Tech boom, MLB programs helping women find jobs in baseball

MESA, Ariz. (AP) — Rachel Folden figured something out early on during her first spring training with the Chicago Cubs — long before the coronavirus pandemic wiped out team activities.

None of the players care all that much that one of their coaches is a woman. As for the girls she encounters, they care very much that one of the coaches is a woman.

“I’ve had quite a few people reach out that their daughters are like glued to the television watching baseball now or their daughters know that there’s some sort of way that they can get into baseball, they don’t have to pick softball,” Folden said. “I’ve heard that from quite a few people, actually.”

Major League Baseball is pushing the same message. Recognizing the importance of representation when it comes to growing the game, the commissioner’s office continues to look at ways to bring more women and minorities into the sport.

Women in Pirates organization provide inspiration for others

PITTSBURGH (AP) — By themselves, each has an impressive story.

Mayu Fielding started with the Pirates as an administrative assistant in 2007 and quickly moved into her current role as education coordinator, helping foreign players transition to life in America. Kinza Baad graduated from the University of Virginia in 2017 and is in her fourth year as a scouting assistant. Astrid DeGruchy does a little bit of everything, describing herself as the “air traffic controller” of the Pirates’ international scouting department.

Together, they’re writing an even more impressive and important story, one that’s about their own talents and also the example they’re setting for others.

“It’s very exciting,” Fielding said. “When I started here, I was probably the only woman in baseball, in this organization, for a while. There were women in other areas, but not in baseball. I’d often find myself in a room full of men.

A piece of some interest, particularly for those curious about the working of the operations staff outside of the analytics department.

Today in Baseball History: Helene Britton becomes the first woman to own a team

Stanley Robison was a streetcar magnate who, along with his brother Frank, became baseball moguls as well. They were the founding owners of the Cleveland team that would become the Cleveland Spiders. They, infamously, sold the Spiders and purchased the St. Louis Browns — who would become the St. Louis Cardinals — swapping out Browns and Spiders rosters, which resulted in the 1899 Browns becoming the worst team in baseball history before their eventual demise.

Frank ran the show in St. Louis, but he died suddenly in 1906, leaving Stanley as sole owner. The Cardinals were a terrible club during Stanley’s sole ownership, finishing in last or second-to-last place in all five seasons he was solely at the helm. In late 1910 Stanley’s health began to decline. On March 24, 1911 Stanley — a bachelor with no family of his own — died of heart failure and blood poisoning while visiting his brother’s widow, her daughter, Helene, and Helene’s young family in Cleveland.

Stanley’s death was something of a shock, but it was nothing compared to the shock delivered at the reading of his will: he had bequeathed controlling interest in the St. Louis Cardinals to his niece, Helene. The remainder of the shares went to her mother, Frank’s widow. As a result, Helene Hathaway Robison Britton became the first woman to own a major league baseball team.