KNBR
It all hit her when she was driving home from a coffee shop in the Inner Sunset.
Alyssa Nakken knew the implications; she knew history had zero female major league coaches she could look toward. She would be the first.
Gabe Kapler had just informed her she would be an assistant coach, her responsibilities vague at the time, but another different-thinking mind to add to the pile the Giants had compiled.
“Whoa,” she recounted Thursday about the epiphany. “This is big … bigger than me. But this is the job that I want.”
It is the job she got in mid-January. Nakken’s first official day as coach was watching as TV cameras descended upon her childhood room, both prepared and unprepared for the swell of attention that was about to come. Her first responsibilities included organizing a coaches retreat — there are 13 in all, many of whom hadn’t known each other — and putting together a “culinary experience” around the Mission Tuesday and Wednesday.
They had wonderful tacos and churros. They talked. They gambled. All but Nakken lost.
“I beat everyone,” the novice Hold ‘Em player said, and when asked her haul, “I haven’t counted it all yet.”
Her on-field and off-field duties will not quite be as rewarding. Nakken will assist with baserunning and outfield defense and will hit fungos. She’ll help organize morning meetings, bringing in guest speakers and ensuring rookies are being worked into the team culture. She’ll be charged with not just player development but staff development, ensuring everyone’s on the same page, creating more events like the retreat that build camaraderie and happiness.
“It’s so energizing and refreshing,” Farhan Zaidi said, “to see her bringing this attitude.”
Her Giants background — she began as an intern in Baseball Ops, then worked on special events like the Giants race — has prepared her for that aspect. Her baseball and otherwise background — a softball star at Sacramento State, a masters in sport management at USF, Chief Information Officer of USF’s baseball team, an obvious go-getter with the Giants who banged on every door to discover her next challenge — will help prepare her for what comes when the baseball season does. She said she’ll figure out the day-to-day as it goes on, with so much work of this expansive staff still to be divvied up.
Nakken entered the Giants’ front office’s radar by literally putting herself in front of them. Soon, she’ll do the same with the players, a few of whom she’s already met in Scottsdale.
“October and November, I just started to walk into almost all of our executives’ offices and just ask them, ‘Hey, what’s your take on the status of our organization?’ and just started to learn a little bit more about what they do and what’s their day-to-day,” the 29-year-old said. “And started to hear their thoughts on the transitions happening on the coaching staff and the team side. And I felt like after each conversation, ‘There could be an opportunity for me to come in and help make an impact for this team, this staff.’ What role? I don’t know, but I want to be there. Title? I don’t care, but let me help.”
She began meeting a bit more officially with executives, including Zaidi, Scott Harris and Kapler. The manager and Nakken kept talking, though she said she wasn’t even aware she was being interviewed. Kapler told KNBR she was “off the charts.”
And then Kapler told her what her new title would be.
“That kind of knocked me off my feet a bit,” said Nakken, in her first comments in a group interview as Giants coach. “But it was a great way to kind of encompass all of what I can bring, which includes a lot of collaboration and team and knowing how to work with a variety of different personalities and kind of streamline processes and put them together.”
She knew what she was getting into and mentioned a recent conversation with Rachel Balkovec, a hitting coach in the Yankees organization. They will have stories to share, though Nakken said Kapler and the Giants players she’s met have not offered her warnings about goings-on in the clubhouse. The job will come with challenges unique for a woman in a clubhouse of all male players.
It also will come with questions about the hire, which follows an intense introductory news conference for Kapler, who did not properly handle assault cases involving Dodgers minor leaguers when he was in Los Angeles. Nakken said Kapler addressed the staff prior to the news conference and you “just have to understand the truth and understand the facts and make sure that you’re looking at all the facts that are presented.” She trusts Kapler, she said, though the two haven’t talked personally about the incidents.
The Giants trust her. She has made history, and she knows it.
As a kid, she did not dream about being a professional softball player, despite her abilities, because it didn’t really exist on TV. She had no one to idolize.
The next Alyssa Nakken won’t have that problem.
“This job has kind of been hidden for so long,” she said. “I’m so excited to be in this role for the challenge, and the opportunity to make an impact for this organization that I loved as a fan while growing up and then have loved the last five years for being a part of it and understanding and working with this organization.
“But also I’m excited that now girls can see there is a job on the field in baseball.”