Entering the 2022 season, the Boston Red Sox will be the first organization in Major League Baseball history with two women on its coaching staff.
That was put into motion last year, when Bianca Smith was hired as a minor league coach and became the first Black woman to hold such a job in professional baseball. Now, the Red Sox have brought in Katie Krall as a player-development coach at Double-A Portland.
As noted by Krall in her introductory press conference Wednesday, no one involved realized the organization was doing anything groundbreaking until after the hire.
"We didn’t realize it would be the first time in professional baseball that there would be two female coaches on a staff. So, (the response to that has) been phenomenal," Krall said, via Alex Speier of The Boston Globe.
"I definitely think that at a point we will get to a place where women will just be hired. It won’t necessarily result in a Zoom call with reporters. I think that would be phenomenal. I guess that would be the ultimate goal, that it doesn’t become newsworthy anymore."
Boston poached Krall from Google's global strategy team, where she briefly worked after working baseball jobs with the Cincinnati Reds, Chicago Cubs, MLB front office and Cape League.
Krall spent the week in Fort Myers getting her feet wet in the new job, participating in the team's 2022 Winter Warm-Up -- a minicamp of sorts for 28 of Boston's prospects.
Next up, in uniform up in Maine.
