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A 70-Year-Old Bat Girl Lives Out Her 60-Year-Old Dream

Bhupender SainiJul 01, 2021Sports
A 70-Year-Old Bat Girl Lives Out Her 60-Year-Old Dream

Gwen Goldman has adored the Yankees for her entire life.

Her favorite player was the Hall of Fame outfielder Mickey Mantle. Her father used to take her to games as a girl, days she remembers now as a special time for the two of them to bond. When she was away at camp each summer, he would include clippings from The New York Times in his letters so she could stay up-to-date on her team.

So when she was 10, Goldman wrote the Yankees a letter asking to serve as their bat girl, the person responsible for helping to retrieve bats and fulfill other tasks during a game. But in the letter she received back, dated June 12, 1961, the Yankees’ general manager at the time, Roy Hamey, told her no.

Girls, he said, did not belong in the dugout.

“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.

Sixty years later, the team righted that refusal. On Monday, Goldman was invited to the Bronx to serve as the bat girl for her beloved Yankees. Before a game against the Los Angeles Angels, she wiped a tear from her eye as she walked onto the field at Yankee Stadium for the first time.

“It’s been an amazing opportunity,” Goldman said in a video call with reporters during the game. “A day of a lifetime I can’t put into words. I don’t know where to start on which was the best, which or what did I enjoy the most. Just the whole piece from walking in the front door of the stadium to coming up to a locker with my name on it, Gwen Goldman, and suiting up, and walking out onto the field.

“It took my breath away, and it’s obviously taking my words away.”

Wearing a full Yankees uniform, Goldman threw out a ceremonial first pitch. She accompanied the team’s third-base coach, Phil Nevin, when he took the lineup card out to the umpires before the game. She chatted and gave fist pumps to the players, all of whom, she said, had been so kind, and had even thanked her for her story and for supporting them. Pitcher Gerrit Cole showed her around.