10-23-2022 W2W - Flipbook - Page 40
Melanie Newman, radio and television play-by-play broadcaster for the Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
PHOTO BY KARL MERTON FERRON
Melanie Newman
Broadcaster for the Orioles
Two years later, the messages still appear in Melanie
Newman’s mailbox, mostly from grizzled male listeners
who’d questioned the Orioles employing a female broadcaster in 2020.
“The emails always start, ‘When I heard that they’d
hired a woman, I didn’t like it’ or ‘I wasn’t sure how it
would go,’ “ Newman said. “Then [the men] admit that,
when they challenged the gender bias in their own heads,
they realized that women are capable of doing the same
job; it’s just a different sounding voice.”
Long after her Orioles’ debut, such comments still
make Newman’s day. At 31, she is one of four women calling big league games, a number she believes will grow
in time.
“In 10 years, I hope it’s all happenstance and that we’re
no longer keeping count,” she said. For now, though, she’s
a pioneer and role model for female aspirants, who reach
out on social media. Newman tweaks their dreams.
“They say they want to be ‘the next Melanie,’ which
is great — but I want them to be ‘the next themselves,’
” she said.
40 | 2022 | WOMEN TO WATCH
“[Men] admit that,
when they challenged the
gender bias in their own
heads, they realized that
women are capable of doing
the same job; it’s just a
different sounding voice.”
— Melanie Newman, broadcaster
Growing up in Georgia, Newman’s own goals lay
anywhere but in the broadcast booth.
“I was massively introverted,” she said. “I liked sports
but wasn’t athletic and didn’t pick up a bat until three
years ago. I hated recess and, on our school’s ‘field day,’ I
faked being sick. I just wanted to stay inside and read my
books. I remember once in seventh grade when, standing at my locker, I said something to a friend. Several feet
away, a boy turned and yelled down the hall, ‘I just heard
Melanie speak!’ I thought, wow, now I’m really never
speaking again.”
Then, impulsively, Newman entered a beauty pageant.
“On a whim, I thought it might be fun,” she said. “Being
on stage, under lights, cracks you out of your introvert
shell pretty quickly.”
It was at Troy University (Alabama) that she found her
calling and, after six years in the minor leagues, Newman
reached the Orioles, naysayers be damned.
“I have truly learned to exorcise [criticism] from those
who live in a boxed-in world,” she said. “I’ve let go of the
thought that I need to know more than my male counterparts. If someone asks me the blood types of the five
best Orioles, just to test my gender, they can take a hike.”
Women broadcasters, she said, excel in “the emotive
side of the game. We have the ability to talk to players and
get answers that I don’t think all men can do. We’re not
there to talk 100 percent stats; there’s a human level that
[women] bring out a little more.”
In the end, she said, “I just want to call a good game
and be one who expands this [job] for women, or any
minority, that hasn’t had a presence. If I bring honor to
this role, that’s it, for me, at the end of the day.”