Baseball's only woman umpire gets dumped, under suspicious circumstances

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

Baseball sure seems opposed to letting women ump in the majors

Some of you may remember Lion in Oil did a post a while back on the first female Cuban umpire to make the equivalent of Cuba's major leagues. I realize Cuba isn't exactly a very forward thinking country, but in terms of letting women ump baseball games, they're light years ahead of us.

As of right now, Ria Cortesio is the only female umpire in American pro baseball, and she's been doing it for nine years - primarily in class A and AA.

She umped a major league exhibition game at the start of this season, the first woman to do so in 20 years. She also umped the All-Star Futures game last year.

"Until I work a regular-season Major League baseball game, I haven't done anything," Cortesio said, "I don't want to be a pioneer. I just want to do my job."

The interesting fact is that there has never been a female umpire who made it to the majors. And the question is why? Certainly female umpires are a lot rarer than male umpires (there have only been 5 total in baseball's history including Cortesio), but it's not like they haven't existed at all.

In fact, Pam Postema, who ended her career in 1996, spent 13 years in the minors - seven of them in AAA.

Although often considered a prospect for major league umpiring, Postema never received the call until 1988, when Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti offered her a contract to officiate at the MLB level during spring training. Later that year, Giamatti also offered her a chance to umpire at the "Hall of Fame Game" between the New York Yankess and the Atlanta Braves.

Both opportunities looked promising, but Giamatti died soon thereafter in 1989, and Postema never again got the chance to umpire in the major leagues. In December of 1989, the Triple-A Alliance cancelled Postema's contract after 13 years of well-regarded experience in the minor leagues. She then filed a sex-discrimination lawsuit at the federal level, which was settled out of court.

In 1992, Postema published a book entitled You've Gotta Have Balls to Make It In This League.

Judging by Postema's experience, Cortesio has a mountain to climb despite her nine years of experience. Cortesio has yet to even ump at the AAA level.

So what's the conclusion? I think it's pretty simple. Baseball would prefer not see women umps in the majors.

But let's hope Cortesio can bust through.

-WCK