Almost three months ago we did a post on Ria Cortesio, the only female umpire in pro baseball. Cortesio's been in A and AA ball for nine years, and has umped an MLB exhibition game, but never an official MLB game. And now she'll never get there. She was dumped by the Professional Baseball Umpire Corporation a few days ago in the rather unceremonious way that the PBUM fires people. By cell phone. Must be because of all those fired umpires that went on killing sprees back in the day.Anyway, as some people have noted, Cortesio's long stint in the minors suggested she was never going to make the pros. Most minor league umpires either move up or get fired long before nine years have passed.
That may be true, but there's also something odd about how she was fired.
Cortesio started this past season as the top-ranked umpire in all of Double-A. If there had been an opening in Triple-A, it would've been hers. That would obviously suggest that she's good at what she does.
However, there were no vacancies and when the new ratings by minor league supervisors came out in midseason, her ranking substantially dropped. A move up to AAA would have greatly changed her status, since umpires in AAA are under the auspices of major league supervisors.
So what happened? Unfortunately, no one knows, except PBUM of course. Perhaps they just got tired of her hanging around for so long. Or maybe she had a bad year. But it seems odd that the best umpire in AA would drop so dramatically in the time span of half a season.
There have been six female umpires in the affiliated minor leagues, and none have made the majors. Pam Postema spent several years in Triple-A during the 1980s; after being fired, she filed a sex discrimination suit against baseball and settled out of court almost 6 years later.
Cortesio said she had not decided whether to pursue legal action.
-WCK
3 comments:
There is nothing "suspicious" about the recent release from the Southern League of umpire Ria Cortesio. Ria's rise to the top of the Double AA ranks was as close as baseball ever intended to allow her to get to the majors. She was kept on as a minor league umpire long past her expiration date - any male umpire, according to the standard currently employed by PBUC, the Professional Baseball Umpires Corporation, would have been either promoted or let go after two years in Double AA - merely as a sop to the spurious and easily refuted orthodoxy that baseball does not discriminate against or intentionally obstruct women's participation on the field as umpires. Just as Pam Postema was kept on for thirteen years, so Ria was used by baseball until her presence on a minor league umpiring staff became too threatening and inconvenient to allow her to advance any farther. By the time she got her big, important spring training assignment in Arizona last March, a lone Cubs/Diamondbacks game, the writing was on the wall and she had to go.
So now she is banished and once again there is a total estrogen vacuum in professional baseball, perpetuated deliberately and with idiocy aforethought by the same group of men who were in charge of minor league umpires more than thirty years ago when a courageous woman named Bernice Gera first went to court in 1972 and got the height and weight restrictions thrown out that had prevented women, and a lot of men as well, from becoming professional umpires. To claim that there is no discrimination against women in professional baseball is laughable; all subjective evidence and the weight of history declare otherwise. One has only to examine the record of recruitment, training, and promoting of women by pro ball to discern that there is no recruitment, targeted training, or promoting of women the way there is and has been for other minorities including African-Americans and Hispanics. None. The few women who have made the attempt since Bernice Gera first cracked open the "stained grass window" have all had to battle for what men are routinely granted simply by virtue of their gender: respect, appropriate facilities, jobs, and the possibility of advancement. There is no organized network by which women umpires can support each other, exchange information and ideas, or seek out new recruits to train and send out into minor league ball the way there is for men and boys. In thirty-five years, nothing has changed; women are still being used, singly and intermittently, to legitimize the false hypothesis that baseball does not discriminate against their participation on the field. Baloney.
The premise that Ria's ranking within her league plummeted precipitously the last half of her final season is highly suspect; more likely, it was the sense of control guys like Mike Fitzpatrick and the other minor league supervisors and evaluators were losing over her as Ria's name and reputation grew nationally that compelled them to act and finally release her from Double AA. Once she reached Triple AAA, it would have become too risky and transparent to fire her; it's been done before, the tactics would have been decried too universally, too many people would have recognized and acknowledged her superior abilities and work ethic by then, and the men in charge would have looked like boobs for firing her. This way they still look like boobs, but there is no objective evidence to prove their prejudice. They can claim Ria's release as simply symptomatic of the normal rate of attrition of minor league umpires ("Well, we release about six Double AA umpires every year; gosh, there's just no movement at the next (major league) level; gee, we kept her around as long as we could, really gave her a lot of breaks, but she just couldn't cut it at the higher level," and so on. Blah blah blah.) It's all so disingenuous and disheartening.
Baseball has no one like Rod Thorn, who saw a void and actively went out looking for qualified women to sign up and promote to the NBA staff of referees. Because of his vision and fearlessness, two women were hired and one of them, Violet Palmer, is still working ten years later. And you never hear anything about her, that's how good she is! Palmer's career belies the belief held inviolable by too many for too long that women are incapable of the physical and emotional fortitude demanded by the rigors of officiating at the highest levels of professional sport. Baseball holds this credo dear, and will obviously do anything to maintain the status quo as long as it possibly can.
Any real commitment by baseball to the eventual advent of women on a major league umpiring crew could be measured fairly accurately by the current construction plans for the soon-to-be-completed Yankees and Mets ballparks in New York. The NBA, for the last ten years, has contractually ensured a separate dressing room or changing area for its female referee(s) in every venue in the National Basketball Association. No complaining that it "costs too much, too much trouble, can't find a space, etc." Will the new ballparks in Flushing and the Bronx offer similar accommodations? They obviously won't be needed anytime soon now, but some indication that proper facilities will be provided for the women who may, at some point in the far, far, far-off future in a far, far, far-away land, be needing them would at least be a step in the right direction for baseball.
Ria's ten-year tenure in professional baseball will stand as a monument to the grit, determination, and love of the game that will one day propel another woman umpire to the major leagues, and to her own strength and endurance, both physical and spiritual. Her achievement will not be forgotten by those of us who know she would have done a fine job as a major league umpire if she had been given anything close to the same chance any of her peers get routinely. For Ria it was not meant to be, but her spirit will infuse the next one who makes the attempt, and the next one after that, with focus and energy until at last baseball wakes up and realizes that a woman on the field of play is something to be welcomed and appreciated, not feared and rejected. We obviously have a long way to go to get there; in baseball, change comes sluggishly and incrementally, and seldom without upheaval or resistance.
Women will umpire in the major leagues; the only question is when, and the sooner baseball recognizes and embraces this inevitability, the greater the benefit for all of us. Ria Cortesio, we salute you and thank you for shedding some much needed light on this dim chapter in baseball's long and disappointing history of keeping women in their place. The wrong place.
I have watched Ria progress for several years in the Southern League. Like many others, she has been trapped by a stagnent system of career progression. Time alone got her fired; her skills are far superior to many of her Southern League peers. I know of one young male who is a lousy umpire, but he is big, loud, and just a plain jack ass; he will not make the bigs, but he will be kept until he too runs out of time. Ria should be high on the list to move up, and she should be kept because she is good at her job and getting better each year.
I went to JEAPU with Ria (when her last name was Papageorgio)in Houston. She was only 19 at the time and would graduate from College by the time she was 21 even with the time off. She had a great body for an ump (that is not sexist). She was lanky and had the flexibility of the dancer that she was and is. She has great knowledge of the book and spent at least six years on the staff at the Evans School. She was tremendous as a ball and strike and aleays took the correct angle. In addition I was really fond of her as a person. She had a pierced tongue. She was definitely "with it." I think that the Game lost a really great umpire when it lost her. She is the equal of Mike DiMuro and Jim Reynolds in potential for sure and they are both in the Show. Her potential was limitless. What a loss.
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