On November 13, 2020, the sports world was changed forever when the Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng as their General Manager. With her new position, Ng, who worked for years as an Assistant General Manager for the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, became the first woman to be named GM of a major American sports team. Ng made time in her busy schedule to join JapanBall’s “Chatter Up!” to discuss her new role, her perspective on the growth of modern baseball, and more. Check out our episode recap or watch the full episode on YouTube.
Shane:
Hey there, welcome to JapanBall’s “Chatter Up!” I’m Shane Barclay, your host for today and the owner/operator of JapanBall. JapanBall is a company that operates international baseball tours and disseminates news and information about Japanese baseball, and baseball around the globe. We at JapanBall are firm believers in the global and unifying aspects of baseball. and basically do everything in our power to promote those ideas. In absence of our tours this past year, due to the [COVID-19] pandemic, I started doing these “Chatter Up!” video calls, in order to give people an escape from the negative news cycle, and give people an opportunity to talk about sports when there were no sports, and now that there are sports, most of us can’t go to the game, so it’s still nice to have a community to talk to about our shared passion. And that’s why we’re here today. And we’re lucky enough to have a really special guest on today’s episode. That is Kim Ng, the General Manager of the Miami Marlins. On November 13, she became the first woman to be a general manager of any of the major professional sports teams in the United States, and is a really groundbreaking woman for that accomplishment, but also for many other aspects of her career, which I will detail a little bit for you. For those who don’t know Kim’s story, she grew up in New York, in Queens and Long Island, and eventually New Jersey; she was a big Yankees fan the whole time. Some of her first experiences in baseball were playing stickball in the streets of Queens, that classic image of playing in the streets of New York City, that was Kim. That experience helped her become a great softball player, and she went to the University of Chicago, played middle infield on the softball team there, was a team captain [and] team MVP. She was studying public policy as well, and wrote her senior thesis paper on Title IX, so I think that was an indicator of her mindset early on, and perhaps a hint of things to come for Kim. When she graduated, she got an internship with the Chicago White Sox, helping in all areas of Baseball Operations. She was hired full-time pretty much right away because she did such a good job. While I can’t confirm this, I’m pretty sure that she was the first woman and first Asian to work in that capacity for an MLB club. Her first prominent “first” came in ‘95, when she became the first woman, first Asian, and the youngest person to present an MLB salary arbitration case. She presented on behalf of the White Sox, and her counterpart was super-agent Scott Boras. So quite a matchup to start things off. And of course, Kim won that case on behalf of the White Sox. So she really became known because of that in her arbitration prowess with the White Sox. The American League office plucked her away from the White Sox to be in charge of roster management administration, waivers, play releases, etc; a lot of the unglamorous stuff. But anyone in baseball knows those transaction are really vital to the baseball ecosystem, and Kim was the master of all of that. Because she was so good at that kind of roster minutia, the New York Yankees and the general manager Brian Cashman hired her in 1998 to be Assistant General Manager. That was her second big “first,” she was the first female, first Asian, and the youngest person ever to have that post of Assistant General Manager. She focused on Major League roster construction with the Yankees, and suffice to say I think she did a pretty good job: the teams that she helped build reached four World Series in four years, and won the World Series three times. She moved on to the Dodgers from the Yankees, as Vice President and Assistant General Manager, continuing to deploy her negotiating skills, but also overseeing their entire scouting and player development departments. If you haven’t noticed a theme yet, she was the first woman and first Asian to be in charge of those areas as well, in all of baseball I should say. From the Dodgers, MLB’s Office of the Commissioner came calling. She was hired there in 2011 as Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations, she oversaw all of MLB’s international operations, the Major League Scouting Bureau, and the Arizona Fall League. Quick brag: I also worked for her there for eight years, at Major League Baseball in International Baseball Operations. As far back as 2003, when Sports Illustrated made this claim, Kim has long been viewed as the woman who will become baseball’s first General Manager. It’s not an easy title to have, because of the pressure, especially when you consider that over the past 15 years or so, Kim has interviewed to be a GM no less than eight times. She persisted though, bringing us to the aforementioned November 13, 2020, when the Miami Marlins hired her to be General Manager. In assuming that role, she became the first female GM, and like I said, in not just baseball, but all the major men’s professional sports. She’s actually the second Asian to hold the title, but first East Asian though, we’ll say, because Farhan Zaidi of the Giants is of Pakistani descent, so we’ll say Kim being of Chinese descent is the first East Asian General Manager in baseball. So it’s an honor to have Kim on with us; the JapanBall community is very grateful for her presence, and we hope you enjoy hearing from her.
