History was made in Atlanta this afternoon when Jen Powell took the field as the first woman to umpire a regular season game in Major League Baseball's nearly 150-year history.

She was on the basis for both games of a double-header between the Miami Marlins and the Atlanta Braves.

In tomorrow's game, she's going to be behind the plate calling balls and strikes.

Earlier, I spoke with Chelsea Janes,

the Washington Post National Baseball writer.

I asked her how Powell found out she'd be working today's games.

She said she was in her hotel room in Nashville

and got called to a conference call with two MLB officials

who were in charge of umpiring,

and they told her,

you know, this is your moment. And she called her crew chief, so the guy who's in charge this

weekend. And they started yelling over the phone, you know, a grown man who generally has to

kind of maintain decorum on a baseball field, just kind of screaming into the phone with her, which is

just really kind of

special to hear about. Tell me a little bit about her background. How did she become interested in umpiring? Jen played college softball. She wanted to umpire from the day she first tried it even in high school, like as a throwaway side job. And when she got done playing, she kind of looked into it umpired high school

baseball in upstate New York, even umpired college softball in New England and New York. So she was

pretty much at the highest level she could get to for that and wanted more, wanted it to be a career

instead of something she got paid a couple hundred bucks a weekend to do. So she, you know,

ended up hearing about a clinic. And at a clinic,

she met a major league umpire named Ted Barrett. And he said, hey, you're pretty good at this.

I also host a clinic down in Atlanta. She attended it and was funneled into the Meyer League system

from there. Talk about how that works, how umpires work their way through the minor league system.

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