Simply too close to call

The GIST: As you read, former college softball player and longtime umpire Jen Pawol made history over the weekend as the first woman to ump a regular-season MLB game, the latest milestone amid a surge of women taking the diamond by storm. Talk about stepping up to the plate.

💪 Over a century later, a woman gets the call: Pawol is the first woman to do the honors in MLB’s long history, breaking the regular-season barrier 17 years after becoming the first woman to umpire a Spring Training game.

• It was a long road to the milestone: Pawol toiled through over 1,200 minor league games across a decade-long career before finally getting the call to the bigs. That’s a whole lot of outs.

📈 Pawol’s breakthrough just the latest for women in baseball: As pro softball continues to rise in the U.S., many women chase their big-league dreams in baseball — and they’re reaching the game’s highest levels, from Kim Ng becoming the first woman general manager in the four major men’s leagues in 2020 to newest Savannah Banana Kelsie Whitmore taking the mound in the Atlantic League in 2022.

• Plus, there’s no sign of it stopping anytime soon, especially considering Pawol’s one of eight women actively umpiring in the minors. One “dream come true” will allow countless others to dream big.

The GIST: All-Star Weekend? Check. Trade deadline? Check. Now it’s full steam ahead to the most important item on the WNBA calendar: the playoffs. With exactly one month left of the regular season, postseason positioning is all that matters. Now the fun really begins.

⚙️ How it works: Most pro sports leagues decide playoff berths by way of divisional or conference standings, but the W does things a little differently: Eight of the league’s 13 teams will qualify for the three-round postseason regardless of conference. And things almost always come down to the wire.

👀 Crowded standings have 10 teams vying for eight spots: Though technically all 13 teams are still in contention for the playoffs, in reality, it’s a tightly-contested 10-horse race. It’s led by last year’s runners-up, the league-best Minnesota Lynx, who have been virtually untouchable this season, especially when now-injured MVP frontrunner Napheesa Collier is in the lineup.

• From there, it’s utter chaos, ranging from the 20-win defending champ NY Liberty in second to the 14-win Washington Mystics in 10th. Outside of Minny, all nine teams are one win away from matching the team ahead of them. Simply too close to call.

• Adding further intrigue, the top four spots, currently held by the Lynx, Liberty, Atlanta Dream, and Phoenix Mercury, respectively, are extra coveted: They provide home court advantage in the first round. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

☀️ It’s been an electric sporty spice summer full of magical moments. Let’s relive them with today’s OneUp Watch presented in partnership with Gainbridge®. Here’s a collection of some of our favorite recent highlights:

1️⃣ Natasha Howard’s electric block for the Indiana Fever. What, like it’s hard?

2️⃣ Izzy Scane’s hat trick in USA Lacrosse’s gold medal win at the Pan-American Women’s Lacrosse championship.

3️⃣ Mamadou Dieng’s two-goal performance for the USL Championship’s Hartford Athletic. No wonder he was the Player of the Week.

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