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imo its a shitty job thats probably a dead end and she should be more selective, but hey she isnt getting selected, so she's gotta start somewhere.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/if-the-padres-want-a-better-ball-club--kim-ng-should-be-their-next-gm-220147933.html
Kim Ng should be the next general manager of the San Diego Padres not because the game has never had a woman general manager, and not because the glass in the game's ceiling is so old it's held in place by lead, and not because it's time, whatever that means. It's not even because Kim Ng deserves a shot, true as that might be.
Kim Ng should be the next GM of the Padres because San Diego deserves a better baseball team.
Owner Ron Fowler and president Mike Dee seek a new direction, as they up and fired the old one mid-season. The former GM's penance for the Padres not being able to hit or win enough ballgames is to spend less time watching the Padres not hit and not win while continuing to pay his utility bills with Padres money, which, ask me, is both a hit and a win.
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.Kim Ng has done just about everything there is to do in a baseball front office. (AP Photo)
Kim Ng has done just about everything there is to do in a baseball front office. (AP Photo)
Like any job that demands 24-hour days, vacation-less schedules and hourly public ridicule, Josh Byrnes' old gig also has some drawbacks. But, nobody is marched into these cubicles by bayonet (though enough of them act like it), so let's assume they're mostly happy to spend their days measuring the meaning of over-shifts and one-run games. At last count, the Padres will interview about eight candidates, all variously qualified, with the hopes the new GM can do more with a good farm system and ever competent manager than finish hopelessly out of contention in the NL West, which they've done in five of the past six seasons and will again in 2014.
So, what about the candidate who once was an assistant general manager for the New York Yankees and held the same job with the Los Angeles Dodgers? That's two large markets and, if you consider the Dodgers under Frank McCourt, one small market. And two somewhat, let's say, volatile owners. What about the candidate who also has worked in Chicago, for the White Sox? How about the candidate whose past several years as an MLB executive have been spent knee deep in the madness of international baseball, who has traveled the pitted roads where the prospects are, who has sorted through the politics there, who has stared down the belligerent men whose very futures rested on less MLB interference, not more?
The candidate who has negotiated contracts and trades, prepared arbitration cases, run a farm system, overseen pro scouting and run advanced analytics. The candidate whose clean and solid reputation is thick with the men who run the game, play the game, scout the game, analyze the game and sell the game.
How about that candidate? And what if that candidate were Kim Ng?
Conversations with baseball officials generally conclude with two points regarding Ng and her chances of becoming baseball's first woman general manager:
She is ridiculously qualified.
It probably won't happen.
Maybe Fowler and Dee are strong enough and secure enough, however, to hire the person most qualified to run baseball operations for the Padres. It wouldn't require breaking any barriers, or lending a hand to a whole world of young women whose interest in the game should include opportunity, or turning their back on a system that usually measures its employees by the breadth of their shoulders and heft of their Louisville Sluggers.
Though all of that would be a byproduct of hiring the person most qualified to run the Padres. That, and a better ballclub.
I spoke to a scout who has known Ng for many years and has nothing to gain from her becoming a general manager. I asked him about Ng, and the rigors of the job, managing up and down, winning today and planning for tomorrow. About the instincts necessary. About the ruthlessness necessary. About standing in a room full of people who underestimate you.
Could she do it, I asked.
"I don't have any doubt," he said. "Take away the gender. What's the problem here? I think there are all the people who think, ‘She can do it. But what if I'm wrong?'"
The scouting ranks are filled with former GM's, of course. A lot of people – men – have tried. They couldn't do it. It's a hard, relentless job. Failure comes often. Sometimes nightly. Maybe, as a sport, owners find it's better to win and lose with people – men – who look and act most like themselves.
There was this baseball manager who hated his boss and who once was a fun and interesting guy but had been worn down by the game and its politics and was no longer fun or interesting but angry and unwilling to be talked out of it.
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.Kim Ng has been assistant general manager for the Yankees and Dodgers. (Getty Images)
Kim Ng has been assistant general manager for the Yankees and Dodgers. (Getty Images)
One day he was asked if so-and-so, just a guy, in his opinion would make a decent manager. Instead of answering yes and believing it, or yes because that's what would go in the newspaper and it wouldn't be proper to say otherwise, or no if that's what he actually felt, this baseball manager responded with a question. A couple questions, really, meant to challenge the perception of the men on the top step, but really of the people who hire them.
He asked, what makes a good manager? You tell me, he said. Tell me what makes a good manager. Who is that man, he demanded. Why is he hired?
I said, he knows something about baseball. He's also 50-ish. And he's probably white.
Which, so happened, accurately described … him.
