Watch highlights from My Baseball Story Panel at 2024 SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference
At the sixth annual SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference on September 21, 2024, the My Baseball Story Panel included MLB official scorers Kara Blackstone and Jillian Geib; Bethany Morlan, co-founder of the Rockford Little Peaches girls baseball nonprofit; SABR Board Vice President and Webster University professor Allison Levin; and moderator Kat Williams, president of the International Women’s Baseball Center.
- Video: Click here to watch a replay of the My Baseball Story Panel (YouTube)
Here are some highlights:
On her baseball fandom as a child
- Levin: “I went to summer camp every year, my parents would send me away for eight weeks. Every week, my mom would send me a package that included Sports Illustrated, with all the box scores from the week and the standings. I would hold camp on the roof of a building and lay everything out where all the baseball fans could see where their team stood. We would all go through Sports Illustrated, and this is really how my fandom grew and bloomed.”
On the personal impact of baseball
- Levin: “My friendships have grown out of baseball. My best friend in the world, I met my first day of college standing in line at the cafeteria. He was standing in front of me spewing absolute baseball nonsense, nothing he was saying was correct. But because he was a guy, everybody standing around him was just like ‘Yes, yes, yes. You’re right.’ So under my breath I corrected him, he turned around, was not happy with me, was convinced I was wrong. We went to a computer lab, looked it up … I was right, he was wrong, we’re best friends to this day.”
On her journey to becoming an official scorer
- Geib: “In the summer of 2021, one of the official scorers for the Rockies decided, kind of suddenly, to retire and one of my bosses called me up and said, ‘You know what, Jillian? You’ve kind of done it all in our department, so how do you feel about maybe trying out official scoring?’ I was shocked, but elated. Obviously, that’s something I had done since I was an infant essentially. … I decided ‘Heck yeah, I’m going to do it.’ I scored my first game in July 2021. At the time, there were no other female official scorers in Major League Baseball. … Since then, we’ve had many other females join our ranks. I think it’s super important, obviously we do a great job, and I hope to keep the ball rolling.”
- Blackstone: “If you were to ask me … in 2007 when I was working for the [Albuquerque] Isotopes, if I’d ever see myself in a big-league press box keeping score in a Division Series or even the World Series, I would have told you heck no. … But here we are. It’s a cool thing to be a part of.”
On people’s reaction to a woman as an official scorer
- Geib: “It’s definitely been an interesting adjustment, something that I’ve had to grow a bit of a thick skin and just realizing that I might not be fully respected initially. But all I have to do is keep doing my job to the best of my ability. That’s all I really can do, it’s all I can control.”
On an interesting play witnessed as an official scorer
- Blackstone: “My first game ever, my major-league debut as an official scorer, was a no-hitter through seven [innings]. That was hilarious in the way that I had no idea it was happening. I was in such awe of everything around me that it didn’t hit me until after the game when I was writing the totals.”
On switching from baseball to softball as a child
- Morlan: “What broke my little heart wasn’t adjusting to a bigger ball or pitching underhand. It was our team names. Boy teams got to wear Cubs or [White] Sox uniforms, pretending to be Mark Grace or Bo Jackson as they watched them on TV. I was now wearing hot pink and representing the Pink Panthers. I could still be hardcore, though, like my heroes in the movie A League of Their Own. They had a lame name, Peaches, but they showed me … a Peach was tough and kind, strong and committed. A Peach to the public, yes, but never a pushover. Everything I wanted to be when I got big.”
On co-founding her nonprofit youth baseball organization for girls, the Rockford Little Peaches
- Morlan: “That generation didn’t have A League of Their Own. So, a friend of mine and me started the Little Peaches. We teach baseball, but we teach strength, and we teach them to have a voice. It’s introduced me to this whole family that I didn’t know was here, and that I didn’t know I had. That’s what I want to give to the girls. I want to give them this family and to show them that they have a community. It really has nothing to do with baseball, but it does.”
Transcription assistance by Victoria Monte.
For more coverage of the 2024 SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference, visit SABR.org/women-in-baseball-conference/2024.
Originally published: September 25, 2024. Last Updated: September 25, 2024.