Over the weekend, minor league umpire Jen Pawol became the first woman to umpire in a Major League Baseball game, handling the bases in Game 1 of an Atlanta Braves-Miami Marlins doubleheader then moving behind the plate to call balls and strikes for Sunday’s game. Of course, MLB made a great hullabaloo over the momentous occasion. At various times during the season, minor league umpires are brought up to the big leagues to fill in for umpires getting their union-dictated vacations. Pawol is the only woman currently umpiring in the minor leagues. Thanks to baseball’s (and Commissioner Rob Manfred’s) wokeness obsession, she took her place in baseball history with a lingering and unavoidable doubt: would a man with her record and credentials have been chosen by MLB for the weekend umpiring chores? Were there more qualified and deserving male umpires who were passed over because they had y-chromosomes?
This is the scourge that the DEI fad has created. I feel sympathy for Pawol, but there is no avoiding it.
Naturally, MLB was ready for the questions and the suspicion. “Jen Pawol’s MLB debut is no PR stunt — she earned it the hard way” blared a Fox News headline, following an MLB press release. Methinks they doth protest too much. My suspicions were raised because just a few days earlier, the Boston Red Sox created team “history” by having an all-female broadcast team for a game. Why? Well, you know, because. The women were fine, professional play-by-play and color announcers, but nothing special except for their high voices. I’m sure there were plenty of long-time minor league male broadcasters who would have loved the chance to do a big league game, but, again, they wouldn’t be “historic,” so they were out of luck.
As with umpires, almost all baseball broadcasters are male and white. There’s no demonstrable discrimination at the heart of this: it’s self selection. Women don’t play hardball; blacks tend to be drawn to other sports as well. Why should that circumstance provide a special advantage to the minorities who do enter the field? Baseball doesn’t benefit from diversity of umpires: what matters is getting the calls right. Baseball fans want engaging, knowledgeable game broadcasts, and couldn’t care less about the sex and color of those providing it.
Meanwhile, there is still room for Manfred to carve out some more gratuitous history: baseball still hasn’t had a heterosexual female ump in the major leagues.
Ethics Alarms 