In their book Diamonds in the Rough: The Untold History of Baseball, Joel Zoss and John Bowman speculate that the first instance of a woman officiating a baseball game may have occurred as early as 1846. On July 12 of that year, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club played a game officiated by a person whose scrawled signature on the pages of the club's gamebook appears to be "Dolly Flores." Notwithstanding the fact that "Dolly" can also be a man's name or nickname - there was a major league umpire named Albert "Dolly" Stark whose National League career spanned the years from 1928 - '42, with a couple of year-long breaks during which he held out for a better contract - it's still pretty amazing to consider that more than a hundred and fifty years ago, a woman may have been calling 'em as she saw 'em.

Verifiable documentation of a woman paid to umpire doesn't exist before 1904, when Amanda Clement went to see her brother pitch in a semi-pro league. The first game of the afternoon was an amateur contest, and when the umpire didn't show up, Amanda volunteered to step in behind the mound. Her brother vouched that she'd umpired plenty of games in their hometown, and the semi-pro teams were so impressed with her performance that they hired her to work their following game. For the next six years Amanda, who was from South Dakota, worked games in a five-state area, averaging fifty a season. Amanda earned between $15 and $25 a game, and used the proceeds to pay her way through college.

Fast-forward nearly seventy years. In 1970, Bernice Gera, a 1967 graduate of the Florida Baseball Umpire School, contracted to work for the New York-Penn League. Six days later, the president of the NAPBL declared her contract "disapproved and invalid." Bernice took her case to court and in 1972 the New York State Court of Appeals ruled in her favor, throwing out the height and weight restrictions that until then had made it improbable, if not impossible, for women - and a lot of men, too - to join the ranks of professional umpires. Bernice worked only one game, the first of a double-header on June 25, 1972, before retiring.

Christine Wren began umpiring minor league baseball in the Northwest League in 1975. In the spring of 1975, she was asked to be the home plate umpire for an exhibition game between the LA Dodgers and USC--the first game of her professional career. Attendance for this free event was approximately 51,000, breaking previous attendance records for exhibition games at Dodger Stadium by approximately 46,000. In 1977, Chris was promoted to the Midwest League and worked the league's All-Star game that season. She retired after the 1977 season.

Chris's last season was Pam Postema's first. In 1977, Pam began umpiring rookie ball in the Gulf Coast League. Unlike her predecessors, Pam slowly but steadily rose up the minor league ladder, and was promoted to AAA in 1983. She spent six years in the Pacific Coast League and worked Major League Baseball spring training before being released from her contract in 1989. Pam subsequently filed a discrimination lawsuit, which was settled out-of-court for an undisclosed amount. In 1992, Pam wrote a book about her minor league baseball experiences titled You've Got to Have Balls to Make It in This League.

Just as in the Wren/Postema succession, Theresa FairLady (formerly Theresa Cox) went to umpire school and got a job in the Arizona Rookie League the same year Postema was released from Triple AAA. Theresa's career lasted longer than a blink of an eye, but not by much; she never made it out of Single A and was released in 1991 after only two years in pro ball. Her release from professional baseball followed her joining Pam's lawsuit, making it a class-action suit, and testifying against the Umpire Development Program.

Eight years later, in 1999, Ria Cortesio succeeded Theresa FairLady. She was promoted to the AA level, and worked one major league spring training game in Arizona before being released from the Southern League in 2007. During her tenure in minor league baseball, Ria spent portions of many off-seasons teaching at the Jim Evans Academy of Professional Umpiring.


Shanna Kook of Canada was the sixth and most recent woman to be hired as an umpire in affiliated profesional baseball. Shanna spent two seasons in the Pioneer League, working in 2003 and 2004, before being released.

During the six-year interval from 1992 until 1998, there were zero women umpires in minor league baseball. Perry Barber was hired as a staff umpire and assignor by the fledgling independent Atlantic League in 1998 and worked in that capacity until the end of the 2001 season. In 2007, Kate Sargeant became the second woman to umpire full-time for a professional independent circuit when she was hired as a crew chief for the New York State League. During the 2008 season, with Ria's release from the Southern League the previous September, Kate became the lone woman umpire in all of pro ball as she toiled for the independent United League in Texas.

As of the 2010 season, there are, once again, no women umpires in all of professional baseball; for us, history unfortunately repeats itself way too often. It also suggests that whoever follows the women already named in this all-too brief summary will have a hell of a task...but she, or they, will also have a wealth of support from the Women Umpiring Baseball community. For some of our members' "origin stories," please check out our page Herstory: How the Women of WUB Became Umpires.