D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April 2010
A League of Her Own
Baseball diamonds are this NMSU grad's best friend, as an executive for Minor League Baseball.
By Jeff Berg
If you're a baseball fan, you probably know that every December, baseball honchos gather for the "Winter Meetings." The meeting is usually in a warm clime, although this past December it was curiously placed in Indianapolis. It is a time to talk about trades, sign free agents, exchange information and swap stories and lies. Players and agents also make appearances, especially those who are seeking sweet contracts for the next season.
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A baseball family: NMSU grad Heather
Raburn with husband Johnny, in his Nashville Sounds uniform, and son
Jace, age five, who's just started playing T-ball. |
At the most recent Winter Meetings, however, something fresh took place just across the street. Nearly 100 women, all of whom work in professional baseball in some capacity, gathered for the second annual Women in Baseball conference. Although it was a brief gathering, it helped bring together the growing number of women who are, usually, in executive positions in baseball, still more often than not in the minor leagues.
The conference was the brainchild of Heather Raburn, a graduate of New Mexico State University and former NMSU softball player, who is now a senior account manager at Minor League Baseball headquarters in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Raburn has worked in professional baseball for a dozen years now, since graduating from NMSU in 1998. She organized the event as more of a networking opportunity than a rally against the men in the all-male sport (at least all the players are still male), according to a story about the conference in the New York Times. She told the paper, "It's a chance to talk to other women in the same position and find out how they are handling situations."
Historically, women have been involved in pro baseball for many years — even as players. The All American Girls Professional Baseball League flourished in the Midwest from 1943-54. More recently, a barnstorming team of all-female players, the Colorado Silver Bullets, challenged teams around the US from 1994-97. Ila Borders became the first woman to be a starting pitcher in a professional league game, in an independent league, but eventually retired in 2000 after failing to attract any offers from teams with major league affiliations. And last year, Eri Yoshida turned heads when she played for a Japanese professional team. She later returned to the US and was signed a few weeks ago by an independent-league team, the Chico (Calif.) Outlaws. A pitcher, Yoshida is only 18 years old.
Women are also umpires and, increasingly, executives. Kim Ng, for example, is an assistant general manager for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and has interviewed for several general manager openings.
Baseball was a family affair for Heather Raburn. Born in New York, she grew up in Colorado. "I owe getting into the game to my grandma and grandpa Crombie, who were active board members with our local Little League organization," she says. "They encouraged all of us kids to get involved.
She wound up at NMSU because, she says, "I was looking for a Division I school in a warm climate." She would earn a bachelor's degree in business administration, with an emphasis in marketing, while playing on NMSU's women's softball teams (then known as the Roadrunners) from 1995-98. She started out as a catcher, but moved to a utility role her sophomore year. In her junior and senior years, she played in the outfield full-time.
"During my playing years the Big West was one of the toughest softball conferences, with schools like Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach, Hawaii, UNLV and others," Raburn recalls. "Therefore, my first year was a learning curve for all associated with the team. The coaching staff was brand-new and so was half the team. Our conference record wasn't very impressive in 1995, but we were young and gained the necessary experience to be competitive."
The team turned it around her sophomore year, 1996, tying for second in the conference and ranking as high as 18th in the country. At 40-26, however, the team was snubbed for a regional tournament berth.
"Our coach had done such a tremendous job that he was offered a job with a Pac-10 school and moved on. We were still left with our core team and did just as well my junior year." NMSU placed second again in the Big West — "showing it wasn't a fluke in 1996" — but again got skipped over for a regional bid. "In 1997 we realized we had to prove ourselves by winning the Big West Conference outright in order to get into the NCAA tournament."
Another coaching change, right before her senior season began, was hard on the team. "We played tough, but after a two-week road trip filled with losses it was too much of hill to climb to get back on top. I would have loved to have finished stronger my senior year, but the experiences I had traveling to California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii, as well as the friendships I gained, will never change. I still remain very close with my former teammates and we coordinate a girl's trip each year."
She toyed with the idea of trying to play professionally after graduation, as pro women's softball was then developing. Looking back, though, she says, "I would not change any of my steps or chosen career path, so I'm glad I did not pursue playing professionally."
Her NMSU connections got her started along that path. After graduating, she returned to Las Cruces for an internship in the Athletic Department; the person who'd created the internship program had strong baseball ties. Raburn got introduced to executives running operations for the Rancho Cucamonga (Calif.) Quakes, the single-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.