MLB Is Calling Up Its First Woman Umpire

Here’s a first!

Major League Baseball will introduce the league’s first-ever woman umpire.

Umpire Jen Pawol will be an umpire during a doubleheader this weekend between the Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins.

NBC News had more insight into Pawol’s journey as an umpire:

Jen Pawol is set to become the first woman to umpire in Major League Baseball when she works games this weekend between the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves.

Pawol will work the bases in Saturday’s doubleheader at Truist Park and the plate on Sunday, MLB said Wednesday.
Pawol, a 48-year-old from New Jersey, worked spring training games in 2024 and this year.

MLB’s move comes 28 years after the gender barrier for game officials was broken in the NBA, 10 years after it ended the NFL and three years after the men’s soccer World Cup employed a female referee.

Pawol in 2024 became the first woman to umpire big league spring training games since Ria Cortesio in 2007. Cortesio spent nine years in the minor leagues, including the last five in the Double-A Southern League, then was released after the 2007 season.

Pawol was an all-state softball and soccer player in New Jersey for three seasons in each sport at West Milford High School. She went to Hofstra on a softball scholarship and became a three-time all-conference pick and was on the USA Baseball women’s national baseball team in 2001.

Pawol got a master’s degree and was living in the Binghamton area of New York and taking teacher certification classes at Elmira College while still playing on the side.

Here’s Pawol in action:

Jen Pawol gets the call!

This weekend, the Minor League ump will become the first woman to umpire in a regular season MLB game: https://t.co/XyJv3Fx1Kf pic.twitter.com/5mLakGdHH7

— Minor League Baseball (@MiLB) August 6, 2025

MLB provided a further backstory of Pawol:

“For me, personally, I just love doing the job,” Pawol said in 2016. “I’m passionate about it, and it’s just part of who I am.”

Pawol played softball at Hofstra University and at the Amateur Softball Association Major Fast Pitch level for 10 years before making the transition to umpiring. The former catcher worked college softball games and umpired in the Big Ten Conference from 2013 to 2015.

The following year, Pawol attended the 2016 Minor League Baseball Umpire Training Academy in Vero Beach, Fla., and earned her first assignment in the Gulf Coast League (now known as the Florida Complex League). At the time, Pawol was the seventh female umpire in Minor League Baseball history.

Pawol, a New Jersey native, is one of 17 current Triple-A umpires eligible to serve as a substitute in Major League games.

“Anybody in baseball will tell you that you’ve just got to keep it simple, keep working hard, put your all into it and get ready for the next day,” Pawol said in 2024. “That’s all I think about every day — get better before tomorrow.”