Honoring the Women of the Milwaukee Brewers this International Women’s History Month

While Major League Baseball has been and always will be a male-dominated sport, women have played contributing roles since the sport’s earliest days. Since 1904 when Amanda Clement became the first female umpire all the way to today as we see 43 female coaches in the MLB, women have played a big part in America’s favorite past-time.

Women have contributed to Major League Baseball for over a hundred years, and today, we’re honoring two women who have served as part of the Milwaukee Brewers coaching staff.

In 2020, Sara Goodrum made history when she joined the Milwaukee Brewers as the minor league hitting coordinator. She was the first woman to hold that position for any team in Major League history. Goodrum was brought into the coordinator position after first serving as an intern and then a full-time coordinator of integrative sports performance. After putting in the hours and proving her worth to the Brewers, she was brought on to the coaching staff in October of 2020 (though it wasn’t announced until January 2021 when the full minor league coaching staff was announced).

When asked about the promotion and any intimidation factor, Goodrum responded:

“The most eye-opening thing for me is that especially with the players who are coming up now, they don’t care if you’re a man or a woman. If you can provide them guidance that is going to help them accomplish their dream of making it to the big leagues, they don’t care. For me, it’s always been about showing first and foremost that I care about them. I’m going to continue to do that as I go into the role of being a little more on the front face with our players. Showing them, ‘I want to help you guys in your career, and I’ll be able to provide that information.’ Our hitting coaches are phenomenal, as well. I don’t think the players mind what your gender is. It’s about the information.”

“I love being able to see people with no preconceptions. At the end of the day, I’m a woman in a male-dominated sport, right? I was a woman on the baseball field. If everybody [prejudged] me, I wouldn’t be where I am today. They’d look at me and say I’m undersized. They’d say I’m a woman and I shouldn’t be on the field. That I should be playing softball. If I had the same approach to how I coach hitters, that would be horrible, right? I would just see everybody at face value. So, I have the coaching style of coming out there to help everybody, no matter what round they were drafted, no matter the color of their skin, male or female.”