Woman Finally Nabs Yankees Bat Girl Job At 70 After Being Denied Over Gender

There’s no crying in baseball. But there should be an exception for Gwen Goldman.

Goldman, 70, finally became an honorary bat girl for the New York Yankees Monday during the team’s home game against the Los Angeles Angels. Goldman asked to serve in the position 60 years ago when she was a girl, but was rejected due to her gender.

“I feel like I’m in a dream, to tell you the truth,” a visibly emotional Goldman told the team’s current general manager Brian Cashman on a video call in which Cashman surprised Goldman with the good news, released last week.

Goldman, a Connecticut native, also got to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

Goldman got the opportunity to fulfill her childhood dream thanks to her daughter Abby and the Yankees’ 2021 Hope Week initiative, which highlights inspirational stories.

In 1961, a 10-year-old Goldman wrote a letter to then-Yankees general manager Roy Hamey, telling him that she wanted the gig and arguing that she would be just as good in the position as a boy.

“While we agree with you that girls are certainly as capable as boys, and no doubt would be an attractive addition on the playing field, I am sure you can understand that in a game dominated by men a young lady such as yourself would feel out of place in a dugout,” Hamey wrote her in a letter shared on social media by the Yankees.

Despite the kindly worded “no,” Goldman hung Hamey’s rejection letter on her living room wall to show her “love for the Yankees and to hold on to a dream,” she explained in the video call with Cashman last week.

Goldman’s daughter set the plan in motion when she forwarded a photo of Hamey’s letter to Cashman.

“Although your long-ago correspondence took place 60 years ago — six years before I was born — I feel compelled to resurrect your original request and do what I can to bring your childhood dream to life,” Cashman told Goldman, reading from a new letter addressed to the longtime fan.

“Here at the Yankees, we have championed to break down gender barriers in our industry. It is an ongoing commitment rooted in the belief that a woman belongs everywhere a man does, including the dugout,” he said.

Despite six decades passing since Goldman first aspired to be the Yankees’ first bat girl, Cashman noted that “it is not too late to reward and recognize the ambition you showed in writing that letter to us as a 10-year-old girl.”

And although the story is sweet, one Twitter user pointed out that the Yankees have been rejecting girls’ requests to become bat girls as recently as 1992.