Her Take

After more than 30 years of shattering glass ceilings in baseball operations, Kim Ng has taught women in professional sports the greatest lesson of all: know your worth, and don’t be satisfied with just checking the diversity box.

In 2020, Ng and the Marlins made history when she was named the first female general manager in Major League Baseball. In doing so, she became the highest-ranking woman in the front office of a major men’s North American professional team.

She fought, tooth and nail, to get to this place. Her analytical skills and accomplishments as an assistant manager in operations, on paper, should have earned her the GM role much sooner. It’s not hard to imagine that would have been the case if she were a man.

The Marlins’ success in 2023 undoubtedly earned Ng a contract extension. She made the call to overturn a 5-2 vote among Marlins executives to hire Matt Quatraro as Manager, and instead hired Skip Schumaker, a promising candidate for Manager of the Year. She made a deal for Luis Arraez, acquired Josh Bell and Jake Burger at the deadline, and set the team on the path to their fourth-best record in franchise history and their first full season playoff appearance in 20 years. This came one season after the team finished 4th in the NL East with a 69-93 record.

The Marlins awarded Ng’s success by stripping her ability to make staffing decisions and then informing her they planned to hire a President of Baseball Operations to supervise her decision-making. It’s become painfully obvious that they didn’t even have anyone in mind for this role; they simply wanted another person above her.

Marlins officials have indicated the reason for wanting to hire for a higher-ranking role in the club’s baseball operations stems from concerns over questionable draft choices and stalls in player development. One might be able to accept this if the high-ranking analytics staffers who have long been responsible for those shortcomings, well before Ng’s arrival in Miami, were similarly demoted or edged out.

After informing Ng of their intent to hire someone above her, they graciously picked up their end of their mutual option for 2024. Ng chose to decline her end, effectively resigning from her role with the team. Her decision could have a greater impact on the future of women in professional sports than her hiring ever could.

Writing for The Athletic, Brittany Ghiroli said in leaving the team, “Ng did more in minutes for women in sports — many of whom still constantly feel, subconsciously or otherwise, that we’re lucky to have our jobs and shouldn’t rock the boat by asking for the pay or power of our male counterparts — than she did the three years before that.”

Ng put in the work for three decades. She finally got her chance to manage a professional baseball team and she made sound decisions. And she has the success of the 2023 season to show for it. But instead of sucking it up, smiling and thanking the Marlins for the opportunity to be the league’s lowest-paid manager, for a team that didn’t appreciate or respect her, she took a stand for herself and for women everywhere.

She’s made it clear that getting the job isn’t the end game. For women in sports, the goal isn’t checking the diversity box and wearing pink on the front cover of a sports publication while editorials praise the men who hired you. The end game is boldly making your own decisions, empowering other women to have the confidence to follow in your footsteps, and knowing your worth and when to step away when others don’t.

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