Christina Kahrl is one of the co-founders of

Baseball Prospectus Baseball Prospectus (BP) is an organization that publishes a website, BaseballProspectus.com, devoted to the sabermetric analysis of baseball. BP has a staff of regular columnists and provides advanced statistics as well as player and team perf ...

. She is the former executive editor of the

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's website, BaseballProspectus.com, the former managing editor for their annual publication, former writer and editor for

ESPN.com ESPN.com is the official website of ESPN. It is owned by ESPN Internet Ventures, a division of ESPN Inc. History Since launching in April 1995 as ESPNET.SportsZone.com (ESPNET SportsZone), the website has developed numerous sections including: ...

, and is currently sports editor o
The San Francisco Chronicle
She is a member of the

Baseball Writers' Association of America The Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) is a professional association for journalists writing about Major League Baseball for daily newspapers, magazines and qualifying websites. The organization was founded in 1908, and is known ...

. Kahrl is an activist on civil rights issues for the

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...

community in her hometown of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

and a member of the Equality Illinois board of directors. The story of her coming out as a transgender sportswriter in 2003 was part of a

GLAAD GLAAD (), an acronym of Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, is an American non-governmental media monitoring organization originally founded as a protest against defamatory coverage of gay and lesbian demographics and their portrayal ...

award-nominated segment entitled "Transitions" on HBO's ''

Real Sports ''Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel'' is a monthly sports news magazine on HBO. Since its debut on April 2, 1995, the program has been presented by television journalist and sportscaster Bryant Gumbel. Overview Format Each episode consists of fo ...

'' that aired in 2010.

Background

Kahrl graduated from El Camino High School in

Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

in 1985. She graduated from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1990, with a concentration in Modern European History and a minor concentration in Ancient History. She was a member of

Phi Kappa Psi Phi Kappa Psi (), commonly known as Phi Psi, is an American collegiate social fraternity that was founded by William Henry Letterman and Charles Page Thomas Moore in Widow Letterman's home on the campus of Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pen ...

fraternity. In 2000, she earned an MA in Public History from

Loyola University Chicago Loyola University Chicago (Loyola or LUC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1870 by the Society of Jesus, Loyola is one of the largest Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Cathol ...

Career

From 2000 to 2005, Kahrl was employed as an acquisitions editor at Brassey's Sports, a mid-list publisher that focused on sports history and analysis. After the launch of BaseballProspectus.com in 1996, of which she was a founding member, she contributed a regular column entitled "Transaction Analysis," listing and analyzing the transactions (player trades, contract signings, promotions and demotions) by all

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

teams for the site. In 2011, she kicked off a new standalone opinion and argument column for the site entitled "Purpose Pitches." She was a co-editor of nine of the ''Baseball Prospectus'' annual volumes of baseball statistics and analysis. Kahrl has also written for

SportsIllustrated.com ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...

, the ''

New York Sun ''The New York Sun'' is an American online newspaper published in Manhattan; from 2002 to 2008 it was a daily newspaper distributed in New York City. It debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of the earlier New York ...

'',

Salon.com ''Salon'' is an American politically progressive/ liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events. Content and coverage ''Salon'' covers a variety of topics, including re ...

, ''

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

'', ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. K ...

'', and the ''

Washington Blade The ''Washington Blade'' is a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area. The ''Blade'' is the oldest LGBT newspaper in the United States and third largest by circulation, behind the ''Philadelphi ...

'', and was an associate editor of ''The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia.'' In 2008, Kahrl was accepted as a member of the

and thus became eligible to vote on

post-season awards and nominees for the

National Baseball Hall of Fame The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a history museum and hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, operated by private interests. It serves as the central point of the history of baseball in the United States and displays baseball-r ...

. She voted for the

American League The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the American League (AL), is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a minor league ...

Rookie of the Year in 2009 and for the

National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team s ...

Manager of the Year in 2010. Reflecting on the meaning of her election, Kahrl wrote, "While I expect to still write about transactions, I really want to try and breathe new life back into the game story as an art form, and perhaps in my conceit try to take pages from Runyon and Lardner and

Pete Palmer Pete Palmer (born January 30, 1938) is an American sports statistician and encyclopedia editor. He is a major contributor to the applied mathematical field referred to as sabermetrics. Along with the Bill James ''Baseball Abstracts'', Palmer's ...

and

Keith Woolner Keith Woolner (born c. 1968) is an author for Baseball Prospectus and is the creator of the statistic Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). VORP is acknowledged by the sabermetrics community as one of the key concepts in the analysis of a player's p ...

to provide something old and something new, all at once." In April 2011, Kahrl announced that she would be joining ESPN.com to write and edit, teaming up with David Schoenfield in penning the "SweetSpot" blog, which provides a

sabermetrics Sabermetrics, or originally SABRmetrics, is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. Sabermetricians collect and summarize the relevant data from this in-game activity to answer specific ques ...

-driven analysis on the goings-on in baseball. On November 10, 2016, Kahrl announced she has been promoted to MLB Senior Editor at ESPN and will be relocating to ESPN Headquarters in Connecticut. Kahrl became sports editor of The San Francisco Chronicle in March 2021. In 2014 Kahrl was inducted into the

Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame The Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame (formerly Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame) is an institution founded in 1991 to honor persons and entities who have made significant contributions to the quality of life or well-being of the LGBT community in Chic ...

Activism

Since 2007, Kahrl has been active in the

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

community, helping out with transgender programming at the

Center on Halsted Center on Halsted is a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community center in Chicago, Illinois. Kim Fountain serves as Chief Operating Officer. The center is located in the Lakeview neighborhood on the corner of Halsted Street a ...

, running the support group and adding a seminar series and an open mic night to its programming, as well as speaking about activist efforts in the area. She has spoken to local student groups and on college campuses about acceptance of transgender people in society and in sports, and on transgender issues. She is a member of the board of Illinois Gender Advocates (IGA), and co-chair of IGA's action committee. As an activist and board member for

Equality Illinois Equality Illinois (EI) was founded in 1991 to work towards building a better Illinois by advancing equal treatment and social justice through education, advocacy, and protection of the rights of the LGBT community. Structure The Equality Illinois ...

, Kahrl has been actively involved in an effort to curb police harassment of transgender Chicagoans, and has helped launch the Trans-Friendly Bathroom Initiative with fellow activists from Genderqueer Chicago. She has also helped organize the public observation of

Transgender Day of Remembrance The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), also known as the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, has been observed annually (from its inception) on November 20 as a day to memorialize those who have been murdered as a result of transp ...

in Chicago. She has also discussed the nature of transgenderism at the

Chicago History Museum Chicago History Museum is the museum of the Chicago Historical Society (CHS). The CHS was founded in 1856 to study and interpret Chicago's history. The museum has been located in Lincoln Park since the 1930s at 1601 North Clark Street at the in ...

, stating, "You have to explain to people that, no, this (being transgender) does not mean that you are supergay, although it's sweet of you to say so. Forging acceptance in the face of inevitable confusion and concern is the diplomatic mission of a lifetime, for each and every transsexual." On November 8, 2013 it was announced that she had been named to

's Board of Directors. Kahrl, who identifies as bisexual, married Charley Wanamaker in 2014.

Notes

External links

Christina Kahrl Archive
,

. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kahrl, Christina American women sportswriters Living people Baseball statisticians Writers from Chicago University of Chicago alumni Loyola University Chicago alumni Year of birth missing (living people) American LGBT writers LGBT people from Illinois Transgender women Transgender writers American women non-fiction writers Sportswriters from Illinois 21st-century LGBT people