“His desire to make himself better so he could make others better has always inspired me to do the same,” she said.

Image Rachel Balkovec Credit...

Major League Baseball has been taking steps to include more women in on-field roles — as coaches, scouts, umpires and athletic trainers.

The Oakland A’s hired Justine Siegal as a guest instructor for the team’s fall instructional league in 2015, then had Veronica Alvarez as a guest catching coach in spring training this year. The Chicago Cubs hired Rachel Folden to work as the lead hitting lab technician and a “fourth” coach for their rookie-level team in the Arizona League next year. And at its winter meetings in San Diego in December, M.L.B. will host its second “Take the Field” program, designed to provide women who are interested in careers in coaching, scouting and player development with opportunities to attend panels and breakout and networking sessions.

Before her time in Houston, Balkovec, who grew up in Omaha, Neb., was the minor league strength and conditioning coordinator for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2014 and 2015; she was the first woman to hold a full-time strength and conditioning position in major league-affiliated baseball.

But being a woman has always been the biggest obstacle to her success, she said.

After her messages were not answered when she initially applied for strength and conditioning jobs in baseball, she changed her first name on her résumé and applications to “Rae” from “Rachel.”

Then the phone started ringing.

Most callers were taken aback to hear a woman’s voice on the phone, she said, and wouldn’t call back a second time. One team flat out told her it would never hire a woman.

But Balkovec had already worked for the Cardinals on a temporary contract in 2012, as a strength and conditioning coach for their affiliate in Johnson City, Tenn., where she won the Appalachian League’s strength coach of the year award.