Game-changer: How a Woodland native is breaking ground with MLB’s most innovative team
Alyssa Nakken earned a nickname long before she became a trailblazer in Major League Baseball.
“She was our Pig Pen on the team,” said Kathy Strahan, Nakken’s softball coach at Sacramento State.
Nakken’s intensity on the softball diamond has translated to her unprecedented career in Major League Baseball. The Woodland High School graduate broke ground last week, becoming the first woman to coach on the field during the San Francisco Giants’ 13-2 win over the San Diego Padres.
Breaking ground is nothing new for the Giants. Manager Gabe Kapler has a penchant for unconventional approaches to the game. Whatever works: The Giants won a league-best 107 games last season with a roster that was expected by many to miss the playoffs.
Nakken’s emergence is part of that Giants’ commitment to approaching the game with an eye for new ways to play, analyze and manage. Farhan Zaidi, the team’s president of baseball operations, and Kapler have challenged conventional baseball thinking from the staid unwritten rules to the size of coaching staffs to who the coaches are.
For Nakken, last week was just a payoff for a long grind.
Working hard is also nothing new for Nakken. Strahan recounted a conversation she had with Kapler at Nakken’s wedding last fall. She told Kapler how Nakken would dirty up her uniform before games by diving for ground balls during early warm-ups.
It embodied the type of player and teammate Nakken was. She was all energy and effort as a power-hitting first baseman for the Hornets from 2009 to 2012. She was one of Strahan’s appointed captains.
“Oh, I’m not surprised to hear that,” Kapler told Strahan.
According to Strahan, Nakken was never afraid to ask hard questions of her coach or volunteer solutions to problems within the team before they bubbled over. She was mature beyond her years and helped Strahan by serving as an extension of the coaching staff who could relate to players and lead by example.
Examples include putting maximum effort into practice and warming up before games, sometimes at the expense of her pearly white-and-green uniform. Thus: Pig Pen.
“She wasn’t afraid to lay out, to dive, to get dirty. And her teammates saw that, and they wanted to be in it as well,” Strahan said. “It just was very catchy and she could just lead and inspire just by her doing it. And it just really caught on.”
Working her way up with the Giants
Perhaps that’s one of the things that drew Kapler to the idea of making Nakken, 31, an assistant coach with the Giants in 2020, after she spent time in San Francisco’s front office, starting as an intern for the World Series Championship team in 2014. She worked her way up, starting in event logistics, marketing and business before becoming the chairwoman of the Giants’ employee resource group with a focus on empowering women in the organization.
“She’s pretty incredible. To know her is to love her,” Strahan said. “I don’t know if there’s an athlete I’ve had that’s worked harder than Alyssa. ... The thing that I most remember most about her is just how authentic she is. Just an incredible person to work with and know.”
Since becoming a coach, Nakken spent the last two years working with players on base running and outfield defense. She’s one of 13 members of Kapler’s robust staff.
On Tuesday, Nakken — a Woodland native, three-time all-conference player for the Hornets and four-time academic All American — made history becoming the first woman in Major League Baseball to serve as a base coach during a game.
Her jersey from the 13-2 victory over the Padres was sent to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and she instantly became a pioneer, not just in baseball but in all of American sports.
“I think we’re all inspirations doing everything that we do on a day-to-day basis and I think, yes, this carries a little bit more weight because of the visibility, obviously there’s a historical nature to it,” Nakken told reporters Tuesday. “But again, this is my job.”
Nakken’s move from the batting cage behind the Giants’ dugout — MLB limits how many coaches can be in the dugout during games — to the first base coaching box came after the team’s usual first base coach, Antoan Richardson, was ejected after a verbal spat with Padres third-base coach Mike Shildt.
It was an ugly incident in which Richardson accused Shildt of using racist undertones, though the two sides cleared the air the morning after, when they both addressed reporters before the following game. Richardson, who is from the Bahamas, said he didn’t believe Shildt was racist.
