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Cuba's first-ever team of top women umpires

STORY: Here in Cuba, baseball is a national passion…

and this all-women umpire team is winning praise as they travel the island to oversee several national championship games...

The first group of women to call the shots in a profession and a sport dominated by men.

Former baseball and softball player Janet Moreno broke into the top-league as an umpire 18 seasons ago.

“I was the first woman in the world to work in the major leagues in her country, but this year we managed to have a complete group of female umpires in Cuba's 62nd national series.”

She was joined by three others a few months ago, known as ‘The Cuban Four.’

Even in U.S. Major League Baseball, the world's most watched baseball tournament, there has never been a female umpire.

This is Cesar Valdes, the head of rules and officiating for Cuba’s National Baseball League…

"I've been around part of the world, and in the sense of umpiring, there is currently no group of four women working together anywhere else in the world in baseball."

The gravity isn’t lost on Moreno’s colleague Miroslava Cumbo…

"For me it is a source of pride to be here and to represent this collective of women who have given us an important task and we have been able to develop it and perform it throughout the series."

The women swapped jokes and jabs as they prepared for a game earlier this week… a camaraderie they say has helped them succeed.

Cuba has recently allowed women to participate in other sports where they had been previously relegated to lower or amateur leagues...

And late last year the island's government staged official female boxing matches... the first since 1959.