Miami Marlins name MLB’s first female generalmanager.
Executive spent time as an assistant GM with Yankees and Dodgers over long career
At a basic level, the Miami Marlins’ announcement Fridaymorning of their new general manager was most noteworthy for the new hire’s extensive qualifications. In a sport in which teams are increasingly run by young Ivy Leaguers with backgrounds in data or finance, the Marlins’ new GM had 21 years of major league front office experience, another 10 as a high-level executive in the sport’s central office and universal respect across baseball.
If anything, she was overqualified for the job.
The Marlins’ new general manager is Kim Ng, and shemade history Friday as the first female general manager not only in baseball, but also, it is believed, in any of major men’s North American professional sports.
“(A)fter decades of determination, it is the honor of my career to lead the Miami Marlins as their next general manager,” Ng, 51, said in a statement released through the team. “This challenge is one I don’t take lightly. 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 move was both long overdue— Ng (pronounced Ang), a former assistant GM for both the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, had previously interviewed at least four times for GM openings beginning in 2005, only to fall short each time — and the natural pinnacle of the recent trend of women making significant inroads in a sport that was once closed off, if not downright hostile, to them.
“I definitely think this is a monumental moment for baseball and for any woman in the industry,”
Haley Alvarez, assistant director of scouting and baseball operations for the Oakland Athletics, said in a telephone interview Friday. Alvarez, a 27-year-old University of Virginia product, joined the A’s in 2017 as the organization’s first female talent-evaluator. “I think this opens a lot of doors for myself and other women in the industry, as well as anywho are aspiring to enter the industry.”
With Ngworking forMLB since 2011— hermost recent title was senior vice president for baseball operations — two other women, NewYork Yankees assistant GM Jean Afterman and Boston Red Sox executive vice president and assistant GM Raquel Ferreira, were the highest-ranking team sports executives in the game. Amanda Hopkins of the Seattle Mariners in 2015 became the first full-time female scout in the sport in more than a half-century. And last winter, three teams — the Yankees (Rachel Balkovec) San Francisco Giants (Alyssa Nakken) and Chicago Cubs (Rachel Folden) — hired female coaches.
“Theway to conquer this is numbers,” Ng told ESPN in 2018. “It shouldn’t rest on one or two peoples’ shoulders. The fact that there’s now this larger group [of women] is a very good signal to the industry that we’re finally making some headway.”
Ng’s hiring in Miami appears to have been spear
headed by former Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, aHall of Famerwho knewNgwell from their time together in the Bronx and is the Marlins’ CEO and part-owner.
Ngwas born in Indianapolis and grewup in the New York area as a Yankees fan. Her parents are of Chinese descent, which also makes her just the second Asian American to run on-field operations for an MLB team, following Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ president of baseball operations, who is of Pakistani descent.
Ng is a 1990 graduate of the University of Chicago, where shewas a standout in softball for four years, and began her baseball career that summer as an intern with the Chicago White Sox, who offered her a fulltime position by the end of
her internship. She would spend six years with the White Sox, then four as the Yankees’ assistant GM and another 10 with the Dodgers as vice president and assistant GM. In 2011, she left to join MLB.
With Jeter in the owners’ suite and Ng running the front office, the Marlins are suddenly one of baseball’s most fascinating teams. In the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, they endured an eight-day shutdown because of a coronavirus outbreak across their roster to finish 31-29 and qualify for the playoffs for just the third time in the franchise’s 28-year history.
“(We) look forward to Kim bringing a wealth of knowledge and championship-level experience to the Miami Marlins,” Jeter said
in a statement. “Her leadership of our baseball operations team will play a major role on our path toward sustained success.”