Christine Wren

Christine Wren was born in Seattle, Washington, on June 25, 1948, and grew up in Spokane. She was the oldest of four girls, all of whom were born within a span of 49 months and three days. Baseball was her first love. As an eight year old she wanted to be the next Mickey Mantle and roam center field for the New York Yankees, and nobody told her she could not. "My grandma told me, 'You can do anything you want to do when you grow up,'" she recalled. "My mom said, 'Yeah, she's right.' I took that and ran with it."

She spent long afternoons playing street ball and sandlot baseball with the neighborhood boys, usually the only girl on the field, and said playing with the boys never bothered her. Before Title IX, organized sport for girls was limited, and she dabbled in volleyball, basketball, racquetball and handball through intramurals. As a teenager she played fastpitch softball for the Webb Cats, a semipro team in Yakima, usually as a catcher. The Society for American Baseball Research notes she spent about 13 years playing fastpitch softball.

Wren studied education at Eastern Washington University for a few years before returning to Seattle in her early twenties. While working day jobs she officiated amateur baseball, basketball and football at night.

When she applied to formal umpire training programs she was told the courses were full. On her next application she wrote her name as Chris instead of Christine and was accepted into the Bill Kinnamon Specialized Umpire Training Course, a five week program that began in January 1975 in Southern California. The instructors were surprised to discover that one of their 39 students was a woman. She stood 5 feet 8 inches and weighed about 120 pounds, and some of the men questioned whether she was big or strong enough. One instructor, she remembered, muttered: "Well, she can umpire. What are we going to do?" She finished as one of the course's top ten umpires, a ranking that qualified her for a minor league job. Unusually, that year's top ten were not ranked in order, which she suspected was because the school was embarrassed. She believed she was probably in the top three.

In early 1975 Los Angeles Dodgers president Peter O'Malley called the auto body shop where Wren worked and invited her to umpire the annual exhibition between the Dodgers and the University of Southern California at Dodger Stadium. She was the plate umpire before a free admission crowd of about 51,000, the first woman to umpire a major league exhibition game, and she remembered it as the highlight of her career.

She then joined the Class A Northwest League, an 80 game short season circuit that let her keep Seattle as a base while working games from Boise to Bellingham. She was paid 300 dollars a month plus 5.25 dollars a day in expenses, and she lived for much of the summer in her 1975 Chevy van with her dog Arrow. On June 26, 1975, at Sicks' Stadium, she ejected her first player, Seattle Rainiers catcher Ron Gibson, after an argument over a foul tip. Late that first season a foul ball broke her right collarbone. She kept the injury to herself and did not miss a game.

Barney Deary, who ran baseball's Umpire Development Program, told reporters she was "made of sturdy stuff" but that officials were worried whether she could take the physical punishment. She returned to the Northwest League in 1976 rather than being promoted. In 1977 she was moved to the full season Class A Midwest League, where league president Bill Walters praised her and invited her to umpire the league All-Star Game, making her the first woman to work a minor league all-star game. SABR reports she earned 250 dollars a month plus 60 dollars for travel that year. She retired from umpiring after the 1977 season, having worked three full professional seasons.

After leaving umpiring, Wren turned her winter job into a full time one, driving a delivery truck for UPS. She was one of only two women working out of the company's downtown Seattle warehouse. In the mid 1980s she went back to school to learn about Apple computers, which helped her land a job as a staff computer specialist in the Renton School District. She stayed there for about 25 years, and her umpire's chest protector hung above her desk.

She retired in 2015 and moved back to Spokane. There she volunteered several days a week delivering food for Meals on Wheels, kept a vegetable garden of tomatoes, carrots and bush beans, and listened to Spokane Indians radio broadcasts while she worked in the yard. She once bought a house because it sat next to a recreational baseball field, so she could watch games from her back deck.

Wren was the oldest of four sisters, Mary, Margaret and Kathleen surviving her. No spouse or children were reported in her obituary, which said she was survived by her sisters, nieces, nephews and many close friends. She loved dogs, travelling the Northwest League with her cockapoo Arrow and later keeping another cockapoo named Boga in retirement. For decades she deliberately stayed out of public view, with no public address, phone listing or social media presence, and Seattle Times reporter Adam Jude said she was the most reluctant interview subject he had encountered in 25 years of sportswriting.

Wren believed good officiating was what baseball needed most, and she saw herself simply as someone doing a job. "I'm not a freak. I'm just somebody trying to do a job," she said when she started. She was candid about the sexism she faced, saying she was challenged in ways her fellow students were not because she was a girl, and that baseball was afraid of what a woman umpire in the major leagues would look like. Yet she refused to describe herself as bitter, and for years she declined to explain why she left because she did not want to reflect badly on the game. She credited umpiring with giving her the confidence to enter other male dominated fields: "Once I had been an umpire, I didn't think there was anything that could stop me."

Bernice Gera was the first woman to umpire a professional game, but she worked only one game in 1972 before resigning. Wren was the second woman to umpire in organized baseball and the first to work a full season, and over three seasons she compiled a series of firsts, including the first woman to umpire a major league exhibition game and the first to umpire a minor league all-star game. Pam Postema followed her into the minors in 1977 and later reached Triple-A, and Ria Cortesio and others came after.

Her influence came full circle with Jen Pawol, who had tried to find Wren for years before a 2020 Seattle Times story connected them. They became friends, and when Pawol became the first woman to umpire a regular season Major League Baseball game in August 2025, she listed Wren among the people she needed to thank. Umpire and advocate Perry Barber said what Wren did was radically progressive for its time because she bucked the system and held fast, making the path a little less daunting for the women who followed.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown holds the chest protector Wren wore from 1975, together with scrapbooks and baseballs from her officiating days, which she donated. The Hall of Fame featured her in its article "Umpire Unmasked" and has highlighted the chest protector in its collection. She was named one of the top ten graduates of her 1975 umpire training course and was chosen by the Midwest League president to work the 1977 All-Star Game. No formal awards beyond these have been documented in the sources consulted.

Wren drew national attention in 1975 and 1976, including coverage in The New York Times by H. A. Dorfman ("Woman Umpire Story: The Perils of Christine" in August 1975 and "Christine Wren: Another Season" in June 1976) and a People magazine story in July 1975. After decades of silence she told her story to Adam Jude for a July 2020 Seattle Times Pacific NW Magazine cover feature, later syndicated in The Spokesman-Review, and she commented to The Seattle Times again in August 2025 when Jen Pawol reached the major leagues. She is profiled by the Society for American Baseball Research in its history of professional women umpires.

Wren's career unfolded against open resistance. Umpire schools initially turned her away, and officials publicly doubted that a woman could handle the job physically. Players sometimes abused her verbally, and in one exhibition a Portland player kissed her on the field; she gave him a warning and no one tried it again. Despite solid reviews she was passed over for promotion to Double-A, and she later said it was made clear to her, in a roundabout way, that there was no path to the major leagues for her.

Christine Wren died in Spokane, Washington, on October 25, 2026, after a long illness, her sister Kathleen told The Seattle Times. She was 78. The specific cause of death has not been made public, and funeral or memorial arrangements had not been reported at the time this page was written. The Seattle Times announced her death on October 30, 2026, describing her as a trailblazer for women in baseball who became the sport's first full time female umpire.