Miami Marlins Hire Kim Ng, Breaking a Baseball Gender Barrier

Still, that institute’s latest report card gave Major League Baseball and its 30 teams a C grade for gender hiring. Of the roughly 500 vice president jobs among the 30 clubs, only 95 were held by women, according to the report, and only 19 were women of color — about 4 percent of all vice-president level positions.

The news of Ms. Ng’s hiring was cause for celebration Friday among the dozens of women in full-time baseball-operations jobs who share a text chain. Many in the group chat, which was created in the summer of 2019, look up to Ms. Ng as a role model.

The group’s founder, Jen Wolf, 33, a life-skills coordinator in the Cleveland Indians’ farm system, said she was star struck earlier in her career when she first met Ms. Ng at an annual industrywide conference. She later worked under Ms. Ng in Major League Baseball’s central office; it was a powerful experience, Ms. Wolf said, not only because she could learn directly from a role model but because she had another woman as a boss in baseball.

Ms. Wolf said her first thought upon hearing the news was happiness for her friend and mentor.

“And then my second thought was: it’s about time,” Ms. Wolf said. “Anyone with her résumé should have been hired years ago, so I’m very excited. I feel like males with a similar résumé would have been hired ages ago.”

Before this season, Rachel Balkovec, a Yankees’ minor-league instructor, was believed to be the first woman hired as a full-time hitting coach by a major-league organization. Rachel Folden, also a minor-league hitting instructor but with the Chicago Cubs, was the first female coach in that organization’s history. And in July, Alyssa Nakken of the San Francisco Giants became the first woman in major league history to coach on the field.

“The most important thing for me is that this is not a one-off in all of these roles,” Ms. Wolf said. “Just because Alyssa, Kim and both Rachels are the firsts, they should by no means be the last. They’re incredible women, but there are so many more amazing, incredible women that are ready for those roles as well.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/sports/baseball/kim-ng-miami-marlins.html