Welcome. Good to see you.
Kim:
Thank you. How you guys doing?
Shane:
Doing very well. I appreciate you taking your time. I know you’re extremely busy right now. I’m going to put you on spotlight, so everyone can see you. Looks like you’ve still got some decorating to do! Is that office new or what?
Kim:
It is. And there’s lots of boxes around it, and empty shelves. So I need some work. More work, more work to do while I’m putting together a roster.
Shane:
I think that might be kind of important, and I know you’ve got a lot of important things, so thanks so much for joining us. The entire JapanBall community, and everyone that’s joining us, is really happy to have you on here. So yeah, really appreciate it, and I want to just jump right into it.
Kim:
Oh, yeah, let’s do it. I’m ready!
Shane:
Alright, so I’m going to start with a few questions, and we’re going to get into the groundbreaking, trailblazing, all that stuff, but I want to start first by talking a little bit about the international things, because [at] JapanBall, as I was explaining earlier, we like to perpetuate the global aspect of baseball. You and I worked together in International, so I want to talk a little bit about that, and a little bit about your past jobs before we open it up to the floor and talk more about your current position. So, talking about the Dodgers, I want to start with them. So they’re a very international organization. They have a long history of playing games abroad, developing players abroad, guys like Fernando Valenzuela, Chan Ho Park, [Hideo] Nomo, [Adrian] Beltre, Pedro [Martinez,] all these guys; and you signed a bunch of Japanese guys and other foreign players with the Dodgers. How much of that international mindset was instilled in the organization when you got there? And then taking that and your time at MLB, working in International into consideration, what do you envision the international mindset of the Marlins being?
Kim:
So, there’s a lot in that question, Shane. So when I got to the Dodgers… they were such pioneers in a number of different areas, between Chan Ho Park, Hideo Nomo, Campo Las Palmas, which is the Dominican Academy, so many reasons to love them, but they were the first in a lot of arenas. I actually had been with the Yankees prior to that, and the Yankees were no slouches themselves in the international world, but when I got to the Dodgers, my eyes were really opened in terms of Asian baseball, so it was a great experience. We actually had an Asian Operations department at the Dodgers, we had, I’d say five members in the Asian Operations department, which was really unheard of at the time. We had someone covering each country, and then we had one director, and then another one just the admin. I will say that the stories that came out of the Dodgers and their being pioneers, all the way back to the 60s, when they were doing camps and clinics over in Asia, just tremendous. Mr. O’Malley was really just a visionary in that way, and had just been there before anybody else. So that’s really where I got my taste of it.
I will tell a funny story. This is my first spring training with the Dodgers and we were at Vero Beach, and it’s a great setting for baseball and talking baseball all the time. We lived on what we called campus, we lived on campus. And my first couple of weeks there, I was burning the midnight oil, and I ran across the street, literally about 100 feet, to go get some files that I had forgotten in the office. I walked in, and I saw the entire Asian Operations department, all five of them, sitting in the middle of the room, eating ramen. And I looked at them and I was like, “What is going on here?” And they were like, “Kim-san! Come, come!” I said, “Where’d you get the noodles?” And they said “Acey’s wife sent it from LA” [Acey Kohrogi was the Dodgers’ Director of Asian Operations]. And so from that point on, we called it the “Noodle Club,” and anytime anybody at midnight wanted to get noodles, we always knew where to go. So, great memories with the Dodgers.
In terms of the Marlins and where we are now, close to half of our club are from [the] Dominican Republic and Venezuela, we’ve got one guy from the Bahamas, so we’re very international, not as involved in the Asian market. They did have Ichiro here a couple years ago, but in terms of what we’re gonna do in the international market, we are heavily, heavily involved in the Dominican [Republic] and Venezuela. We’ve actually got an academy that’s going up, I just saw the drawings, we’re completing our deal. This thing is going to house two [Dominican Summer League] clubs, and I’ve seen many of the academies down in the Dominican – I have not seen San Diego, which is pretty far out – but I will say, this one is off the charts; beautiful, gorgeous, even compared to some of the really new ones, like the Rockies’ academy. So anyway, I’m not sure if I answered all of that question, Shane, but tried to get a lot of it.
Shane:
You did, thank you. I was gonna ask a question about international development from the MLB side, then Joe Whelan, who is on the call, asked in a better way. So I’m going to go to him right now, and Joe, you can ask Kim the question about international development.
Joe:
Hi Kim! Thank you for taking my question. Based on your international baseball development experience, to what extent has MLB committed to an ethical approach to international baseball development as the game’s appeal continues to broaden? In my case, I’m particularly interested about baseball development in Africa, which I knew is kind of new territory for MLB. And what do you see as MLB’s roles and responsibilities in that regard?
