A 70-year-old woman who 60 years ago was denied a request to serve as a bat girl for the New York Yankees finally got to live out her dream at the team’s Monday night game against the Los Angeles Angels.
Gwen Goldman was photographed at Yankee Stadium fist bumping with players while wearing her own official team uniform and was given the honor of throwing out the first pitch. “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.
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.
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,” Cashman said.
