J-Speaks: Glass Ceiling Hire By Miami Marlins

 

On Friday, a major glass ceiling was broken in Major League Baseball (MLB) by New York native who spent three decades building one of the most exceptional resumes in her time with two of the most well-known and championship organizations in not just professional baseball but in the four major North American pro sports.

Kim Ng, the current MLB Vice President of Operations, who began her career as an intern with the Chicago White Sox 30 years ago, and worked with them for six years made history when the Miami Marlins hired her as their new General Manager, shattering the sports gender barrier.

According to the Marlins, Ng-pronounced “Ang” is the first female GM in the history of the sport known as America’s pastime, she is the first Asian American woman to be GM of that sport, and just the second to have a woman GM of the four major men’s pro sports in the U.S. the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), and the National Hockey League (NHL).  

The only other woman to hold the position of GM in the aforementioned four major men’s sports was the daughter of former owner of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles Leonard Tose Susan Spencer in 1984. She worked mostly on the business/legal side of the organization, but not when it came to decision with what happens with the Eagles like who ends up on their roster for that season.  

“When I got into this business, it seemed unlikely a woman would lead a Major League team, but I am dogged in the pursuit of my goals,” the 51-year-old Ng, who attended the University of Chicago, where she played softball said in a statement released by the Marlins about being the Marlins new GM.

The Queens, NY native, who was born in Indianapolis, IN graduated from Ridgewood High School in New Jersey in 1986 added, “I entered Major League Baseball as an intern and, after decades of determination, it is the honor of my career to lead the Miami Marlins as their next general manager. This is a challenge I don’t take lightly.”

This is not the only glass ceiling that has been broken in MLB.

Alyssa Nakken at the start of this calendar year became the first full-time female coach in MLB history when the Giants promoted her to their coaching staff in January. Nakken first joined the Giants as an intern in their operations department in 2014, and then became their chief information officer a year later.

On July 20, 2020, Nakken became the first woman to coach on the field in a major league baseball game during MLB’s exhibition season as the first base coach for the Giants’ tilt against the Oakland Athletics, who they defeated 6-2. Nakken’s jersey from that game was sent to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Melanie Newman also earlier this year became the first woman play-by-play announcer for the Orioles, making her debut on Aug. 4, 2020, becoming the first woman ever to call a regular season game in the team’s history. Newman is though just one of four active women calling games in MLB when she worked as part of the Orioles broadcast team.

To put into context the incredible journey of Newman’s broadcasting career, the Troy University graduate for several years called games for Minor League Baseball, that included High-A and Double-A. She worked as a sideline reporter for FOX Sports Southwest and served as the play-by-play announcer for the Texas Rangers Double-A affiliate the Frisco RoughRiders. Last year, Newman joined Suzie Cool as part of the first all-female broadcast team in professional baseball when serving as the play-by-play broadcaster for the farm team of the Boston Red Sox, the Salem Red Sox.

“All it takes is one, and then it opens the door for so many,” Sowers said in a famed commercial she did for Microsoft a couple of years back.

Ng will be joining a group of women changing the game of pro sports. In the NFL, Kate Sowers was the first woman to coach at Super Bowl LIV earlier this year as a member of the San Francisco 49ers staff, who lose 31-20 to the now reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.

In the NBA, eight women were recently hired as assistant coaches, with the first being Becky Hammon of the San Antonio Spurs, Brittni Donaldson of the Toronto Raptors; Natalie Nakase of the Los Angeles Clippers; Jenny Boucek of the Dallas Mavericks’ Lindsay Gottlieb of the Cleveland Cavaliers; Lindsay Harding of the Sacramento Kings; Sonia Raman of the Memphis Grizzlies; and Teresa Weatherspoon of the New Orleans Pelicans.  

The NBA in recent years has also hired six women working in front offices, with the most well-known in Jeanie Buss of the now World Champion Los Angeles Lakers and Gayle Benson of the Pelicans. Kelly Kruskopf of the Indiana Pacers; Matina Kolokotronis of the Sacramento Kings; Gillian Zucker of the Los Angeles Clippers; and Cynthia Marshall of the Dallas Mavericks.

While this moment is ground-breaking, Ng has been shattering so-called glass ceilings long before Marlins owner Bruce Sherman and Chief Executive Officer Derek Jeter hired Ng for the position of GM.

In 1998, Ng joined the New York Yankees as their Assistant GM, after spending the year working in the American League. She became the youngest person ever in the game at age 29 to hold that position at the time, and the second woman to have that title in baseball. In her four seasons with the Yankees, they won three World Series titles, led by their Hall of Famer to be shortstop in Jeter at the center of that great success.

“She was indispensable to me when I first began my tenure as the GM,” Yankees GM Brian Cashman said in a statement released by the Yankees. “Kim was tireless and dedicated executive back then, and in the ensuring years, she as ceaselessly added to her skill set to maximize her talent.”

“She will provide the Marlins with vast experience and institutional knowledge along with a calm demeanor and an amazing ability to connect with others—all of which will serve her well in her new leadership role as head of baseball operations.”

Four years later, Ng moved on to be the assistant GM of the now World champion Los years ago, and while she did not ultimately get the job as the head of the Dodgers baseball operations, their new GM Ned Colletti decided to keep her in their front office.

