CLEARWATER, Fla. — Somewhere above Tampa Bay, as she drove down the causeway from Tampa, Fla., to here, Rachel Balkovec asked the two top Yankees prospects in the back seat of her car if they had already watched softball.
Antonio Gomez, 20, a wide receiver from Venezuela, said he did. Jasson Dominguez, 19, one of baseball’s top-ranked prospects, said he did too – but they were men playing in his native Dominican Republic. Neither had seen women play varsity softball.
“You’re about to see what female athletes look like,” said Balkovec, 34.
It was while having dinner with these players that week in mid-February, well before the start of the minor league season, that Balkovec realized they probably didn’t know much about his journey.
They knew she was a unicorn — the first woman to serve as a manager in affiliated professional baseball — but they didn’t know much about softball, the sport Balkovec played in college before his winding path and trying up to this point. So Balkovec, the manager of the Tampa Tarpons, a Class A affiliate of the Yankees, had an idea: take Dominguez and Gomez to a multi-college American preseason softball tournament that was taking place near the Yankees’ spring training facility. Yankees.
