The Boston Red Sox are making history! The Major League Baseball organization will be hiring the first Black woman coach in professional baseball history. According to The Boston Globe, the Red Sox will be hiring Bianca Smith as a minor league coach.The young Black woman will primarily be instructing minor league players at the team’s complex in Fort Myers, Florida.
Red Sox, vice president of Player Development, Ben Crockett told the Boston Globe
, “She was a great candidate coming in. She’s had some really interesting experiences and has been passionate about growing her skill set and development herself.”USA Today reports that she joins other women coaches such as Rachel Balkovec (New York Yankees), Rachel Folden (Chicago Cubs), and Christina Whitlock (St. Louis Cardinals). And just this past season, Alyssa Nakken became the first on-field female coach in Major League Baseball history with the San Francisco Giants.
Smith currently is the assistant baseball coach and hitting coordinator at Carroll University in Wisconsin and has held this position since 2019. The former Dartmouth College softball player was the director of baseball operations and a graduate assistant at Case Western Reserve and served as an assistant coach at the University of Dallas.
Back in 2017, Smith was an intern for the Texas Rangers in their baseball operations department. She also spent some time working in amateur administration at the Major League Baseball offices before interning in the Cincinnati Reds baseball operations department.
This comes after recent news of Major League Baseball’s Commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. announcing that Major League Baseball had officially elevated the Negro Leagues to “Major League” status.
In a written statement, the commissioner stated, “All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice. We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record”