Which, probably, is why he did not respond well to the answer. And why we haven't talked much since. He'd been hired by a guy who looked a lot like him. The guy who hired him looked a lot like the guy who hired the guy who hired him. And they all looked a lot like the guys who did the hiring for the past, oh, let's say century.
The game has become slightly more generous since. Not generous: open-minded. Not open-minded: sensible. Not sensible: honest. Slightly more willing to believe – really believe – that someone not like them in some way could do a job better not only than themselves, but than anyone else.
It's baseball. It tries sometimes. And sometimes we believe it and other times it interviews the same African-American candidate for 12 jobs because the commissioner says the process must be fair.
Ng has interviewed previously to become GM in Los Angeles, Seattle, Anaheim and, once before, San Diego. Each time she returned to her job, no more bowed, chasing the game because she loves it and is good at it and not because she carries a flag for others. Honestly, sadly, there are very, very few others.
But that's not why we're here. The Padres should not concern themselves with hiring the first woman to do a job she could do and do well. They should concern themselves with hiring Kim Ng, because it's a job she could do and do well.
Because San Diego deserves a better ballclub.
Kim Ng unfazed in quest to become GM
NEW YORK
The office of the most powerful woman in Major League Baseball overlooks Midtown Manhattan from the 34th floor. The world headquarters for what once was America’s favorite good ol’ boys network sits smack in the middle of America’s capital of finance and machismo — the place both Donald Trump and Don Draper call home — but Kim Ng doesn’t seem to notice.
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And maybe that’s her secret. In her quest to become the first female general manager in the history of American professional sports, Ng doesn’t look at herself as some symbol of gender equality, or as some pioneer in women’s rights, or even as some role model for girls who aim to reach the upper echelon of sports. She simply does her job. She has spent two decades impressing fellow baseball insiders, not by her drive to change the culture of this game, but instead by her competence in the boardroom and in the negotiating room.
It was a recent sunny Friday afternoon in Manhattan, the 42-year-old Ng (pronounced “Ang”) sat in her office, surrounded by stacks of Styrofoam coffee cups and Jet Blue airline stubs and team media guides. Friends were coming to the home Ng shares with her husband in Tribeca that weekend, and she was hosting a top-shelf rum tasting. That’s one of the side benefits of her new job as senior vice president of baseball operations for Major League Baseball. She oversees international baseball operations, which means frequent trips to the Dominican Republic, which means honing her palate for the finer sipping rums.
On the wall next to her desk are two framed black-and-white images that are infinitely more symbolic than the life-sized cardboard cutout of Washington Nationals outfielder Jayson Werth in the corner. These black-and-white images are as much a nod toward baseball nostalgia as they are a nod to Ng’s pioneering role in baseball. One is of Don Drysdale mid-windup. The other is of Jackie Robinson sliding into home.
“Just the ultimate symbol of change,” Ng said, peering at the photograph of the man who broke baseball’s color barrier. As for Drysdale? “Drysdale was just a tough S.O.B.”
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And that’s as close as you’ll get from Ng as far as recognition of her place in baseball history. She scoffs at any comparisons to Jackie Robinson. What he went through as the first black big-leaguer? Infinitely more dangerous, infinitely more impressive in the scope of American cultural history than Ng busting through baseball’s glass ceiling for women.
Yet there’s something to that comparison. For women trying to make it in the men’s world of professional sports, Ng could end up being their Jackie Robinson. Many baseball insiders expect her to someday be the first woman to take the helm of a Major League Baseball team. But she’s going to need a little bit of Don Drysdale in her to do it. She may be a 5-foot-2 Chinese-American woman with a warm smile and a pinstriped pantsuit, but don’t doubt that Kim Ng is also one tough S.O.B.
And she has to be. Forty years after Title IX, less than 20 percent of NCAA athletic directors are female, and only about 21 percent of college coaches are female. Only about 13 percent of sports industry executives are women. And at the very highest level? Not a single one.
Not that Ng pays attention to any of that.
“I say this often to the women who are positioned to be the barrier breakers: They are never conscious of their impact,” said Donna Lopiano, a sports management consultant and the former CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “They’re doing what they do, whether it’s trying out for a wrestling team or Kim with her aspirations in Major League Baseball, and they don’t see themselves in that context at all. They do what they do because they’re passionate about it.
“But we’re looking at sports and they’re anachronistic,” Lopiano continued. “They’re so oblivious to where the rest of world is, and it’s a shame. It’s all boys in the sandbox, and they’re not letting the girls play.”
If you don’t follow the intrigues of Major League Baseball teams’ front offices too closely, you may not have heard of Kim Ng.
