Bob Solorio/Sacramento State Athletics
Alyssa Nakken’s mother informed her these would be her grandmother’s last hours, and a few days before Thanksgiving in November 2010, Nakken left college to say her goodbye.
The Sacramento State junior got on Interstate 5 and was nearly home, nearby the Woodland exit. Nakken drove in the left lane, and the car on her right drifted over. To avoid a crash, Nakken swerved into the median, overcorrected to return to the lane and sent her car tumbling over several times.
It is hard to find a person who remembers a mistake she’s made, so of course she was wearing a seatbelt. The four-time Academic All-American unbuckled it, put her foot to what was left of a nearby window and kicked glass out before crawling to safety. “Freaking out” teammates rushed to the scene. Nakken was airlifted to UC Davis Medical Center, exited the hospital with a concussion and some bruising, and saw her grandmother that day and just in time. She was at softball practice soon thereafter and stewing on a bucket of balls, cheering on her teammates while frustration built because trainers wouldn’t let her return just yet.
“I’m amazed she didn’t get killed,” said her college head coach, Kathy Strahan.
“Worst day of my life,” said her mother, Gaye, “until I knew she was alive.”
“A cop on the scene was like, ‘I don’t even know how you got out of the car,’” a former teammate, Molly Smith, remembered.
Nakken, whom the Giants recently made Major League Baseball’s first female coach – an assistant whom manager Gabe Kapler referred to as a “Swiss army knife” because of her diverse set of responsibilities – had to shatter glass before the glass ceiling.
As Nakken grew up, nobody seemed to know where she was going, but they all seemed to think she would get there.
Alyssa was a confident, athletic girl with two older brothers from whom she never backed down. She was best at softball, but soccer, basketball and volleyball were mixed in there, too, in a fairly idyllic Woodland childhood.
She was “different,” her parents said, with a knack for leading without demanding the attention that comes with leadership. Her ability on the fields and the courts helped establish she was a person people wanted to listen to, and her ears were always open to others.
“I can’t remember any discipline situation,” her father, Bob, said over the phone. “As far as softball, I’d find out things after the fact. She’d get up early in the morning and go over to a local park and pitch into the backstop. [Her mother and I] had no idea this was going on – we were still in bed.”
The first time Bob could remember seeing the side of Alyssa that soon will be on display was in travel-league softball, when he was forced into coaching. She had two coaches; one was away, and the other got ejected from the game. Bob stepped in from the stands, dad forced into coaching duties. But Alyssa was the Nakken who needed to step up.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “Just said, ‘OK, girls, you gotta do this.’
“Alyssa then took them together and said, ‘Look, let’s just get this done’ – words to that effect, I can’t remember now. She was the leadoff batter next inning and leads off with a big double over the center fielder’s head, and that just started the ball rolling.”
She was a good enough scholar and softball star at Woodland High that she went to Sacramento State on scholarship, where she majored in psychology and starred in the softball infield all four years. The numbers were impressive: a career .304 hitter, 19 home runs, third all time at the program with 115 runs. At least one teammate saved.
Smith, a catcher who was a year behind Nakken, had been a softball standout all her life, facing few struggles in the sport until her sophomore year. After a solid freshman year, the hits stopped coming and then the playing time followed.
Strahan, the coach, glued her to the bench for a few months, and Smith was “devastated.”
“I honestly had never been challenged like that as an athlete or as a human being,” said Smith, who now coaches softball at Raymond S. Kellis High School in Glendale, Ariz. “It just completely destroyed me.
“Nakken was the one who pulled me aside and was like, ‘Softball is not the end-all be-all.’ She was like, ‘You’ll probably have a future [in softball] after, but your character is more important. She’s the one who really made me realize that it’s more about how you play as opposed to the talent that you bring to the game. I will never forget it because that’s how I coach now, too. And that’s how she coaches, too.”
The compliment that shadows Nakken the most entails a rare ability to teach, mentor and communicate without condescension. She could be both friend and coach and transmit messages without pushback. She “was the only person that pulled me aside and was like, ‘You need to get your shit together, dude,” Smith said.
Nakken has spent her 29-year lifetime preparing for a job that surely did not occupy space in her mind until it materialized. It is hard to strive for something that does not exist.
It was during Nakken’s sophomore season that Strahan watched an evolution take place. Nakken realized the team needed a leader, so that’s what she became. Like so many years prior when her father abruptly became coach, she fills roles when the roles present themselves rather than shoehorning herself into a situation.
