Ria Cortesio is a former American baseball umpire, working games at the Double A level. In 2007, she became the first woman since Pam Postema in 1989 to work a Major league exhibition game. The 2007 season was her ninth and final professional season and fifth at the Double A level.
Cortesio attended five-week umpire school. [1] She began umpiring professionally in the minor leagues in 1999, [2] in the short-season Pioneer League. [3] In 2002, she began umpiring at the Double A level, [2] spending five seasons in the Southern League. [3]
She worked both the 2006 All-Star Futures Game and Home Run Derby. [4]
On March 29, 2007, she became the first woman umpire to work in a Major League Baseball exhibition game since Postema in 1989, when she served alternately as the first and third base umpire in a spring training game between the Chicago Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks. [5]
At the conclusion of the 2007 season, she was released. According to fellow umpire Kate Sargeant, Cortesio's male colleagues colluded against her to block her advancement to Triple A, [6] where she would have received major league supervision. [3] Cortesio was the top-ranked Double-A umpire at the start of the 2007 season, meaning she would have been eligible for promotion to Triple-A had any umpires at that level retired; [4] Sargeant alleges the Triple-A umpires colluded to not retire and thus not create an opening for Cortesio until the rankings were re-shuffled. [6] By mid-season, when rankings were re-shuffled, hers had dropped from the top spot. [4] According to FanGraphs, the minor leagues had a policy to fire any umpire not promoted after five years; since the 2007 season was her fifth, she was fired. [6]
Cortesio was the fifth female umpire in the history of the game, after Bernice Gera, Christine Wren, Postema, and Theresa Cox Fairlady. [2] One of her masks is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. [4]
She is supportive of other women umpires who have come after her. [3]
Cortesio was born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1976, and is of Italian and Greek descent.[ citation needed] She attended Rice University in Houston, Texas. [4]
After her work as a minor league umpire ended, she worked some college games and spent some time in Greece. [3] She now resides in Lincoln, Nebraska, where she has a desk job. [3]