Alyssa Nakken has made history this month as the first woman to coach on-field in a major league baseball regular season game.
According to ABC News, “Nakken is an assistant coach who works heavily with baserunning and outfield defense. She watches games from an indoor batting cage near the steps to the dugout — and keeps a Giants jersey nearby, just in case she needs it.”
Nakken was working in the batting cage when she received the call that the San Francisco Giants needed her to coach at first base. She ran to the task, made history, and helped the giants reach their win against the San Diego Padres.
ABC News also reported that Nakken’s helmet was already on its way to the hall of fame in Cooperstown, NY. When I heard about this news, I found it incredible. It is great seeing a woman make history in major league sports. However, it is disappointing that in 2022, we hadn’t even had a woman coach on the field before in baseball. I think this raises a bigger issue and question of why women are not being prioritized in these positions and are rather backups when needed.
There are so many talented female sports professionals that have trained and practiced just as much as their male counterparts but are never given their time to shine. It seems like sports teams hire them, but they are never at the forefront of what’s happening for everyone to see. This doesn’t just go for baseball but for all sports. Women deserve to be put in these coaching positions in the spotlight. Now, though there are more female coaches seen on female team sports than male team sports, this is no excuse for the inequality shown.
There’s no reason why a woman can’t coach a men’s team, as men coach women’s teams all the time. Though I must recognize that there has been significant improvement in including women in male dominated sports, in my opinion, we are still far off from where we should be presently. It should be normalized to have both women and men coaching sports together on a regular basis regardless of the sex of the team.
I hope that Nakken’s shining moment only encourages not just other Major League baseball teams, but all professional sports to rethink their placement of women on their staff and possibly make some changes to promote equal opportunity.
