There’s a glass ceiling in baseball that women have been shattering for a few years now. Among those making moves is Rachel Balkovec, who just became the first woman manager of the Tampa Tarpons and the first woman ever to reach that level.
“It’s a privilege to be at the front of something. And you know, there’s a lot of pressure. There’s a lot of other things that come with that that aren’t really desirable. But I signed up for it, and I’m not going to shy away,” Balkovec said. “It was wildly important for me to have visible ideas of what was possible when I was coming up. And so for me to do that for somebody else is an honor, and it’s a responsibility that I’m happy to have.”
Balkovec is no stranger to breaking boundaries in Major League Baseball. In 2019, she was named hitting instructor for the Tarpons, which is a minor league team affiliated with the New York Yankees.
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