Charlesworth-Seiler 2nd Woman Hired into GCL in 2 Yrs

Minor League Baseball hired Emma Charlesworth-Seiler to umpire Gulf Coast League games, the latest woman to enter the professional officiating ranks, and first instance that two women have been hired into pro ball in back-to-back years in Minor League history.

MiLB Ump Emma Charlesworth-Seiler.
Photo: Historic Dodgertown.

Last season, MiLB hired Jen Pawol and similarly assigned her to the rookie-level Gulf Coast League. Pawol was promoted to the Short-A New York-Penn League ahead of the 2017 season.

Unlike Pawol, who was hired into pro baseball after a noteworthy college officiating career, Charlesworth-Seiler enters the Minor Leagues at just 22 years of age, with experience that includes Little League Baseball, Australian ball, scorer for the independent-league St. Paul Saints, and several MLB/MiLB programs and camps.

Charlesworth-Seiler's credentials include service as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) in Minnesota and affiliation with the Halsey Hall (Twin Cities of Minnesota) chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), having served on the Women in Baseball Research Committee.

The complete list of women to have umpired in the Major/Minor League baseball system includes:
Bernice Gera (1972);
Christine Wren (1975-77);
Pam Postema (1977-89);
Theresa Cox Fairlady (1989-91);
Ria Cortesio (1999-2007);
Shanna Kook (2003-04);
Jen Pawol (2016-);
Emma Charlesworth-Seiler (2017-).

The Charlesworth-Seiler hire, on the heels of Pawol's MiLB foray, suggests a potential emphasis on opening baseball's umpiring door to women, which, eventually, and in what appears to be closer to fruition, will render obsolete articles like this one.

Still, there remains an ambition gap in camp and school attendance. Charlesworth-Seiler was the only woman out of 100 participants at the MiLB Umpire Training Academy in Vero Beach, Florida, which, like Pawol, she attended on a scholarship from MLB's Umpire Camps program.

Minor League Baseball's rookie-level Gulf Coast League begins its season on June 26, 2017.