removed. These are good guys, and there is a professional etiquette." 

Pawol said that the reaction among the players and managers has been particularly gracious.  

"They come up to me and tell me (my journey) is inspiring," she said.  

They use words like "whoa" and "wow" when they greet her. You could hear that enthusiasm in Gardenhire's voice Thursday, when he called Pawol's quest "exciting." 

As for the fans, Pawol hasn't heard a single insult related to her sex. Do fans get mad? Absolutely. But that's because she's an umpire, and fans hate umpires. 

"I don't really care," she said.  

Besides, she learned to ignore the noise long ago when she was a player. These days, the only voices she listens to are her peers, the managers — when they have a point — and her supervisors, who judge her as they do any other umpire dreaming to make it big. 

Pawol was the seventh woman to make it to the minors as an umpire. Only one made it to Triple-A. To reach that last rung, she'll have to keep eating her vegetables (fuel is key, she said) and act like she did when she took the field at Joker Marchant, as if she'd done it all her life.  

"I'm the luckiest woman in the world," she said. "I get to take the field every day."

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.