Kim:
I think MLB takes a very strong stance on trying to be ethical. I can talk for MLB, I’m not talking for other clubs. When I was there, it was really at the forefront of what we were trying to do, and I think in general, though, MLB tries to do what is best for the players, while also trying to serve the 30 clubs that essentially we work for. And I say “we” – I’m an alumni of that group. So I do think that they really try and take a stand, and I think in terms of the Dominican and Venezuela, I think there are obviously some issues there, and I think that we have tried to fix them; some of them have gotten better. But I think we really looked at it as a lesson, in terms of the other countries that have come after. So I know that we’ve taken great care in China, and really trying to prevent what happened early on [in other countries] from happening in China. We’ve taken a hard look at some of the African countries as well, in some of these countries, record keeping and documents are not as of higher priority, and some of them just don’t have the resources for it; you know, it’s difficult. We have been lucky that some of the other countries that we’ve looked at, or have been involved in have gotten past that, but there are still some markets out there that we need to be mindful of as they move up the ladder in terms of development.
Shane:
All right, we’re gonna move on to some more of the big picture career stuff. Stephanie, are you there?
Stephanie:
Thanks so much! Thanks, Shane, for this opportunity. I’m such a big fan as a woman who worked in sports as well. So I’m just curious: how have you leveraged the unique aspects of yourself in your career? What superpowers or strengths do you possess as an Asian woman in a fairly male dominated industry?
Kim:
Superpowers… I’m not sure about superpowers. I will say that… and actually, it was funny to read Shane’s story about me, to get somebody who works for me, get their perspective on who I am. I think, and Shane said it in the article, and other people have said it too, is that I tend to be a fairly decent listener. I think it’s not just listening, but I think it’s what you hear. And I think the ability to really put myself in other people’s shoes, I think it’s helped me a lot throughout my career. Some people call it empathy, I think it’s actually strategic. I think when you’re in any type of negotiation, I think it’s important to always try and see it from the other person’s point of view, whether you’re talking about a player or coach and they’re negotiating their contracts – obviously, the player’s not negotiating his own contract, but the agent – and trying to figure out what the nuances are there, it’s trying to be a little bit crafty, and get in their heads, and you really try and figure out where their pressure points are, and when you have a pretty good idea, then you can go in for the kill. I don’t know if that’s a superpower, but it’s something that sometimes a lot of people just don’t do it very well. I think if you really do listen to what people are saying, and I think, actually, I have few former staff members on here, I think they’ll probably tell you that I tend to ask a lot of questions, and that’s how you get a lot of information, and you try to figure people out and try and figure out where they’re coming from. That, I would say, has probably served me the best of many of the things that I’ve been able to do.
Yuriko:
Okay, so I have to say that my original question was really what Stephanie just asked, but on the other side of that, since you have been working in the baseball world, do you think that there are specific challenges that you’ve had to face because you are a woman or Asian woman? That’s probably more likely, because you’re a very minority woman in the business?
Kim:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I do a speech and the title of the speech is, “Every Day is a Battle.” I think it’s not just being a woman, a lot of people that go through this on a daily basis, no matter where they work, it’s that you have to dispel many perceptions that are out there, as soon as you walk into a room. If I walked into a room with Shane, to somebody who was outside of the industry, they would talk to Shane, they would look at Shane, they would direct questions to Shane. Is that annoying? Of course it is, but I think a lot of what I’ve been able to do is, first of all, you have to be really patient and you have to be really calm, and you can’t let it get to you too much. But I think listening has become a skill, where you just try and direct – not that Shane doesn’t deserve attention like that – you just have to redirect the room to what is appropriate. That’s one thing, and there’s just always the daily battle of people’s perceptions of whether you belong, whether you should be allowed in the clubhouse, whether you should be allowed on the field. It gets old, but I think you just have to be patient, because I think we all have our own preconceived notions. And I think if you really look at yourself, and your actions and your beliefs, when people come into the room and you just take a snapshot of what you’re thinking at that moment, I think we all will realize that we have unconscious bias. I think knowing that about ourselves, we just have to try and recalibrate. I just happen to be on the end that a lot of perceptions happen just when people look at me, so I’ve just tried to be really patient over the years and try to educate people a little bit. And you also have to have a sense of humor about it, right? Can’t take it too seriously. Unless people are just absolutely obnoxious, then I think that gives you a little bit license to maybe not be so patient. I would say those are the things that I do.
Shelley:
How are you? Thank you for your time and being here with us tonight.
