Rachel Balkovec just made some major league history.
On January 10, MLB (Major League Baseball) announced that the New York Yankees has hired 34-year-old Balkovc to manage its minor league Low-A affiliate, the Tampa Tarpons, making her the first female manager in affiliate baseball history.
This is not the first time the rising star in professional baseball has broken barriers in the sport. 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. Per MLB.com, she has a decade of experience in baseball and coached for the Australian Baseball League while Minor League baseball season was canceled in 2020 due to 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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Following the announcement, Twitter users took to the replies to share their congratulations.
“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! Excited to watch you crush it!!” 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 to the MLB coaching staff of 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.”
