By Sally Tippett Rains
As the month of March starts and we usher in Women’s History Month, we want to put the spotlight on women in baseball and also sports media. The Baseball Hall of Fame devotes a page to Women in Baseball: “Women have been playing baseball almost as long as men have. Their long connection with the game began in the 1860s and has continued through the efforts of individual pioneers like Amanda Clement, Jackie Mitchell, Toni Stone, Maria Pepe, and Ila Borders.”
As far as St. Louis goes, there were some trailblazer women who broke barriers in sports. Nancy Drew of KMOX Radio worked in the sports department in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with only about four other full-tie female sports reporters in the city at that time. Kathy Nelson, Marcia Sanguinette, and Cathy Burnes Beebe worked at the Post-Dispatch. These women worked very hard and all gained the respect of their male collegues and the readers and listeners of St. Louis.
Terry Krueger was also a pioneering female broadcaster in St. Louis, becoming one of the first women to work as a photojournalist and gain access to football and baseball locker rooms in the market, starting her career at KSDK in 1980.
Betsey Bruce is recognized as one of the first female TV journalist reporting hard news in St. Louis in the early 1970s, and she also covered the business side of sports.
In 2025, STLSportsPage.com did an article on the evolution of women in the sports media both in St. Louis and the national scene. To read that CLICK HERE.
The following is just a round-up from the internet and the Baseball Hall of Fame website.
Major Milestones for Women in Baseball:
- On-Field Umpiring (MLB): 2025- Jen Pawol made history as the first woman to umpire a regular-season MLB game in August 2025, having previously worked in Triple-A and Spring Training.
- Play in a MLB- partnered league: 2022- Kelsie Whitmore became the first woman to play in an MLB-partnered league (Atlantic League) in 2022.
- Hitting Coordinator: 2021- Sara Goodrum became the first female hitting coordinator in affiliated Minor League history in 2021.
- Team management: 2021: The Boston Red Sox hire Bianca Smith as a minor league coach, making her the first Black woman to serve as a coach in the history of professional baseball.
- Team management: 2021- Rachel Balkovec takes the helm as manager of the New York Yankees’ affiliate in Tampa, FL. Balkovec becomes the first fulltime female manager of a minor league team affiliated with MLB.
- On-field coach: 2020- The San Francisco Giants hire Alyssa Nakken as an on-field coach, making her the first female to hold such a position in the history of the major leagues.
- Baseball writing: 2017- Claire Smith is named the winner of the prestigious BBWAA Career Excellence Award. She is the first woman to receive the honor. Smith is widely recognized as the first female baseball writer to cover a Major League Baseball team full-time as a beat reporter working for the Hartford- Courant covering the New York Yankees starting in 1982.
- Baseball Hall of Fame Induction: 2006- Effa Manley becomes the first woman inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
- Drafted by MLB: 1992- Carey Schueler was the first woman drafted by an MLB team, selected by the Chicago White Sox in 1993.
- Professional Playing (Partnership/Negro League): Toni Stone was the first woman to play professional baseball in 1946.
- Scouting & Coaching: Edith Houghton was the first female scout in1946.
- Team owner: 1935- Effa Manley and her husband Abe purchase the Brooklyn Eagles, a Negro Leagues franchise that they will soon move to Newark. Manley will run the business operations of the Eagles, managing the payroll and negotiating contracts with the players. She will work to improve conditions for players, including the securing of the best available hotel accommodations at a time when many hotels are segregated. Manley will also become an active force in the Civil Rights Movement.
While we concentrated on “Women in Sports” March is for all women; a month to remember and appreciate all of the advancements that have been made by women.
This information compiled from National Day Calendar.
NATIONAL WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH
National Women’s History Month in March annually encourages us to honor the women who came before us and fought for equality among all races and genders.
#WomensHistoryMonth
While America is full of influential women today, hundreds of women came before them, paving the way. Women’s History Month serves as a way to not only remember them but keep carrying their torch onward. There’s still work to do.
Pioneering Women from History
- In the 1800s, Sojourner Truth was an abolitionist and women’s rights activist who was born into slavery and escaped with her infant daughter. She later became known for her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech regarding racial inequalities in the year 1851 at an Ohio Women’s Rights Convention.
- Louisa May Alcott worked in the mid-1800s to support her family and their financial difficulties, while she was just a young girl. She wrote one of the most famous novels in American history, “Little Women.”
- Susan B. Anthony played a massive role in the women’s suffrage movement in 1878 when she and her friends presented an amendment to Congress that, if passed, would give women the right to vote. In 1920 it was ratified as the 19th amendment.
- In the mid-1900s, Marguerite Higgins was a reporter and war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune during WWII, The Korean War, and the Vietnam War. She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Correspondence.
- Coretta Scott King played a crucial role in keeping alive the legacy of her husband, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., after his death. She started the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1968 after he was assassinated.
- Rosa Parks was one of the most famous, influential women of the civil rights movement. In 1955, she refused to give up her seat in the “colored section” of a bus to a white man and got charged with civil disobedience. Today, she’s widely known as the “mother of the freedom movement.”
- Sandra Day O’Connor is the only woman on this list who is still alive today. She is a lawyer, a celebrated judge, and was the first female justice on the Supreme Court from 1981-2006.
Author
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Sally Tippett Rains started her sports media career at KMOX Radio Sports (writing/producing for Bob Costas, Jack Buck, Bill Wilkerson) in the late 1970′s, early ’80′s then switched to book writing and charity work while raising their children.
Currently she is content manager for STLSportsPage.com and author of 11 books, many in the sports genre.She also wrote "Choose Happy; Find Contentment in Any Situation," which comes in Black & White or Color versions.