Christine Wren obit

Seattle’s Christine Wren, baseball’s first full-time female umpire, dies at 78

 She was not on the list.

Christine Wren was an American professional baseball umpire who, in 1975, became the first woman to work a full season as an umpire in organized baseball. Born in Seattle on June 25, 1948, and raised in Spokane, Washington, she umpired three seasons of Class A minor league ball, in the Northwest League in 1975 and 1976 and in the Midwest League in 1977. She followed Bernice Gera, who had worked a single professional game in 1972 after a long legal fight, and she helped open a door that later women umpires, from Pam Postema to Jen Pawol, would walk through. She died in Spokane on October 25, 2026, at the age of 78, after a long illness.

Wren was the oldest of four sisters, all born within a span of a little over four years. As an eight year old she dreamed of playing center field for the New York Yankees like her idol Mickey Mantle, and she spent long afternoons playing street and sandlot baseball with the neighborhood boys, usually as the only girl. Her grandmother told her she could do anything she wanted when she grew up, and her mother agreed. As a teenager she played fastpitch softball, usually as a catcher, including for the Webb Cats, a semipro team in Yakima regarded as one of the best on the West Coast. She later said she decided she could umpire after being called out on a play at second base that she was sure was wrong.

She studied education at Eastern Washington University for a few years before moving back to Seattle in her early twenties. By day she worked odd jobs, including as a general laborer at an auto body shop and as a security guard. By night she officiated as many amateur baseball, basketball and football games as she could. Her first applications to formal umpire schools were rejected on the grounds that the courses were full. On her next application she signed her name as Chris rather than Christine, and she was accepted into the Bill Kinnamon Specialized Umpire Training Course, a five week program that began in January 1975 in Southern California. She was 26 and the only woman among 39 students. At the end of the course she was named one of the school's top ten umpires, which qualified her for a minor league job.

Before that job arrived, Los Angeles Dodgers president Peter O'Malley tracked her down at the auto body shop and invited her to umpire the annual exhibition game between the Dodgers and the University of Southern California at Dodger Stadium. A co-worker hung up on his first call, assuming it was a joke. Wren worked the plate in front of a crowd of about 51,000 and later called it the highlight of her career. "That gave me a picture of what The Show was like," she said.

Her first minor league assignment was the short season Class A Northwest League, at a salary of 300 dollars a month plus 5.25 dollars a day for expenses. She drove through the night between games in a 1975 Chevy van that doubled as her summer home, with her cockapoo Arrow along for the ride. Her first ejection came at Sicks' Stadium in Seattle on June 26, 1975, a day after her 27th birthday, when she tossed Seattle Rainiers catcher Ron Gibson after an argument over a foul tip. Later that season a foul ball fractured her right collarbone. She told no one and worked the final six weeks of the season anyway.

Baseball's umpire development officials openly questioned whether a woman could take the physical punishment of the job, and instead of the promotion she hoped for she was sent back to the Northwest League in 1976. In 1977 she moved to the full season Class A Midwest League, cutting her long ponytail into a short wedge so she would blend in on the field. League president Bill Walters was impressed enough to say he wanted to convince Commissioner Bowie Kuhn that she was good, and he invited her to work the league's All-Star Game. It became her last season. She came to understand that there was no path for a woman to the major leagues, and she walked away on her own terms after 1977. "I gave it the best shot I could," she said decades later. "I don't think I'm bitter. I love the game."

After baseball she kept working in fields where women were rare. She drove a delivery truck for UPS, one of only two women working out of the downtown Seattle warehouse. In the mid 1980s she went back to school to learn Apple computers, which led to a job as a staff computer specialist in the Renton School District, where she worked for about 25 years with her old umpire's chest protector hanging above her desk. She later donated that chest protector, along with scrapbooks and game baseballs, to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. For roughly 35 years she avoided publicity, and she retired to Spokane in 2015, where she volunteered delivering food for Meals on Wheels, gardened, and listened to Spokane Indians games on a transistor radio hung on her fence.

In 2020 Seattle Times reporter Adam Jude persuaded her, reluctantly, to tell her story for a Pacific NW Magazine cover feature. That story put her in touch with Jen Pawol, then working her way up through the minor leagues, and the two became friends. Wren travelled to Tacoma to watch Pawol work a Triple-A series. When Pawol became the first woman to umpire a regular season Major League Baseball game in August 2025, fifty years after Wren's debut, Wren wrote: "It's about time." Pawol named Wren among the people she needed to thank.

Wren is survived by her sisters Mary, Margaret and Kathleen, and by nieces, nephews and many close friends.