Next time the USA Baseball Women's National Team, seen here in 2004 action, takes the field, Julie Croteau will be the skipper. (John Ulan/AP) Related Links Fashions for the field Put a bid on it MiLB Headlines Javs edge Dogs, win AFL title LA's Mitchell wins Stenson Award Desme named AFL MVP Path of the Pros: Ian Kinsler No surgery needed for Strasburg New BayBears logo reflects past Promo Preview: Charitable deeds Leake ends whirlwind year strong Double-A All-Stars named Rickwood Classic marks milestone AFL Championship preview D-backs get Heilman from Cubs ADVERTISEMENT

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Nearly 13 years ago I wrote a feature story for a long-since defunct newspaper about a young pioneer, a baseball player blazing a new path, a true role model when there are so few in today's sports world.

Her name is Julie Croteau.

She had sued her high school to play baseball, but lost. That didn't deter her. She became the first female to play college baseball at St. Mary's College. She didn't stop there, becoming the first female college baseball coach. She played semipro ball in the Virginia Baseball League and then with the barnstorming Colorado Silver Bullets. Her playing and early coaching careers were peppered with firsts.

So it came as no huge shock when I saw the press release last week announcing that Croteau was named as the "first-ever female head coach in USA Baseball history." She had been an assistant coach under Marty Scott when the first USA Baseball Women's National Team won the Gold Medal at the 2004 IBAF Women's World Cup in Canada. Now it's Croteau's turn to lead in the dugout and try to win gold again in Taiwan in August.

"I've never had a female coach in baseball," said Croteau, who still has the same balance of humility and understanding about what her accomplishments may mean to others that she displayed when we last spoke more than a decade ago. "I would've loved to have had a female coach.

"It's self-serving for me to say this, but I think it's very important. It's similar to minorities in sports. Coming up as an African-American player, but never having an African-American coach, it doesn't seem like an option."

A lot has changed since Croteau was seemingly going it alone back in high school and college. While many female baseball players still get recruited back into softball -- people often just assume Croteau is the Team USA softball coach -- Croteau was amazed to see, during a tour around the country to hold tryouts, exactly how many young women are sticking with baseball. Back in 1993, she told me how all girls were gone from the sport by the time she reached junior high school. Now, she says, the best players she's just seen were 13 and 14 years old.

There are also more role models now for these youngsters to learn from and look up to. Many of Croteau's teammates from the Silver Bullets stayed with baseball, giving some women more than a decade of experience with the sport. That just didn't exist when Croteau started her mainly uphill journey to play baseball, and she sees all these kids playing as a very good omen for the future of women in the sport.

"It speaks volumes about what will happen with the sport," Croteau said. "They marched right out and tried out for their teams, and presumably had climates where they felt comfortable doing that. It's going to be a whole different animal than when I was playing."

She, of course, has a lot to do with this evolution, not that she would ever openly admit that. So we'll do it for her. Every movement, every step forward in sport -- in society as a whole -- has to have people willing to step up and challenge the status quo. Croteau did just that when she took her high school to court. She did that when she donned a college uniform. And she's doing it again today.

"I don't want to give myself credit for that," Croteau said. "I was just trying to play a sport I loved. I'm happy if I in any way contributed to that, but that wasn't my intention."

There were times when Croteau had a little baseball burnout. She left her college team after her third season when she felt the burden of carrying her entire gender on her shoulders every single game. A good game meant a tremendous future for women in baseball. An 0-for-5 performance depressed her, a confirmation that women didn't belong in the sport. She came back to it with the Silver Bullets, left again, stepping in and out until she decided she needed a complete break.

So she left the game for a while, started a family, gave the business world a try. But she just couldn't get the game out of her system, and when given the chance to jump back in, and perhaps show her two young children first-hand what women on the baseball diamond can do, she didn't hesitate.

"What I realized when I took a break is that I am a lifer," Croteau said. "The opportunity to get back in at this level was very meaningful to me in a number of ways. I'm hopeful this is the beginning of the next chapter of my baseball life."

Her timing couldn't have been better. Women have made some inroads into what's generally been considered to be the old boys network of baseball, but mostly in the front office. There are some high-powered female executives (the Dodgers' Kim Ng and the Yankees' Jean Afterman come to mind). Minor League Baseball is dotted with women in GM offices (Kinston's Shari Massengill is the most recent addition) and other front office posts.

But there is a noticeable dearth of women in dugouts. And at a time when Major League announcers are demonstrating Neanderthal attitudes on the air about women in baseball, Croteau's presence as a Team USA head coach serves as the perfect antidote to such backward thinking.

"I'm not sure gender really matters," Croteau said. "There are males coaching females. I think that [women coaching men] is something that's going to change in the next generation.

"Any place, like USA Baseball, that keeps a place for girls and women to play baseball will only encourage women to be coaches, managers or executives. I'd love to stay in pro baseball, whether it's on the field or in administration. I think there is room for women to coach men."

Not that this surprises me. I dug up the feature I wrote all those years ago, curious to see what the Croteau of 1993 said compared with the one who will lead Team USA into international competition in August. Maybe she won't cop to any intent in bringing more women into baseball, but I think I've caught her red-handed with the following excerpted quote from that story:

"I think that sport really reflects life, and I think that sports is one of the last frontiers for women," she told me. "Although it was very exciting to be the first woman to play college baseball, and the only woman, I don't want it to stay that way. So, I'd like to be able to pull women up to that level in baseball. Help them not go through what I went through.

"I just don't think that sport has a gender. I think that we've given it one. We made this sport 'masculine' and this sport 'feminine' and we shouldn't restrict opportunity."

Croteau is once again in a position to make sure that doesn't happen. And the baseball world is certainly better for it.

Jonathan Mayo is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues or its clubs.

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