One of the first female umpires in baseball history shares her story about finding what made her passionate and what her hopes are for the women who follow in her footsteps.
By Kelsey J. Koenen
Published: October 21, 2008
Perry Lee Barber’s path to professional sports didn’t start with childhood dreams. At age 27 she was thrown a curveball. The path it led her down, while unexpected, is one completely submerged in a love for the game. Over the past quarter century, Barber’s work as a professional baseball umpire has blazed a trail for women umpires and begun to chip away at one of the last sports careers presumed to be reserved for men.
The love affair with baseball started when a friend of Barber’s beat her in a game of trivia, when baseball came up as a category. Eager to learn more and avenge the loss, Barber dived into the literature of the sport and soon became enchanted with it. She began to think of it more as a methodology, and the idea of umpiring came up soon after with her mother’s encouragement.
Since the day Barber first put on her blues, she has umpired games on every level: local, regional, state and professional—including spring training games for Major League Baseball.
“At this stage in the game, my first thought is, isn’t that pathetic, that I should be the first anything?” Barber said. “If I were the 20th or 30th, that’d be about right.”
Starting out as an umpire, Barber remembers feeling scared, “I knew so little at first.”
But she kept it up. At times, it was daunting, especially as a female, and the need to be confident and aggressive was vital. Soon Barber realized the good ball players learn control and claim their own power, not giving it to the umpire, who, Barber said, is merely a “conduit through which things flow.” Now Barber looks at each game remembering she is predicting a play, not a result, and she’s there to evoke respect for herself, the players and however many innings come up that day.
After more than 20 years and a countless number of innings, Barber is still on the road: a free spirit. She spent her summer months umpiring games in Kansas at 3 a.m. for the NBC World Series and then driving to Texas to support another female umpire friend, Kate Sergeant, who worked the United League playoff. Barber’s network continues to grow, and her plans are nowhere near through.
One of Barber’s new goals is to establish some kind of network for female umpires. Her love of umpiring has led her to promote her position to other women, athletes or not.
“I want to make sure there’s a mechanism in place by the time I die,” Barber said, “that women have of reaching out and finding and encouraging one another to view umpiring as a possibility in their lives, as one that’s fun and rewarding and that might eventually lead to one or more becoming major league umpires.”
Barber has a plan to fund one or two women through umpiring school and then guide them in order to be selected as one of the top 25 to 30 graduates who go on to start umpiring rookie games like the Brooklyn Cyclones. From there, they have to move up on their own, and Barber only hopes this will be the beginning of incorporating more women as umpires. Then one day there will be plenty of female umpiring opportunities in the minor league system and one day the major leagues, too. Eventually it won’t be about the first females at all, just about any umpire—male or female—and then, of course, the game.
Barber said working as an umpire and falling in love with the game has helped her to focus and learn, to find joy and friendship. She quoted Bruce Lee, “All knowledge leads to self-knowledge.” Encouraging other women, Barber feels like what she learned while umpiring has lead her to conduct herself better with her relationships and to learn more about herself.
While she hasn’t allowed herself to completely give up the dream of umpiring for the major leagues during regular season, Barber knows that realistically she might never get there. Fortunately for her, seeing another woman would be just as satisfying, so she sets her sights on introducing it to others.
Read Perry Lee Barber's blog.