Ng was a serial candidate for many MLB GM vacancies the last few years, including being interviewed for the New York Mets vacancy two years back, before hiring their current GM Brodie Van Wagenen. She has also interviewed with the San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Angels, San Francisco Giants, and Baltimore Orioles for their GM vacancies.  

After her nine-year run with the Dodgers, Ng joined MLB as their previously mentioned senior vice president, which was until the start of this weekend.

Among her duties as SVP of MLB, Ng oversaw international operations, which included efforts to clean up how teams went about signing amateurs—a corner of the sport rife with corruption.

Ng’s opportunity as MLB’s senior vice president came after former Yankees skipper during their championship years in the late 1990s and early 2000s Joe Torre, who thought very highly of the then assistant GM’s work when they were with the “Bronx Bombers” and Dodgers.

“I asked the Dodgers’ permission, and they weren’t happy,” Torre told the New York paper Newsday in 2018 about hiring Ng to work for MLB. “But it was an advancement for her. It just made her a little more well-rounded.”

Torre also said of Ng once, “She’s very well prepared in whatever she does. She’s way over my head when it comes to all the knowledge she has about a lot of aspects about the game. She’s a bright light. She knows her baseball. And she’s how do you put it? I don’t want to say sure of herself, but she’s very bright and a very brave woman. She knows baseball and she doesn’t hedge on stuff. She attacks things head on. That’s the best way to put it.”

The best example of this came in 2004 when during arbitration, she won the case versus baseball super sports agent Scott Boras and closer Eric Gagne, who was fresh of National League Cy Young award season. Gagne earned a salary of $5 million instead of the Dodgers having to pay him $8 million.

Ng’s skills, knowledge, dedication, and no-retreat, no-surrender mentality is how she broke a major glass ceiling of being the GM of the Marlins. It also helped that the men she worked for saw her greatness and made it their business to acknowledge her strengths and get he word out about her, and what she brings to the table.

It is this kind of outside of the box thinking that Ng said in an interview with Sportsnet back in March why women should be considered for positions of influence in companies and government in the U.S.

“As we see, you know, female world leaders, CEOs, Secretaries of State, there’s no reason there shouldn’t be a woman general manager,” Ng said

Her Yankee connections is how Ng got the GM job with the Marlins as Jeter and Gary Denbo, who worked in the Yankees farm system has been a major influenced with the organization since Jeter hired him away from the Yankees three years ago to be the Marlins vice president, player development and scouting.

The Marlins since Jeter has come on board to their front office have a number of times dipped into their Yankee connections to put the right people in place in the ranks of the current team they work for to build on their success of making the playoffs for the first time since 2003 and try to build them into a team that is contention to win titles moving forward.

In replacing president of baseball operations Michael Hill with a lady he crossed paths with a little more than two decades ago to make those championship dreams a reality.

“We look forward to Kim bringing a wealth of knowledge and championship-level experience to the Miami Marlins,” Jeter said in a statement. “[Ng] will play a major role on our path toward sustained success.”

In her aforementioned interview with Sportsnet, Ng said that it would take a “courageous, bold, gender blind owner,” to hire a woman to be GM of an MLB squad.

While that might have been true, it really took someone like Jeter, who sat on the other side of the table when it came time to negotiate his new deal to present her the opportunity that she clearly has earned.

It is unclear if Kim Ng had not known two of the best in MLB history in Derek Jeter and Joe Torre that she would have been hired as a GM. At least when she got in front of them as well as Brian Cashman in her time in New York and several others of front office prominence she put her best foot forward, as did Alyssa Nakken and Melanie Newman in their own journeys to respective prominence as a coach and commentator, while also putting in the work and now are breaking glass ceilings that will make it easier for the next generation of women to make their own mark in pro sports front offices and the broadcasting booth.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama Tweeted @MichelleObama, “So excited to see Kim Ng named the first woman and first Asian-American General Manager in the MLB. I grew up loving the Cubs, but I’ll be cheering you on!”

Christine Brennan, longtime sports columnist for USA Today and an ESPN consultant said of Ng’s hire as GM of the Marlins, “What Kim is showing us is that hard work, that dedication to the task. That no amount of sexism. No amount of misogyny. None of that is going to stop someone who wants a job like this.”

The hiring of Kim Ng by the Miami Marlins as their new General Manager, coupled with the glass ceilings broken by Alyssa Nakken and Melanie Newman, and the recent hires women to prominent positions in coaching and management in the NFL and NBA, it is clear that things are changing for the better. While more still has to be done, it can no longer be said that there is not a place for a woman to make her mark in positions that for so long have been held by men.

We have gotten to this place because we have had men step up and vouch for women to be in positions of prominence in the front offices of pro sports like how Jeter and Torre did for Ng.

“Kim’s appointment makes history…and sets a significant example for the millions of women and girls who love baseball and softball,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a separate statement this weekend. “The hard work, leadership and record of achievement throughout her long career in the national pastime led to this outcome.”

Information and quotations are courtesy of 11/14/2020 Newsday articles, “Trailblazing Ng Takes Major Step,” by Tim Healey and “She Finally Shatters Glass Ceiling,” by Barbara Barker;” 11/15/2020 8 a.m. of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” with Whit Johnson, Eva Pilgrim, Dan Harris, and Rob Marciano, with report from Janai Norman; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alyssa_Nakken; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Newman; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_Red_Sox; and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisco_RoughRiders.