Jenny Cavnar grew up in a baseball family. Her dad was a high school coach in Colorado, and as a kid she loved to run out and hug him as soon as his games were over. Cavnar was always the first one on the field—until one day in the early ’90s, when a local sportscaster named Marcia Neville beat her to it. It was in that moment, seeing a female journalist at work, that Cavnar started to believe that she could have a career in sports.
Decades later, she’s the one showing the next generation what’s possible for girls and women to achieve. After graduating from college, Cavnar worked as a host on the pre- and postgame shows for the San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies. Then, in 2024, she made history when the A’s hired her as their full-time, primary play-by-play voice—the first woman to serve in that role for a major-league team.
In the year since her A’s debut, Cavnar has gotten loads of praise as a baseball pioneer. She’s also been criticized mercilessly by fans who don’t think she belongs. “I really need to know how she got this job,” and “Go back to the kitchen, lady.”
“There was gonna be pushback in our business, but ultimately, it’s about the people that believe in you, stand by you,” Cavnar told me. “All I was hired to do is be myself and … let the reps, the experience, and my personality and my knowledge of the game come through.”
Thursday’s Opening Day marked the beginning of Cavnar’s second year with the A’s. Her rise in the profession is historic, and brings to mind a story I delved into for Slate’s One Year podcast. It’s about a woman who tried to carve out space for herself—and for all women—in one of America’s most sexist industries.
Her name was Mary Shane, and in 1977, she became the first woman to get a real job as a major-league announcer. What Shane went through is a telling reminder of how much has changed—and how much hasn’t—in the last half-century. Her complicated legacy is worth remembering, and so are the victories she fought for in the years after baseball cast her aside.
This story was adapted from an episode of the One Year podcast. Evan Chung was the lead producer. Madeline Ducharme was the assistant producer . Listen to the full version:
At 9 years old, Mary Shane dreamed that she’d grow up to play second base in the major leagues. There was one rather large obstacle blocking her path: She didn’t actually play baseball. As a girl in Milwaukee in the 1950s, she was never allowed.
But that didn’t stop her from falling in love with the sport. In 1957, her dad got them tickets to watch the hometown Braves play the New York Yankees in the World Series. That afternoon was one of the highlights of Mary’s young life. But less than a decade after the Braves won the title, the franchise left Milwaukee for Atlanta. Without a team to root for, her fandom started to fade. She was in her early 20s by then, and more conscious of what the world expected of young women. For Shane and her older sister, Pat, a lot of those expectations came from their mother. “She felt that both my mother and Mary had two choices,” Pat’s daughter Laura Schuett told me. “One would be to be a secretary, and one would be to be a teacher.”
When Shane graduated from college, she followed her mother’s blueprint. She got a job teaching high school history, married her college boyfriend, and gave birth to a son. For a while, everything was going according to plan. But then, in 1974, Mary’s sister got in a very bad car accident. At first, it looked like Pat was going to recover. But within days, she fell into a coma, and a few weeks after that, she slipped away.
When Pat died, Shane fell into a deep despair. The only thing that helped, even for a little while, was baseball. By then, Milwaukee had a new team. The Brewers weren’t any good, but Shane didn’t mind. She wrote about those days in a memoir that’s never been published.
Something happened to me at the ballpark. For the first time since Pat’s death, I felt a sense of peace. … I went to another game, secretly afraid that it wouldn’t work again. But it did. When I tried to analyze what was happening, I couldn’t. It didn’t make any sense. But then neither did anything else.
With her love of baseball rekindled, Shane thought about all the childhood dreams she’d cast aside. Growing up, she’d wanted to be a sports reporter, but it had never seemed like a practical option. And now, with no experience as a journalist and a small child at home, she didn’t know where to start. What she needed was a little nudge—permission to take the first step.
That opening came from a surprising place: an auction on a local PBS station. One of the items up for bidding was an all-access road trip with the Brewers. The announcer described it as “a great opportunity for a boy and his father.” Shane’s husband suggested the two of them put in a bid. They did—$1,200. And they won.
This was her chance to be a reporter—to follow the team, interview the players, and put together a story. The trip didn’t go as she’d hoped. Despite all the access she’d been promised, she struggled to get anyone to talk. At the hotel pool, she asked the Brewers’ announcer, Merle Harmon, for advice. “You’ll never be one of the boys, Mary,” he told her. “You’re too feminine.”
When she got back home, she typed up an article that included Harmon’s dismissive comment. The piece got rejected by an editor at the Milwaukee Journal; he said she’d never truly understand the life of a baseball player on the road. But Shane did manage to get a version of the piece published—in womenSports, a magazine launched by feminist icon Billie Jean King.
Shane felt jubilant. And not long after, she decided to go for it: She was going to ...
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