“I think, though, to the important point,” Richardson said. “He’s recognizing that some of his words, our words, are powerful and they’re impactful. And we just want to bring awareness to a situation that I think is important for our community.”
Groundbreaking moment
Sadly it took controversy between Richardson and Shildt before Nakken could have her groundbreaking moment. She served as a first base coach previously in exhibition games and it was just a matter of time before she would eventually get on the field during the regular season.
“The benefit of Alyssa being on the field last night was as important that as important as anything else that happened,” Kapler said last Wednesday. “I woke up this morning, read all of the quotes from inspired women pretty far reaching, and received a lot of commentary about how important it was for women in this city to see that happen.
“When it was happening in the dugout, we needed a pretty good coach to go out and handle the responsibilities of first base. Alyssa was the natural and obvious choice. She had been preparing for that moment. At that point it was very much, okay, what is the next step in front of us? In hindsight, I recognize how huge of a moment that was for our staff, for our players, Alyssa, all of our fans and everybody around the world. It was huge. So did it come on the heels of some conflict? It certainly did, but the net of it was that that moment happened, and I’m really glad that it did.”
Giants breaking the rules
Kapler, MLB’s reigning manager of the year after helping the Giants to 107 wins in 2021, has become one of the most progressive figures in baseball. He’s outwardly bucked the games’ unwritten rules, which say teams shouldn’t bunt for hits or steal bases when scores are lopsided, which both happened during San Francisco’s blowout win over the Padres last Tuesday.
Outfielder Steven Duggar stole second base when it was 10-1 in the second inning. In the sixth, Mauricio Dubon bunted for a hit with the Giants up 11-2.
The Padres were rankled and let the Giants know about it from the visiting dugout. It led to Kapler and Padres manager Bob Melvin having a discussion when they exchanged lineup cards at home plate ahead of last Wednesday’s series finale.
Kapler’s point: his team will keep its foot on the gas with the bigger picture in mind. The more pitchers an opponent uses in a game, even in a blowout, would impact the opposing team’s pitching staff for remaining games in the series.
Kapler also noted that players like Dubon, who aren’t assured long careers in the big leagues, should do everything in their power to stick around.
“Everybody is competing on a Major League Baseball field,” Kapler said. “It doesn’t make any sense to have one part of the field stop competing, and the other part of the field keep competing. I can’t think of a reason why that makes sense. The pitcher on the mound is trying to get you out. The batter at the plate stops competing with all of the tools at his disposal. I’ve never quite understood it, I don’t understand it now, and I don’t think the best way to play this game is to take away any of your tools to be successful on a Major League Baseball field.”
Kapler’s stance on baseball’s aging norms isn’t the only thing that makes him progressive. The 13-person coaching staff, designed to have voices to relate to a variety of different personalities in the clubhouse, was the first of its kind in baseball and has become a growing trend.
“It may be a little bit outside the box, but outside the box increasingly is inside the box,” Giants president Larry Baer told the New York Times earlier in the spring.
More progress
In line with the organization’s empowerment of Nakken, the Giants have taken steps to continue the process. The team over the winter invited players and coaches from Sacramento State’s softball program to participate in a workshop designed to show women how all facets of the organization work — and create a potential pipeline for others to follow in Nakken’s footsteps. Focuses included player development, community outreach, minor league affiliations and sports psychology.
The workshop included a tour of Oracle Park and its facilities. Of course, Nakken was front and center.
“It was really an amazing thing,” Sacramento State’s current softball coach Lori Perez said. “It was a lifetime opportunity for our players just to be able to be there and network and ask questions.”
It’s all part of a growing trend in baseball. The New York Yankees this season made Rachel Balkovec the first woman to manage a minor league affiliate. The Miami Marlins last year hired Kim Ng to be the first woman to serve as general manager.
Which means years from now its likely more and more women will be involved in all levels of baseball. And Nakken will be remembered as one of the pioneers.
This story was originally published April 20, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
