Bianca Smith just wanted to coach baseball. She never imagined being an inspiration.
All the publicity, all the talk about being a trailblazer as the first Black woman to coach professional baseball players didn’t even occur to Bianca Smith when the Boston Red Sox offered her a job in their minor league system.
She just wanted to coach baseball, and she jumped on the offer like it was a hanging curveball
In her eyes, being a Black woman hadn’t been a big deal back when she matriculated at Colleyville Heritage High, Dartmouth College and West Case Reserve University, and when she interned with the Texas Rangers and Cincinnati Reds and coached at the Rangers Youth Academy in West Dallas.
To hear some people say she is blazing a trail as one of her sports heroes, Jackie Robinson, did nearly 75 years ago, well, that just blows her away.
Nevertheless, as the first Black woman to hired coach professional baseball, Smith is a big deal. She now has the potential to inspire others who look like her to pursue coaching careers in professional sports, positions that are still almost exclusively held by men.
“For me, it was just I get a coaching job where I get to just focus on coaching,” Smith said Thursday during a Zoom called with nearly 50 media members.
“Seeing the impact it’s had on other people, it’s still really cool. I like the idea that my story can still inspire other people. I love to have that as part of my legacy. It’s become a lot more to me than it was originally, just seeing how people are being inspired by the idea.”
Smith, who moved to Grapevine in 1997 and graduated from Colleyville Heritage in 2008, isn’t in the major leagues, at least not yet. That’s her ultimate goal, and no one should put anything past her.
The Rangers saw her drive first-hand, beginning in 2017 as she interned in baseball operations. She was late, first finishing her commitment to the Case Western Reserve baseball team’s season, but she caught up quickly.
Among the tasks the Rangers put on her plate was an assignment to MLB scout school, where she learned more about evaluating players to complement her background in analytics and technology.
She added working as a Globe Life Park tour guide on her own.
“The main impression Bianca left here is both about her curiosity and passion for baseball, and her determination and hunger to learn,” said assistant general manager Josh Boyd, who has remained in contact with Smith. “I feel like since her internship ended here she’s done 10 years of work in a little more than two years.”
Smith has only waded into the shallow end of the pool of Red Sox players she needs to learn before spring training starts next month. She wants to give the bulk of her attention to Carroll University, where she is the baseball team’s hitting coordinator for two more weeks.
Among all her stops, including an internship with the Cincinnati Reds that featured more on-field work than she had with the Rangers, Smith said that working with Carroll players has provided her with the most amount of prep for the Red Sox job.
Once she leaves Carroll, located just outside of Milwaukee, she will start putting all her focus on her new players.
“I have to learn how the players learn,” Smith said. “I have to learn their personalities. That’s how I’ll actually be able to approach them as a coach. Getting to know them, that is going be the first hurdle. I just can’t jump in and start giving them instruction when I have no idea what kind of person I’m working with.”
The Rangers know the kind of person Red Sox players will be working with. Smith is a big deal, but that goes beyond her being the first Black woman to coach professional baseball.
“I am confident she is going to continue to not only make an immediate impact,” Boyd said, “but continue to learn and grow.”
