This past February, Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae sat down for an interview with Kim Ng — then MLB’s vice president of baseball operations — in advance of International Women’s Day. With nearly 30 years of service in MLB, both on the league side and at senior positions within the front offices of multiple franchises, it’s hard to imagine anyone better suited than Ng to speak to the realities and challenges of being a female executive in North American professional sports.
Ng had obvious aspirations of leading a baseball operations department. She’d interviewed for general manager openings with numerous clubs, finishing as a finalist time and again. With decades of experience as a decision maker within the front offices of multiple successful franchises, she was ridiculously over-qualified. And yet she was passed over for job after job.
Why was that? Why wouldn’t an MLB franchise want to benefit from Ng’s knowledge and expertise? Those questions are part of the reason why Mae asked Ng if baseball was ready for a female GM.
“They should be,” Ng said. “We see female world leaders, CEOs, secretaries of state. There’s no reason that there shouldn’t be a woman general manager.”
Finally, there is one. Friday, the Miami Marlins announced they’ve hired Ng as the club’s next GM. It’s a groundbreaking moment not only for baseball but for North American professional sports. Ng will be the first female GM of an MLB, NHL, NBA or NFL franchise. It will be a hard-earned bullet point atop an extensive and impressive resume.
Ng’s MLB career began more than three decades ago — years prior to the founding of the Marlins in 1993. She earned an internship position with the Chicago White Sox, who eventually hired her full time and promoted her up the ranks to assistant director of baseball operations, a role that saw her become the first woman to present a salary arbitration case.
In 1998, she became the youngest assistant GM in baseball when New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman added her to his front office. Three years later, she joined the Los Angeles Dodgers as a vice president and assistant GM, where she worked for a decade before leaving the club to join MLB as a senior vice president, the job she held until today.
Along the way, Kim was part of the front offices of eight postseason teams — three of them World Series winners. She was a candidate for a score of GM openings, including positions with the Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, New York Mets, San Diego Padres, Anaheim Angels, Baltimore Orioles, Arizona Diamondbacks, Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants. Every one of them passed.
That she was up for so many GM jobs speaks to her unquestionable qualifications to oversee an MLB front office. It speaks to the sport’s willingness to consider non-traditional candidates.
But it may also speak to a tokenism tendency on the part of organizations, which make it publicly known they’ve interviewed minority candidates even if they aren’t genuinely considering them for the position. And what it certainly speaks to is the much steeper hill women must climb compared to their male counterparts to attain one of those 30 jobs. How many men younger and less experienced than Kim have been chosen for GM positions after far fewer interviews?
The answer is a lot. Ng’s first interview for a GM opening was in 2005. Since then, MLB franchises have hired GMs who were just beginning their baseball careers in mail rooms and as scouts while Ng was negotiating free agent contracts and big-league trades. They’ve hired individuals who were working outside front offices as agents and at consulting firms while Ng was handling arbitration cases and building out player development departments both domestically and overseas.
Ng has long been considered a GM in waiting — a skilled executive whose ascension to the top of a club’s baseball operations department was inevitable. And it turns out it was. But it took longer than it ever should have. And longer than it ever would have if a male candidate with Ng’s talent and experience had existed over the last 15 years and interviewed as often as she has.
What it took, as Ng put it to Mae during their interview last winter, was “a bold, courageous, gender-blind owner.” She was right. But what she never could have predicted was that that owner would be the same all-star shortstop she won several World Series with when she was working for the Yankees.
[radioclip id=5006958]That it’s Derek Jeter — the Hall of Famer was putting up 200-hit seasons for Ng 20 years ago — who finally helped her break through baseball’s glass ceiling is a fitting turn of fate. Since he took over as Marlins CEO in 2017, Jeter has been a strong advocate for members of minority communities within the game. He’s spoken out repeatedly against racial injustice. He’s mandated Spanish lessons for English-speakers in his front office. Jeter’s been a refreshing and needed progressive force within the halls of power in a game stubbornly beholden to tradition. He had a necessary role to play in this moment.
But that moment is still Ng’s. Next week, she’ll turn 52. That makes her the sixth-oldest GM in the sport behind Jerry Dipoto, Dayton Moore, Cashman, Mike Rizzo and Al Avila. What separated her from those individuals who have all helmed front offices for years — not to mention the 20-plus GMs younger than her — wasn’t qualification or acuity. It was opportunity.
Finally, she’s receiving it. Like Ng told Mae earlier this year, this moment has long been overdue. There was never a reason there shouldn’t have been a female GM. And there’s no reason for the next to be far behind.
