Miami Marlins GM Kim Ng echoes Kamala Harris in making history for women and Asian-Americans
- America’s pastime now has its first female and Asian-American GM, echoing Kamala Harris heading to the White House as VP
- Widespread congratulations for historic hire at Miami Marlins but appointment has been a long time coming for Ng and MLB
Stats are perhaps more prevalent in baseball than any other sport so it is fitting that new Miami Marlins GM Kim Ng has made so much history in taking up the role.
The 51-year-old has become the first female GM in 117 years of Major League Baseball. She has become the first Asian-American GM – by virtue of also being the first Chinese-American GM, of course – as well as the first female to be appointed GM in any of the major North American Sports.
She’s shattered the glass ceiling and she’s crashed through the bamboo ceiling while she was at it. If you’re going to crash through one why not two? Get yourself a GM who can do both.
Congratulations are indeed in order and the world of baseball and beyond has just done that. Refreshingly much of it has come from the upper echelons of the game, which like many positions of power in sports, business and politics is the preserve of the old, white and male.
They are in agreement that Ng has earned this over the course of a 30-year career that began as a 21-year-old intern at the Chicago White Sox and saw her push the envelope as assistant GM at the New York Yankees, aged 29.
That made her the youngest in the league at the time and only the second woman to have an assistant GM role. Ng has long been destined for greatness.
In 2003, Sports Illustrated called it. “Write it down: Ng may become baseball’s first female GM,” they wrote with crystal clear prescience in a cover feature that named her No 38 on the “101 Most Influential Minorities in Sport”.
Still it has taken 17 years, chiming with the view that Ng’s accession to GM circles is both long overdue and she is overqualified for it – as she has been for two decades.
Her CV is stacked with stints at the Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers. There are three World Series wins, six league titles and eight postseason appearances on it. Ng has spent the last nine years as MLB’s senior vice-president of baseball operations.
Jeremy Lin, Michelle Obama and Billie Jean King congratulate Kim Ng
It could have been no other way, of course, and Ng was overlooked the previous times she interviewed for vacant GM roles.
Speaking to Sportsnet on International Women’s Day in March, Ng posited that a first female GM would not be an easy appointment to make.
“We see female world leaders, CEOs, secretaries of state. There’s no reason there shouldn’t be a woman general manager,” she said. “I think it’s gonna take a bold, courageous, gender-blind owner.”
Enter the Marlins’ Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter, the former Yankees shortstop who is president in Miami and knows Ng from taking two World Series titles to Yankee Stadium.
While Ng would have been GM several times over already if she was male, she has been made to wait. That wait is now over.
Her historic appointment should be a weight off baseball’s shoulders, if not elite male sport across the board. The Rubicon has been crossed and there is no going back, nor is there any reason to.
Kim Ng becomes first woman, first Asian-American GM in Major League Baseball
Ng will doubtless be under much scrutiny from those who want to see her fail but her move has been greeted with widespread enthusiasm. No one that matters in Major League Baseball has offered anything other than profuse public support.
She certainly has a job to do: the Marlins qualified for the postseason as wild cards. They have only been three times, though they did win the World Series in 1997 and 2003. They have only one player, shortstop Miguel Rojas, contracted to 2022 and the lowest payroll for 2021.
While Ng will have to ring the changes in Florida, “America’s pastime” has been quietly becoming more diverse this year, finally catching up with modern America. The number of full-time female MLB journalists to report on Ng and offer their own congratulations is an eye-opener.
Alyssa Nakken at the San Francisco Giants became the first woman on an MLB team’s coaching staff in January while ever more women are being employed by ball clubs.
Ng is now running one, joined by COO Caroline O’Conner, who is another of the highest ranking women in MLB. It seems the winds of change might be sweeping through ballparks, as they are the wider world.
Vice-president elect Kamala Harris has made history becoming the first woman and first Asian-American to reach the office, alongside Joe Biden.
The North American sports world appears to be slowly following suit and it is about time on both counts. There is still a long way to go when it comes to diversity, though.
There needs to be more of it in the media, in front offices and in general.
For too long employers have “gone in another direction”. Well, this is a step in the right direction. Staying “pale, male and stale” is destined to fail.
