Mariners hire MLB's 1st female scout in over 60 years

The Seattle Mariners made Major League Baseball history Monday when they announced the hiring of six new area scouts.

Among the new hires is Amanda Hopkins. The daughter of long-time scout Ron Hopkins, Amanda is believed to be the first female hired as a full-time scout since the 1950s, according to the team.

"She's been helping us as an intern, in the office, at workouts, at Safeco, anything on the amateur side," Mariners scouting director Tom McNamara told Greg Jones of MLB.com earlier this month. "I've actually been to a couple games with her where we started talking about players. And I was sitting there thinking, 'man, she has a really good feel and breaks down a player like a veteran scout.' The more I spent time with her, the more I kept saying, 'maybe pushing her into the office isn't a good idea. She really wants to scout.'

"We sent her to scout school and she ranked pretty high in the class. When I called to tell her we'd nominated her for scout school, she was in tears on the phone, literally in tears. It was kind of chilling. It meant a lot to her."

A former softball standout at Central Washington University, Amanda will scout in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.

"Whenever she had free time, she was always doing something baseball-related," McNamara said. "She had that passion. This is something she really wants to do. It's in her blood."

Tyrus Bowman, Jackson Laumann, Taylor Terrasas, Stephen Tromblee, and Ross Vecchio were also named scouts for the Mariners.