‘I have a baby’: how women in baseball are redefining work and motherhood

Often women who trailblazers in men’s sports are lauded for their impact on the next generation. Within the Guardians’ front office, that’s a reality playing out right now

Wendy Hoppel, the Cleveland Guardians’ director of baseball administration, landed home in Ohio to see she had missed several calls from her social worker. She was returning from Major League Baseball’s offseason meetings in New Orleans. It was 2003 and Hoppel had been learning about MLB’s new software system. Meanwhile, her baby had just been born.

“I had already done the nursery and everything, because I’m a planner,” Hoppel says recently. She is organized by nature and by profession – her job involves overseeing things like the immigration process for international players. At the time she was 42, had been divorced for three years, and wanted to be a mom. A friend of hers had gone through the adoption process. “And it just hit me like, you know that that’s what I want to do.”

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