Amanda Hopkins Hired By Mariners, Is Full-Time First Female MLB Scout Since 1950's

The Mariners have announced on their web site that they’ve hired Amanda Hopkins as a scout. The daughter of Pirates assistant GM Ron Hopkins, she captained the Central Washington softball team for her junior and senior year, and spent three summers interning for the MLB club.

The move will be seen by many as a trailblazing event as Hopkins is believed to be the first full-time female scout hired by a Major League team since the 1950s, according to Baseball America. But Mariners scouting director Tom McNamara wants one thing to be clear: Hopkins was hired because she’s an excellent scout, not because she’s female.

Hopkins, 22, was officially hired several weeks ago, but the news is just getting out as she begins her career as the Mariners’ area scout in the “four corners” area of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

“We didn’t make a big deal out of it, and the reason we didn’t was because she fits right in,” McNamara said Tuesday at the Winter Meetings. “I look at her as a scout. Everybody here is excited. We’re excited because we feel we’ve hired a good scout.”

I imagine this won’t be the last we hear of her.

As a random interesting aside, it appears as though Ron Hopkins was one of the older scouts who was portrayed negatively in Moneyball (which was deemed unfair in retrospect by a Pirates blog).

[Photo via CWU sports information]

 

from The Big Lead http://ift.tt/1NGrbtm