Nakken agrees with MLB memo
Some facilities for traveling female staffers are subpar
CINCINNATI >> The Giants are the only team in MLB with a woman on their coaching staff, but numerous others have women in support roles who frequently accompany their clubs on the road.
Alyssa Nakken, San Francisco's trailblazing majorleague assistant, was glad to see the memo from the league last week, first reported by ESPN, that admonished a number of teams for failing to provide adequate facilities for traveling female staffers, even though she said “overall, I think it's been pretty positive.”
Under guidelines provided before the 2021 season, every MLB stadium is to provide clean, private locker rooms for
women with showers and restrooms that are in close proximity to the home and visiting clubhouses.
In the memo obtained by ESPN, MLB senior vice president of on-field operations Michael Hill wrote that numerous stadiums “fall embarrassingly below the high standards.” Multiple female staffers told ESPN anonymously about the difficulties they have had finding restrooms in visiting ballparks, to the point of cutting into the time they are able to spend performing the actual duties of their job.
“I haven't wasted too much time, but it is something that we have to think about in some ballparks, figuring out where the restrooms are,” Nakken said Sunday in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “We've had a private locker room, I think, in every stadium we've been to. There's some where the bathroom situation is a little tough.”
Giants manager Gabe Kapler echoed the message sent in the memo and backed up by Nakken.
“Some ballparks are in much better shape to accommodate the women on our staff and others are working through it now and need to get better,” Kapler said, declining to name specific stadiums.
Nakken believes there can be a collaborative effort to design an area that is accessible for all.
“When it comes to infrastructure, I think there's a lot of really intelligent people in the league, on certain clubs and on the staff, if we bring those people together, we can come up with a really cool design,” Nakken said. “Just something that's easy to get to the dugout, the dining area, the weight room, the locker room ... for everybody involved. The entire travel party. Players, staff, support staff, medical personnel.”
While Nakken is the only female coach on the Giants staff — or any team in MLB — she is joined by a handful of other women in San Francisco's traveling party who work in other areas of baseball operations.
Earlier this season, Nakken made more history by becoming the first woman to appear in an on-field role when she took over for Antoan Richardson as the first base coach in a game against the San Diego Padres.