What Will Kim Ng's Next Step Be?
An IBWAA member examines Kim Ng's potential with a new venture
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . Alyssa Nakken became the first full-time coach for an MLB team in 2020 for the San Francisco Giants. However, that was in an exhibition game. Two years later, she would break that barrier in a regular-season game when she substituted for an ejected coach in a Giants game. Last offseason, she broke another barrier, earning an interview with the Giants for their open managerial position, becoming the first woman to interview for a manager’s chair. The job went to veteran MLB manager Bob Melvin.
. . . Nakken remains on the Giants’ staff as an assistant coach. This past January, she and her husband, Robert Abel, who runs a baseball school that he founded in 2019, welcomed their first child, making Nakken the first MLB coach to take maternity leave.
Leading Off
Whither Kim Ng?
By Bill Pruden
Yesterday was former Miami Marlins General Manager Kim Ng’s birthday. But while her former GM colleagues are back at work mulling over possible free agent acquisitions, contract extensions, and other ways to improve their clubs after attending the recently completed General Managers meetings in San Antonio, Tex., Ng, one year removed from her stint as Marlins GM, is continuing to settle into her new post as senior advisor for the new Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL), working to prepare for their launch as the next major player in the developing women’s sports world.
In many ways, it is an appropriate post for the former shortstop on the University of Chicago softball team, whose impressive Major League Baseball (MLB) resume includes a stint as an MLB representative on the board for USA Softball as MLB sought to help the sport’s growth. Consequently, it was not surprising that upon assuming her new post, Ng spoke enthusiastically of working to translate the grassroots and collegiate success of the sport into a successful professional venture through AUSL. And yet for all her studied professionalism, it is hard to reconcile the fact that Kim Ng is not sitting in a baseball front office.
In a country notorious for its short historical memory, it is important to remember that it has only been four years since she was initially hired as the Marlins’ GM. While the appointment was greeted with much hoopla and hailed as a historic, glass-ceiling-breaking hire, there was also an undercurrent best summed up in the phrase, “It is about time.” Indeed, with over a quarter of a century of experience in Major League Baseball, including time as an assistant GM for both the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers, as well as an extended period in the offices of MLB, she had undertaken numerous interviews for the GM position only to be passed over – again and again - until Derek Jeter, who had seen her work with the Yankees, made the historic hire. However, three years later, and a year after Jeter left the organization, Kim Ng was the former General Manager of the Miami Marlins.
Kim Ng does not need me to defend her. Her record, the one so often overshadowed by her gender in too many GM searches over the years, speaks for itself. And in light of the boom in women's sports, this may be a time when the person and the moment are an ideal match.
Indeed, Ng never fashioned herself a pioneer or trailblazer; she asked only that people focus on her record. At the same time, when she was hired by the Marlins she was very conscious of the historical dimension of her selection, of her place as a role model, as well as the pressure, however unintended and unwanted, that she was under to perform on behalf of all those women and young girls whose dreams mirrored her own.
Four years later, anyone looking at Ng’s performance, one highlighted by the Marlins earning the team’s first full-season playoff berth in two decades, must give her credit both for having done the job and advancing the larger cause. In addition, in leaving on her own terms, refusing to accept what could only be described as a demotion with Marlins owner Bruce Sherman planning to bring in a new head of baseball operations while Ng would retain the title of GM, she offered further evidence of why she not only should have been retained but that once that did not occur she should have been swept up by some other team in need of the talent and experience she had brought and utilized with the Marlins. Yet, that did not happen.
Instead, she sits in a place where, admittedly, she can directly impact women’s sports. In fact, given the boom in women's sports, a phenomenon that has included - but not featured - softball, with the sport seeing record crowds and ever-increasing television viewership capped by the most watched Women’s College World Series Final ever, and with softball returning to the Olympics schedule in 2028, working with AUSL to ultimately help launch a city-based professional softball league by 2026 may be an ideal spot for Ng.
There can be little doubt that her wide-ranging experience in baseball will enable Ng to bring much to the table. Her experience could be the final piece the sport needs as it seeks to enter the national consciousness in a way comparable to what the WNBA or the NWSL has experienced. In doing so she would add to the legacy her brief but impactful tenure with the Marlins already secured.
However, at the risk of minimizing the impact that her best efforts with the AUSL could have, or the importance that elevating softball and offering further evidence that we are witnessing a movement and not a moment, could have, it is hard to believe that, given all she has done in baseball over the last 30 years, she would not like another shot as head of a baseball operations with a big league team. Wouldn’t another chance, this time with an MLB franchise that would treat her not as a historic, "look what we did" selection, but rather as the consummate, highly experienced baseball professional that she is, be preferable to returning to a sport she likely thought she had left behind when her UChicago playing days had ended.
Indeed, in that vein, here's a final thought: while the AUSL allows Ng to reconnect with a sport central to her development, it might be no less fitting, not to mention profitable for all, for the Chicago White Sox, a team in desperate need of a fresh start after last year’s historically bad season, to bring back to her old stomping grounds, the baseball veteran who began her professional career as an intern on the South Side.
Bill Pruden is a high school history and government teacher who has been a baseball fan for over six decades. He has been writing about baseball--primarily through SABR-sponsored platforms, but also in some historical works - for about a decade. His email address is: courtwatchernc@aol.com.
Extra Innings
The 2024 Women’s College World Series drew two million viewers for the championship between long-time rivals Oklahoma and Texas. It was not just the two-game final that pulled in record viewership, as ESPN noted after the tournament.