Interview: Modesto Nuts Veronica Hernandez on what it means to be the first Latina general manager in Minor League Baseball

On what her promotion means for women and women of color in the male-dominated baseball field

A lot of growth [and] creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking — having more different minds to the table can just be positive.

Especially the sense of how you view a situation, no matter if that’s creative in portions or operations or things of that nature, there’s different angles.

Veronica HernandezCourtesy of Veronica Hernandez

On what she has learned about Modesto and its communities

To be honest, once I arrived [in] Modesto, I completely fell in love … I immediately fell in love with the greenery and the agriculture out here and the camaraderie among the community.

It was almost immediate, and I think that was probably one of the easiest parts is, I go to one meeting, and I express that I want to learn so much about the community, and the community itself was like, ‘Oh, you should go to this meeting, that meeting and meet this person or that person.’

So it was all a very, very helping hand, the community is in [it] together … and that’s what I probably love the most. I see it time and time again with downtown festivals or different events popping up, is that this community does want growth.

On what her goals and plans are for the Modesto Nuts

I think the first step that I’m working on is internal. One of the biggest things in baseball is just the consistent promotion of different staff members, and that doesn’t mean vertically, it means diagonally, meaning we lose a lot of front office.

So I want to try and help that retention because as an organization, we’re not going to grow quickly unless we have the same people that understand, ‘hey, these were last year’s problems and this is how we’re going to fix them and attack them.’

You know, this upcoming season or upcoming homestand, whatever it is, is just having that retention here internally. So that’s going to be one of my biggest goals.

I never want to close the door to any of my staff members if they have a better opportunity elsewhere. I do want to encourage them and support them in that path of life. But I also want to make it a little bit difficult for them to say goodbye.