This story was excerpted from Bryan Hoch’s Yankees Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
NEW YORK -- Megan Bell was in the middle of one workday, writing up reports for an HVAC company in Queens, when the phone rang. It was a different boss in the Bronx, delivering unexpected news: She’d been selected as the Yankees’ nominee for Major League Baseball’s All-Star Ball Crew.
“Honestly, it was pretty surreal,” Bell said. “I was just absolutely elated. I grew up a Yankees fan my entire life, so to be able to represent the Yankees just means so much to me.”
2026 All-Star Game presented by Mastercard
• Watch on FOX, July 14 at 8 p.m. ET
• Full rosters unveiled, including 26 first-timers
• Complete All-Star Game rosters
• Team-by-team breakdown of the All-Stars
Fan voting is open to select two ball girls to take the field during All-Star Game festivities at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park. Voting runs through 11:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
For Bell, the opportunity is the latest chapter in a sports journey that began with an innocent question she asked her mother at age 6: “Why can’t I play baseball?”
“I was in gymnastics at the time, and my older brother started playing baseball,” Bell said. “My mom tells me this story that one day I went up to her and looked at her with these sad eyes. She was like, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t even think that you would want to play.’
“So the next season, my mom signed me up for T-ball, and I played baseball up until the third grade. Then it was the story that every girl hears: ‘OK, it’s time to switch to softball.’”
Did she ever. A shortstop, third baseman and outfielder, Bell continued playing throughout high school, then at Baruch College in Manhattan, where she was a three-time CUNYAC Softball All-Star and holds the school record for stolen bases.
During the 2022 season, the Yankees contacted local colleges to advertise a new ball girl program. Bell jumped at the chance. When she and three teammates brought their gloves for a tryout, it was her first time on the field at Yankee Stadium.
“They were hitting foul balls to us in the area we’d be working,” Bell said. “It was really helpful that a few of my teammates were there, because we started high-fiving each other and getting everyone comfortable. Everyone was so excited, taking pictures. It was honestly incredible. We even walked through the clubhouse, too.”
That behind-the-scenes tour doesn’t compare, however, to Bell’s first chance in uniform.
“I was really nervous,” Bell said. “The first game, we actually didn’t go on the field yet. We were right behind the gate so we could get a feel for how the ball comes off the bat at this level. I just remember the first ball I got, it was an Anthony Rizzo foul down the first-base line. I ran out and backhanded it, and I was like, ‘Oh, thank God.’”
Those years of practice continue to pay off nightly for Bell, who has made several stellar plays in pinstripes – one, a backhand stab of a DJ LeMahieu hot shot, merited replays on the YES Network. There’s homework involved; Bell said she studies the angles of walls just like an outfielder would.
“Something I had to learn over time is, it’s how you read the ball off the bat,” she said. “Most of them are tailing, and when they’re tailing, they’re going to hit off the wall and the spin completely changes. The reaction time isn’t from when it hits the bat, it’s from when it hits off the wall. Honestly, it’s a lot harder than it looks.”
Each day presents unique challenges. Bell said she served a two-game stint filling in for a dugout bat boy, a last-minute assignment she eagerly snapped up.
“That was insane,” Bell said. “Seeing all the players next to me – I’m 5-foot-4, so having Aaron Judge next to me, he’s huge! I was high-fiving all the guys when they came in from warmups, and I had to learn on the fly whose bat is whose, and when to run out and all that.”
When she’s not in pinstripes, Bell is continuing her studies in grad school, focusing on digital marketing. She said her ultimate goal would be an opportunity where she can combine that marketing knowledge with sports.
But for now, she’s thrilled to be a Yankee, and part of a program that answers the question she asked her mom at age 6.
“I always remember looking at the bat boys and thinking, ‘How did they get to be in the dugout?’” Bell said. “You never really saw girls around baseball too much. Now, a lot of girls might be too shy to talk to me, but their parents are like, ‘She thinks your job is super cool.’
“I tell them, ‘In 10 years, you’re probably going to be sitting where I’m sitting right now.’”