Those responding to Kim Ng’s becoming the first woman and Asian-American to be a general manager in Major League Baseball with celebration are right, says Amy Bass, but they’re also missing an important part of the picture for women in executive or coaching positions in sports.
As the highest-ranking woman in baseball history, Ng now has more than a few firsts connected to her name, including that of the first Asian-American GM. This past summer, in the midst of baseball’s revival in the moment of Covid-19, Alyssa Nakken, the first full-time female coach in MLB history, also became the first woman to coach on the field. Her San Francisco Giants’ jersey was sent to the Hall of Fame after the game in recognition of the historic moment. Who will be the second? No one has a good answer. It can take a long time for historic firsts to turn into real visibility, especially among the ranks of coaches, referees, officials, arena management and front office. Jackie Robinson made his historic at bat in 1947; the Dodgers didn’t field a majority black team until 1954. And even successful mechanisms designed to combat the problem for athletes have, unfortunately, not yielded similar results for executives and coaches. One of the risks of the “first” being the “only,” as seen just this week when the Houston Texans fired VP of Communications Amy Palcic, the first and only woman to head the PR of an NFL team, is that apparent progress can be erased in one fell swoop. That’s why the stories that surround questions of “why did this take so long” — stories that make the question rhetorical, at best — should not just focus on the pathbreaker, the one who ascends to the position of the person, but also whether or not others follow. Yes, the appointment of Ng by none other than Marlins CEO Derek Jeter is historic, but how do we have more of this? Kathryn Johnston’s unprecedented turn in Little League was the first and last of its sort for decades, not at all the kind of pathbreaking moment for girls in baseball that she perhaps hoped. At the end of her first and only season, Little League put the so-called Tubby Rule into effect, helping to ensure that another girl wouldn’t take to the field until 1972, when Maria Pepe pitched three games for Hoboken New Jersey’s Young Democrats.