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So here’s the back of her baseball card: Grew up in Queens four miles from Shea Stadium, a tomboy whose dad loved baseball. Wanted to be a professional tennis player. Loved the Yankees and worshipped the rough-and-tumble Thurman Munson and the so-smooth Don Mattingly. Graduated from the elite University of Chicago, where she majored in public policy and played infield on the softball team. Started as an intern with the Chicago White Sox, then worked her way into a full-time gig and became the youngest person and first woman to present a big-league salary arbitration case. Got hired by her hometown Yankees at age 29, the youngest assistant general manager in the big leagues, before moving on to the Dodgers in 2001.
And most importantly: Has been a finalist for three general manager spots — with the Dodgers, the Seattle Mariners and the San Diego Padres — without getting that top job.
You may not have heard of Ng, but surely you’ve heard of her direct boss. His name is Joe Torre, the former manager of the Yankees and Dodgers and now executive vice president for baseball operations for Major League Baseball. He has advocated for Ng when general manager positions have come open. Having a Godfather-like figure like Torre speaking on your behalf, that relationship is invaluable.
She loves the new job, with 60 people reporting directly to her as she oversees international operations, the scouting bureau and the fall league. Being able to see baseball from 10,000 feet up instead of being stuck with the tunnel vision that comes with following all the turnings of the screw for one team.
It’s a job important enough to get her a window office in a Manhattan skyscraper. But this is not the end game for Ng. Not even close. The end game is running her own ball club.
“You get to put together a club you think will be playing the last game in October, and that’s thrilling,” she said. “Making sure you have depth. Preparing for injuries. Unemotionally evaluating ballplayers. You have entrusted to you almost a public utility.”
For nearly a decade, her name has popped up whenever a general manager position opens up. But nothing yet.
“It’s going to take somebody — excuse my French, but somebody with a set of balls — to do it,” Bob Daly, the former CEO and managing partner of the Dodgers, told FOXSports.com. “Somebody who interviews her, checks her out, and does not get afraid.”
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Then Daly, as a man who once had a chance to make that happen — to make the Dodgers the franchise with the first black Major Leaguer as well as the first female general manager — made a startling admission.
He screwed up.
“When I think back to one of the biggest mistakes I made from personnel standpoint, it was not making Kim general manager before I left,” Daly said. “She can negotiate as good as anyone I know, and she does it without offending people. She deserved the job. And for whatever reason, it is a man’s world out there in baseball. But she is very, very qualified to be a GM. It’s a shame she hasn’t gotten the opportunity. I kick myself for not doing that.
Ask around baseball about Ng, and you’ll get nothing but rave reviews. She’s calm. She knows her numbers. She knows her scouting. She presents well. Even her adversaries can’t help but admire her.
“She’s no pushover, she’s tough as nails, but she’s honest,” said John Boggs, an agent who has sat across the negotiating table from Ng on many occasions. “I’d rather negotiate with someone who is tough as hell but honest and straightforward.”
But ask Ng about what she’d call the high moments in her career, and the answers have little to do with a contract she negotiated well or a superstar player she acquired.
One moment came a few years ago when a general manager job was open — Ng can’t recall which one — and a newspaper reporter interviewed that team’s owner. “Will the general manager get to bring in his own staff?” the reporter asked. “Yes,” the owner answered, “he or she will get to bring in their own staff.”
“It was the idea that ‘she’ was now on the board,” Ng said. “The thought process has changed.”
The second thing that comes to mind involves a second-year law student at Loyola Law School outside Los Angeles named Leslie Hinshaw.
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Hinshaw was in high school when she won an essay contest. She had to write about any living American whom she admired, and she chose Ng because Hinshaw dreamed of someday being a general manager. The school contacted Ng, and Ng invited the high schooler to spend a day at Dodgers’ spring training with her.
“She really has paved the way for women like me, and because of her, things may be easier for me,” Hinshaw said. “She represents perseverance. She realizes she is a woman and obviously it’s a lot harder for women to get in, but I don’t think she lets that stop her at all. She sees it as just a fact. Her position, what she does, it transcends sports.”
And should Ng get to be a general manager, she fully expects a repeat of moments like when she was named an assistant general manager for the Yankees in 1997. Stacks and stacks of letters poured into her mailbox. Many were from 10- or 12-year-old girls. They thanked Ng for getting that job, and they told her that, someday, they want to be just like her.
You can follow Reid Forgrave on Twitter @reidforgrave, become a fan on Facebook or email him at reidforgrave@gmail.com.
| Poll result (8 votes) | | Yes |  (4 votes) | Vote | | No |  (1 votes) | Vote | | Im Asian |  (3 votes) | Vote |
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