Sixty years later, the Yankees say there is room for a batgirl in baseball
Fans peering into the Yankees dugout on Monday night may have been surprised to see a 70-year-old woman in pinstripes.
But Gwen Goldman was fulfilling a dream she thought had been dashed 60 years earlier.
In 1961, she penned a letter to Yankees general manager Roy Hamey, asking to serve as a batgirl. Hamey wrote back: “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.”
Goldman had kept that letter all these years and her daughter snapped a photo of it and sent it to current Yankees general manager Brian Cashman. He decided it wasn’t too late to fulfill Goldman’s request, much to her surprise.
In a video call with Goldman and her family, Cashman read from a letter he wrote to her.
“Here at the Yankees, we have championed to break down gender barriers in our industry,” Cashman said. “It is an ongoing commitment rooted in the belief that a woman belongs everywhere a man does, including the dugout. And despite the fact that six decades have passed since you first aspired to hold down the position as a New York Yankees batgirl, 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.
“Some dreams take longer than they should to be realized but a goal attained should not dim with the passage of time. ... I have a daughter myself, and it is my sincere hope that every girl be given the opportunity to follow her aspirations into the future.”
So that’s how Goldman found herself at the Yankees’ game Monday night against the Angels. She threw out the first pitch, met manager Bret Boone and some of the players and finally got to be in the dugout.
“It took my breath away, it’s obviously taking my words away, too. It was a thrill of a lifetime times a million,” she said in a video on MLB.com. “I actually got to be in the dugout too.”
Cashman was happy to correct a wrong the Yankees had committed in a letter dated June 23, 1961.
“We have a chance to rewrite history here and show you obviously how times have change and we’ve all found higher ground we’d like to think,” he said in the video call. “And we all aspire to do better every single day.”
Goldman soaked up every second of her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“It’s surreal,” Goldman told MLB.com. “This is the thrill of many lifetimes, not just one. To say this is a dream come true would be an understatement. I need to go to a thesaurus to find something besides ‘thrilling’ and ‘overwhelming.’ I can’t find words to explain the joy of walking out into this stadium.”
This story was originally published June 29, 2021 at 9:30 AM.