“Pig Pen,” as Strahan remembers her — an allusion to the Peanuts character because her uniform was always dirty — invented new drills for the team, including an escaping-pickles exercise that allowed fun leaps/dives/leapfrogs into home plate. She was a rare junior-year captain who, according to Smith, was the first unanimously voted captain her senior year. (“Don’t remember that specifically, but wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” Strahan countered.)
As important as Nakken was on the field, Strahan had seen players of her ability. She hadn’t seen a better bridge between players and coaches.
In a manner that would foreshadow her trailblazing job, she was the conduit that allowed quiet voices to be amplified anonymously and without retribution. She would kick coaches out of the room when needed, calling players-only meetings and then reporting back to the staff without betraying her teammates. She would relay “just the climate, the feel, to direct us about where we should go next,” Strahan said.
“They had concerns they wanted brought up to me, and she was so good at dealing with any matters like that.”
The skill to bring people together followed her to the University of San Francisco, where she earned her masters in sport management. She quickly gained a reputation around the school, as not just a sports nut but an approachable and friendly face.
“She’s the kind of person that can walk in a room, has a great smile, gets along with people, that she can quickly make friends,” said USF professor Nola Agha, who taught Nakken in a research-methods class designed to help students think about problem-solving within the sports industry. “So her cohorts, it was a group of people from the United States and also from other countries around the world, and she very quickly became friends with everyone. She just had that very engaging kind of personality.”
If the classroom were part of the training ground that presaged her future, it wasn’t just communication that was being honed. Her big project in Agha’s class involved “intrinsic and extrinsic factors that motivate individuals towards peak physical performance.”
Jaylin Davis wants to get better. Buster Posey wants to get better. In a sport that is seeing a revolution of thought, the Drivelines either replacing or complementing the sage veteran pitching gurus, players value coaches — any coach — who can help them max out their talent. Coaches no longer need “former major league grinder” on their resumes.
Nakken and the Giants found each other at the right time.
“She’s always ready for another challenge, always,” Gaye said. “She does a really good job wherever, then she’s ready for a different challenge.”
After USF, Nakken decided against law school and decided upon focusing fully on the Giants, where she had been hired in 2014 first as an intern in Baseball Ops, inputting scouting reports and fully engrossed in player development — the department that had her heart.
She moved on to work within the team’s health and wellness initiatives, including organizing the Giant race series. She sought new obstacles, taking up surfing, yoga and Spartan Races, looking for the bar she couldn’t clear.
In the process, she placed herself fully on the radar when Kapler sought a staff that has been defined by youth and diversity of thought. She was brought on for multiple rounds of interviews, competing with both men and women, and just as she has everywhere else, she separated herself from her competitors. She was “off the charts,” Kapler said.
“What Alyssa was able to demonstrate was a strong ability to listen and break down information into very digestible bits. And that essentially makes her a) a good teacher, b) a good communicator and c) a good coach.”
Her family were among the last to know Alyssa Nakken made history.
Yes, she told Mom and Dad she would be hired as an assistant coach, a title the team finally decided upon, but she did not share the tidbit that she would be the first female coach in MLB history.
The Giants’ news release, too, did not disclose this information. She was the second assistant coach listed, Mark Hallberg leading the billing, with no mention of gender. Bob and Gaye learned the gravity when reporters began circling on the hire.
A team that also interviewed Yankees organizational coach Rachel Balkovec, a team that has preached about diversity of thought throughout this coaching-hire process, wanted someone “different” with the role because they wanted someone different for every role. But while Nakken is a different hire in definition, she is perhaps not in style, just another positive voice with an impressive background with the ability, they believe, to improve Giants players’ performances.
She has spent her life deciphering her best role within groups and playing that part to its fullest. She won over coaches, teammates, students, teachers and now an MLB organization. The players — maybe the biggest challenge in a sport dominated by testosterone — are next on her list.
Her responsibilities will be myriad; she’ll be in uniform and traveling with the team, ready with a fungo to hit grounders; she’ll be tasked with outfield and baserunning work, perhaps digging into video from years past on specific pitchers to determine opportune times to run.
She’s aggregating the team’s spring training playing-time grid. She’ll organize the camp’s morning meetings, including finding guest speakers and organizing competitions and events to keep things light and spirited.
If the glass is shattered, Nakken — whose first Giants game came in her parents’ arms as a 3-week-old — does not have time to pick it up.