Kim Ng Makes History, Becomes 1st Female General Manager

Posted on by Charlie Ricker

At 10:38 this morning, Jon Heyman of MLB Network announced on Twitter that the Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng to be the team’s new General Manager.

 

This is significant. At almost 52 years of age, Kim Ng is now the first female GM in Major League Baseball. Notoriously slow to adapt to modern ways, Major League Baseball showed it wants to shed it’s archaic ways. It took a young owner like Derek Jeter to break the mold. Furthermore, she is the first female general manager of ANY major sport (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL) in the United States.

While Ng is new to the GM title for the Marlins, she is anything but new to MLB front offices. Starting at the bottom, Ng began her career thirty years ago with the Chicago White Sox, working her way up to the title of Assistant Director of Baseball Operations. Wanting to advance, she left in 1997 to take a position in the offices of the American League, where she was Director of Waivers and Records, approving transactions.

Ng joined the New York Yankees in 1998 as Assistant General Manager under Brian Cashman, himself a new GM. She stayed with the Yankees through the 2001 season, and left for the Los Angeles Dodgers where she held the same title, while adding the title of Vice President. In 2005, Ng interviewed for the Dodgers vacant GM position, but lost out to Ned Colletti. Wisely, Colletti kept Ng in the same position, where she stayed until early 2011.

Undeterred, Ng interviewed for General Manager positions up and down the West Coast. She applied from San Diego to Seattle and everywhere in between. In March 2011, she left Los Angeles for a job as Senior VP of Baseball Operations for MLB, while reporting to Joe Torre. Ng stayed with MLB until Jeter and the Marlins made her historic hiring official this morning.

 

This is a great day for Major League Baseball and humanity in general. Ng’s hiring is more proof women can do what historically has been known as a “man’s job”. I would bet she will do it better than most men. I wish Ng the very best in her new job in Miami.

 

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