Rachel Balkovec has just made major league history.
On January 10, MLB (Major League Baseball), announced that the New York Yankees had hired the 34-year-old Balkovc as its minor league Low A affiliate manager, the Tampa Tarpons. This makes Balkovc the first female manager in affiliate baseball’s history.
This isn’t the first time that Balkovec has broken down the barriers of professional baseball. In 2019, Balkovec became the first female full-time hitting coach when she was hired for the New York Yankees’ rookie-level Florida Complex League team. According to MLB.com, she has a decade’s experience in baseball and coached the Australian Baseball League Minor League baseball season that was canceled in 2020 because of COVID-19.
“The Yankees have hired Rachel Balkovec as the manager of the @tampatarpons, their Low-A affiliate,” MLB tweeted. “She’ll become the first female manager in affiliated professional history.”
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Twitter users expressed their gratitude for the announcement by sharing their comments on the replies.
“From what I gathered, she has nearly a decade of work within MLB baseball, with being hired in 2019 as Yankees’ hitting coach as the most recent before this Tampa manager role,” one user wrote. “She has multiple graduate degrees, too, and she has earned this position! Congratulations, Rachel!”
Another added, “Huge W for women in sports everywhere!!! Congratulations Rachel! We are excited to see you succeed!!” To that specific tweet, another baseball fan replied, “I got a feeling in the next 2–3 years she might be running [Yankees manager Aaron]Boone out of town, or at least getting on the MLB coaching staff in some capacity. Her work speaks for itself.”
In 2019, Balkovec told the Associated Press that she considers her journey as a woman in the male-dominated world of baseball to be an “advantage.”
“I view my path as an advantage,” Balkovec said at the time. “I had to do probably much more than maybe a male counterpart, but I like that because I’m so much more prepared for the challenges that I might encounter.”
Source: Glamour