Rachel Balkovec Won Her Debut Game As Affiliated Baseball's First Female Manager

Rachel Balkovec, the first full-time female manager in affiliated baseball history, won her first game, as the Tampa Tarpons (A, Yankees) opened their season with a 9-6 win over the Lakeland Flying Tigers on Friday night at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, Florida.

The crowd of 2,893 included her parents and more than 1,000 female student athletes who attended the game thanks to a donation from the Detroit Tigers Foundation. The first baseball used in the game, together with Balkovec's jersey and cap, were sent to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Balkovec, 34, has worked as a minor league Strength and Conditioning Intern (Cardinals, 2012 and White Sox, 2013), a minor league Strength and Conditioning Coordinator (Cardinals, 2014), Latin American Strength and Conditioning Coordinator (Astros, 2016), minor league Strength and Conditioning Coach (Astros, 2018), and minor league Hitting Coach (Yankees, 2019). Also in 2019, she worked as an apprentice hitting coach with the Netherlands National Baseball and Softball programs while studying for a Master of Science degree in Biomechanics in Amsterdam.

Before the game, Balkovec discussed her long journey to this moment, which may have begun back in the fourth grade, when she announced to her class with dead seriousness that she was going to be the first female kicker in the NFL. (She had a bit of a scare in spring training when she was hit in the face by a batted ball on March 22 and temporarily lost vision in her left eye.) She has worked her whole life for this, with a noticeable intensity.

When I was in high school, they loved it. . . . "Oh, you're cute; you work really hard" ... But when you get in the professional world and you're outpacing people and you're doing things different, then it becomes a competition and they don't appreciate it. I've heard it all, and this is very typical: "Are you just trying to overdo it because you're a woman." No, motherfucker. This is how I am. . . . I think I've killed the whole, I'm-an-inspiration-to-young-girls [thing]. I don't know, man. I'm not the girl next door. I'm not the girl that 8-year-olds should probably look up to. I'm probably the girl that 22-year-olds should look up to. . . .

It's been 10 years of just working to this point. Things have evolved. I was blatantly discriminated against back then. Some people say not to say that, but it's just part of what has happened, and I think it's important to say because it lets you know how much change has happened. So, blatant discrimination, that was 2010-ish, and now here we are 12 years later and I'm sitting here at a press conference as a manager. . . .

I had to make some really difficult decisions in my career to keep going. If you're asking me why I did that, I ... just like you have to look at yourself and go, "What is my purpose on this planet? And if I don't do this, who else is going to come behind me and do it?" I know that I'm capable of doing this. I know that I'm the right person for it. I know that I'm a woman, I know that I can get respect in any room that I walk into, so [to quit would be] disrespectful to other women who've come behind me and done that for me. So that's why I've kept going. (my emphasis)

In the second inning, some of those female athletes began a "Let's go, Rachel!" chant.

I've never heard my name chanted like that. . . . I see me sitting in the stands, 15 or 20 years ago, and so it's just really cool. Especially for all those young female athletes that came out; it was just very cool that they're here in this moment. And maybe they don't even fully understand it right now, but I think in the future when they get into their professional careers and maybe hit some brick walls that they'll hopefully reflect on this moment.