Lovullo on Gajownik: 'She's got a great baseball mind'

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- When he talked with Ronnie Gajownik about being his bench coach for a split-squad game against the Padres on Saturday, D-backs manager Torey Lovullo told her things might not go exactly as she was expecting.

“I told her, ‘We're going to sit down and just talk baseball for nine innings, and let's have some fun with it,’” Lovullo said. “And I said, ‘You think that I'm going to be probably teaching you things, but you're going to be teaching me things as well.’”

And so for nine innings the two sat next to each other, sharing ideas back and forth about managing a baseball team -- something that is of particular importance to Gajownik, who will become the first woman to manage a High-A team this summer when she takes the reins of the Hillsboro Hops.

“I think he and I think a little bit of the same way in regard to you’ve really got to care about the person,” Gajownik said. “And just to know that, ‘Hey, I have your back, and when there are moments in the game where I need to fight for you, I'm gonna fight for you. And hey, if there's something going on off the field, you know, you're more than welcome to come to my office and we can have a conversation.’”

Gajownik, who won a gold medal in the 2015 Pan-American Games as part of the U.S. women's national baseball team, started with the D-backs' organization in '21 as a video assistant at Hillsboro. It's a job that has proven to be a great pipeline into the organization for coaches, scouts and analysts.

Last year, she was assigned to be a coach for one of the organization’s Arizona Complex League teams, but she wound up coaching for Double-A Amarillo after one of their staff members was hurt by a batting-practice line drive early in the season.

Gajownik has worked at times in the D-backs' big league camp this year and impressed Lovullo.

“I've just appreciated my time with her,” Lovullo said. “I think she's a spectacular teacher and can relate to the players very well.”

Throughout the spring, the D-backs' player development department will send Minor League coaches and managers over to the big league games to sit in the dugout and help out.

That usually doesn’t draw a lot of attention, but in this case, Lovullo sitting next to Gajownik for nine innings drew a lot of eyes. That’s what happens when you’re a trailblazer.

Last year, Rachel Balkovec became the first female manager in professional baseball when she led the Yankees' Single-A affiliate, the Tampa Tarpons. Gajownik is taking that to another level -- literally -- this year. It’s a development that Lovullo supports enthusiastically.

“I've been in [baseball] a long time,” Lovullo said. “And unfortunately, it's taken the game this long to get this far, but it's moving very quickly in the right direction and I'm happy about it. There have been a lot of pioneers out there, and to all those women that have taken chances that have given Ronnie this opportunity, I commend them.”

The pair talked throughout the game, bouncing ideas off each other, sharing stories and talking about managerial philosophies.

“We had good baseball conversations,” Lovullo said. “It's unguided. Whenever a play is made or a situation pops up, I'll just tell her what I was thinking. Ronnie would ask different questions attached to each play, or when there was some downtime, she would ask me some questions about some of my core beliefs about running a baseball game. It was a great opportunity for me to get to know her. She's got a great baseball mind.”

In some ways for Gajownik, it was just another day at the ballpark. Talking baseball and being in a dugout are so natural for her that sometimes she forgets about the attention it receives.

It wasn’t until pitching coach Brent Strom said something around the fifth inning that Gajownik realized how big of a deal Saturday was.

“He's like, ‘They’re doing articles all over about you, you're trending right now,’” Gajownik said. “It was just kind of cool just to be in the game and just to be able to have that connection with Torey and the conversations that we were having. Me asking him questions and him asking me questions. So it's just a really cool environment to be around.”

Cool, yes. Fun, definitely. But Gajownik had a job to do, and she was so laser-focused on letting players know when they were going in as substitutes and locked in on her conversations with Lovullo that there wasn’t a lot of time to just take in the moment.

Finally, after the game had ended and her duties had concluded for the day, it all began to sink in.

"It's cool to take a step back and realize how far women have come," Gajownik said. "And then also me personally as a coach, all the work I've put in myself and then all the work the Diamondbacks have put into me, my family, my friends, my wife -- it's just cool to see the culmination of everything coming together. It was a pretty cool moment. It’s starting to sink in."