WASHINGTON — Professional baseball is the ultimate old boys’ club.
Nepotism abounds in many facets of the sport, and as slow as change can come to the way the game is played on the field and perceived from the stands, it can be even slower behind the doors of the front office. While women have made strides on the business side at both the major and minor league levels, the baseball operations side of the game — the actual baseball — has been a different story.
The upcoming FOX drama “Pitch” depicts a near future in which a woman breaks the barrier on the playing field, as a pitcher for the San Diego Padres. In real life, the glass ceiling in baseball’s scouting side has been nearly as hard to shatter. A few women have attended MLB’s official scout school over the years, but until recently, the last full-time female baseball scout was Edith Houghton in 1951.
In January 2015, Astrid DeGruchy joined the short list of women scouts when she was offered a part-time Northeast region amateur scouting position by, interestingly enough, the San Diego Padres. Her hiring didn’t make as much news as that of Amanda Hopkins, who became the first full-time female scout in 60 years when the Seattle Mariners brought her on board 11 months later. But perhaps it should have.
Hopkins was a standout softball player at Central Washington, but she also had ties to the game as the daughter of Ron Hopkins, a longtime scout who is now a special assistant to the general manager with the Pittsburgh Pirates. DeGruchy had no such connections, so she formed her own.
Growing up on Long Island with brothers who played baseball, DeGruchy always wanted to be a part of the game. While attending St. John’s University, she started working with players who were trying to get noticed, shooting and cutting recruiting videos of game action for them. One day, while out shooting, she was told there was a pitcher she needed to see, a lefty named Rob Kaminsky out at a high school in New Jersey.
“He had the best high school curveball I’d ever seen,” DeGruchy said of watching Kaminsky pitch.
There were plenty of pro scouts in attendance that day, so DeGruchy wasn’t the only one to notice. The St. Louis Cardinals selected Kaminsky in the first round of the 2013 draft. He was later traded to Cleveland for Brandon Moss. Kaminsky was the Indians’ ninth-best prospect coming into this season, per Baseball America, and made it to Double-A as a 22-year-old.
When DeGruchy went to see Kaminsky pitch, she struck up a conversation with another spectator, who took interest in what she was doing there. She thought he was just a father of a player, but he turned out to be Mitchell Modell, CEO of Modell’s Sporting Goods.
“Astrid bleeds baseball,” Modell told WTOP. “Not only is she so determined to make it, but she really knows how to evaluate the game.”
Modell opened a scouting door for DeGruchy. After she landed an internship with the Orleans Firebirds of the Cape Cod League, a top college summer league, he brought her as his guest to the 2013 MLB First-Year Player Draft.
On the way out the door, they ran into Kim Ng, the former assistant general manager for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who has risen as high as any woman in in baseball operations. Ng is currently the senior vice president for baseball operations with MLB in New York. For someone like DeGruchy, it was a brush with fame.
“It was like meeting Beyonce,” she laughed.
DeGruchy began an email correspondence with Ng, who suggested that DeGruchy should try to attend MLB’s scout school. In order to be accepted, though, she would have to be recommended either by a team or internally by MLB. That’s what led DeGruchy to reach out to Frank Marcos.
Marcos is the former senior director of the Major League Scouting Bureau. He retired a couple of years ago after 26 years with MLB and was the one who began to integrate women into scout school several years ago, though few of them actually pursued the scouting life.
“I spoke with her several times, and I sensed a tremendous passion for baseball and wanting to learn more about baseball,” said Marcos of DeGruchy. “So it was an easy decision to add her to the program that year.”
Marcos had seen his decision to open up the program vindicated by Robin Wallace, who attended in 2012.
“She was our best student, hands down, and we had some good students that year,” said Marcos.
He eventually hired Wallace to work at the scouting bureau. But still, no women had broken through from scout school to land with specific teams in decades.
So when DeGruchy was hired by the Padres, even on a part-time basis, it marked a quiet landmark. And her position certainly wouldn’t seem part-time to most: DeGruchy covered at least one game every day, sometimes more than one, largely in the tri-state area, but also up and down the northeast.
“I loved it,” she said. “I loved traveling to different cities. I’d be in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, then New Jersey the next day.”
By the time the Padres came calling, so did Orleans, this time to offer her a spot as a board member.
“We felt that this was a great deal, that we could use somebody with her skills on the board of directors,” said Firebirds President Gene Hornsby. “It’s nice when the interns we have now can talk to someone in the job who’s actually made it in baseball.”
But even with a foot in the door, the fight for respect can be a tough one as one of the only young woman around.
“It’s a definite uphill battle, there’s no doubt,” said Marcos. “If you look at the industry in terms of scouting and player development, there are very, very few women involved. There are no women scouting directors, no women farm directors, no women general managers. In terms of the entry-level positions, such as scouting or coaching, it’s a very, very difficult battle, I think, because of the mindset of the people who are in those positions.”
DeGruchy has lofty goals to one day find herself among those ranks. But she isn’t making any excuses for any pushback in the meantime. By and large, she says she has found people to be professional about her position and supportive of her goals.
“Most guys have been very respectful,” she said. “Even the veteran guys wanted me to succeed.”
For now, she has gone back to school to advance those dreams. She just started her first semester at Arizona State’s new Masters of Sports Law & Business program, where former MLB commissioner Bud Selig is part of the faculty. Those who know her have no doubt she’ll be back in baseball again when she’s done.
“She can and will do great things because of her passion, and will never give up until she’s there, and I know she will get there soon,” said Modell.
The difference between those who make it and don’t? A scout might call it “make-up.”
“I believe Astrid has the temperament, the character, the integrity to do it,” said Marcos. “With her scouting background, with her educational background, (she) would be a tremendous asset to an organization.”
