70-Year-Old Gwen Goldman Becomes NY Yankees Bat Girl After 60 Year Wait

In 1961, ten-year-old Gwen Goldman wrote a letter to the New York Yankees asking to be a bat girl. The response she got would make modern girls bristle. Team manager Ron Hamey wrote:

“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.”

As Julia Gergely wrote yesterday in The Forward,

Although it wasn’t the response she had hoped for, a note with the Yankees letterhead was still exciting, and Goldman remained a fan.

She never expected the Yankees to reach out after all these years to right their wrong.

Brian Cashman, the Yankees GM since 1998, reached out to Goldman after hearing the story from her daughter. “A woman belongs everywhere a man does, including the dugout,” he read out loud to Goldman from a new letter on a surprise Zoom call with her family.

As part of the Yankees HOPE Week Initiative, Cashman invited Goldman to work as a bat girl for a game. “Some dreams take longer than they should to be realized,” his letter finishes, “but a goal attained should not dim with the passage of time.”

After 60 years, Goldman's dream was realized in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday.

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