Why Are There No Female MLB Umpires?
A demonstration of how even old-fashioned, blatant discrimination can flourish even in our woke world
OK, you read the headline. So why are there none? Let’s start by refuting the Neanderthal position- it’s obviously not because women can’t see or can’t tell the difference between a ball and a strike or can’t memorize the rulebook. Nor is it for some reason having to do with physical fitness- plenty of umpires are overweight, some grossly so, and at any rate, running halfway out to right field to rule on a foul ball is, the last time I checked, well within the athletic capabilities of any typical human female. And no, it isn’t because women can’t handle those intense arguments with the managers or can’t break up bench clearing brawls. Both the NBA and the NFL have female referees. If female officials can handle LeBron James and Nikola Jokic, or 330 pound offensive linemen, they can deal with baseball managers.
So what is it then? It’s so obviously sexism and gender discrimination that I really don’t have to prove my case, do I? Pam Postema was an accomplished minor league umpire for 13 years- she never got to go to the show. Indeed, even in minor league umpiring, the sex discrimination is rampant. Think of all the minor leagues all around the country- AAA, AA, single A, independent leagues, etc. And think about the fact that they have existed for more than a century. And yet- only SEVEN umpires in that entire time have been women.
There’s literally no way that only seven women in the last 100 years were qualified to umpire in Minor League Baseball and none in Major League Baseball. What happened? Well, here’s a clue. The first of those umpires was Bernice Gera, who won a sex discrimination suit in 1972. She umpired ONE GAME and then quit. You can imagine what it must have been like.
Here’s an analogy. The Citadel was an all-male state-owned military school in South Carolina, which was forced to integrate by court decisions. It’s first female cadet, Shannon Faulkner, left after a week after getting physically ill from all the taunting and hazing.
But here’s the thing. Because The Citadel was public, not private, it couldn’t just throw up its hands and say “that proves it, having a woman here will never work”. They were forced to integrate, eventually by the US Supreme Court, which held in United States v. Virginia that Virginia Military Institute, a similar institution, had to integrate. And guess what? Once The Citadel was forced to integrate, it was found that women could survive and flourish despite its grueling curriculum. One of those early female graduates was Nancy Mace, now a member of Congress.
This is, of course, exactly what happened in many industries. It was once thought that women couldn’t be police officers (other than meter maids) and firefighters. It turns out they do fine. It was also once thought by the Olympic Games that women could not run distances longer than 800 meters (half a mile). Now, women run the marathon (over 26 miles) in the Olympics.
There’s literally no reason women can’t be MLB umpires except that a lot of men in the sport don’t want them as umpires. And there needs to be some activism around this issue. If fans make an issue of it (a lot of baseball fans are women), if there are protests at ballparks, if there are threats to remove MLB’s antitrust exemption, this will change. But attention needs to be brought to the issue. Right now, few people even think about it.