Kim:
I wish I had a Sierra Nevada right now.
Shelley:
I would hand you one if I could do it through the screen! I’ve read a lot of articles that have been written about you, and I’m so happy to see you in this role. I’m just wondering how you’re dealing with… you’re getting a lot of attention for being a woman when you’re very well known for your baseball skills. So you know, as a woman first that happens a lot, but how are you feeling about the attention that’s being drawn to your gender and your ethnicity? And is it taking away from how you want to be seen, as someone who’s really a skilled baseball person? How are you dealing with that? Then I guess my second question is, who comes next? I mean, what is the future for women in baseball?
Kim:
I think, right now, I am just a novelty. And I think that just comes along with this job, and honestly, it’s humbling. I will tell you this: the Friday that this was all announced, it was like an out-of-body experience, where I was just watching all the text threads from my friends and my family, and I just had a blast watching it all, because they got so much joy out of it. I think it was the fact that it was me, but I think it was the fact that it actually just happened, regardless of whether it was me or not. I think that’s the thing – I just saw so much celebration, and so that was awesome. I think in terms of bearing that burden, I’m fine with it. I’m absolutely fine with it. There were 30 years for a reason, and it does harden you up a little bit, and in terms of being able to take it, I’m on the front lines, and that’s fine… as long as it got done. As long as it got done, I think that’s the way I viewed it. And I’ve said that in interviews, at a certain point, I didn’t even care if it was me. I just wanted it done so that I could see it in my lifetime. I mean, I thought I would, but – this is gonna sound strange – it took a long time, but it came a little bit quicker than I thought it would; probably the next five years, that’s what I was thinking. So that made me incredibly happy. And then what does this mean for other women? I think last year, and I would say the last couple of years, we’ve seen a lot of strides in our industry for women. We saw [the] first major league coach [Alyssa Nakken] with San Francisco. I think we’re seeing a lot more women coming through the ranks, and I talked about this at the press conference: one of the things that I felt was really impressive about the Marlins, you look through the media guide at all the different staff members, and we have women who are in the analytics department, we have women who are trainers, strength and conditioning coaches; I don’t think we have a scout, but there are a handful of women who are scouts in the industry. So I think we’ve seen a lot of progress the last couple of years. I think it’s not just me, it’s really them. A lot of the women’s groups throughout all of professional sports have sent congratulations, and just really heartwarming thank you notes to me, which tells you that they’re all watching, and they all see what’s going on. And so I think that has been one of the most heartening things about that all.
Shelley:
I’ll just tell you – we will get off the stage here – but at the Katy Feeney Leadership Symposium this year, you were talked about all the time, you really are a role model to women in Major League Baseball as I know you know.
Kim:
Thank you, I appreciate that:
Josh:
Kim, you’re such an inspiration to all of us, and especially the next generation, and you’ve broken many different barriers to get to where you’re at. But what advice would you give to the next generation of leaders in baseball to help expand the game?
Kim:
To help expand the game? I think we have to be persistent, I think that’s number one. I think number two, we have to be very proactive with the youth, I think that’s where we really got to focus a lot of our attention. And then I think, number three, I do think that the Commissioner is trying to make the game more appealing to our younger fans. One of the things that came up probably seven or eight years ago, is that the average age of the World Series viewer is maybe 56, 57 years old, and that’s a pretty tough statistic right there. So I think people at MLB are working pretty hard in terms of making the game more attractive to younger fans, I think they’re doing some really interesting things in the digital space. But I think that as an industry, if we could expand our creativity on that front, and really just push wholeheartedly to really engage those younger people. And it is hard, I will say that we’re not the only sport that’s having issues. I mean, when you talk about kids actually playing sports anymore, many of the numbers are going down for all sports, and it’s all about their phones, and social media, and those types of things. But listen, I think one of the things that came out of many of the studies that we’ve done is that, if you play as a kid, you are basically a fan, and that determines avidity of fandom. So I think the department that I was in, and a couple of people on this call were in, trying to get more engagement out of our younger people is so, so important to the future of the game.
Shane:
Thank you. Thanks, Josh, for the question. All right. Well, Kim, our time flew by, thanks so much for joining us and it’s great to see you. You have 76 people on the call, I think you have 75 Marlins fans (counting you as the 76th), so we’re all rooting for you. And really appreciate you coming on. I know you’re super busy and it’s late over there, so appreciate it and you are welcome to sign off.
Kim:
Alright, thanks. You know when I get fired from this GM job, Shane, you’re gonna have to hire me for JapanBall.
Shane:
You could lead our VIP tours! I like it!
Kim:
Alright, see you guys. Take care!
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