Kim Ng Made Baseball History. Now She's Taking On Softball

Time​ Magazine

a day ago

Kim Ng, who became the first female GM in the history of major North American men's pro team sports when the Miami Marlins hired her to run the team's baseball operations in 2020, is taking on a new challenge: building softball's version of the WNBA. In April, Ng was named commissioner of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL), a new professional start-up that begins its inaugural season on June 7. Ng (pronounced Ang, like Angus) spoke to TIME about why she's taking on her new role, the strategy driving the AUSL's rollout, and her future vision for the sport, which has garnered impressive TV ratings for coverage of its college postseason and returns to the Olympics in 2028.
(This interview has been condensed for length and clarity)
You left your job as the GM of the Miami Marlins in 2023, after leading the team to its first postseason appearance—following a full regular season —in 20 years. [ Management wanted to install a president of baseball operations above her, and Ng has said she and the team owner "were not completely aligned.' ] So before joining Athletes Unlimited as an adviser in 2024 and ultimately taking the AUSL commissioner job, what were you up to?
That was eight months of being on my own. Doing my own thing, trying to live life a little bit. I had calculated that this is my first significant period of time off since being a sophomore in high school. Played some golf, visited a couple of friends, and just tried to get back into the swing of being a real person again. I was probably talking to [Athletes Unlimited co-founder and CEO] Jon Patricof for a couple of months and also doing some speaking engagements. It went by fast. Too fast.
Why did you take this job?
Part of this was what I spent the last 30 years doing, and that is trying to create opportunities for women, paving that path, mentoring. Making it easier for those coming behind me. I did that all through my baseball years, and now, having seen what was going on in the women's pro-sports landscape, it was incredibly exciting to think about being a part of it and lending my name to that effort. Taking on this role of being the very outward-facing, let's say, shepherd of the sport, I felt like I was ready for it.
You grew up playing softball and played at the University of Chicago. What drew you to the game?
First of all, my dad was a big baseball fan and grew up watching the Yankees. Big fan of the late-1970s Yankees. This was the sport my dad and I shared. Softball is really so similar to baseball. I'm not sure they're quite interchangeable, but in my mind, they are. And I was pretty good at it.
Other attempts at women's pro softball haven't enjoyed sustained success. Why are you confident that the momentum that we've seen in other women's team sports in the U.S. in the last few years, particularly in basketball and soccer, is going to translate to softball?
No. 1, I think Jon Patricof and [Athletes Unlimited co-founder] Jonathan Soros are very good listeners. That was one of the things that attracted me to the group. Then I think the greater acceptance from society, and how we view women and their ability as athletes, just led to this incredible moment. And the college metrics have been there for years. How do you try to connect those college fans with the pro space? There have to be these bridges to fill that gap. The softball landscape wants to be galvanized.
In the inaugural AUSL season, the four teams—the Bandits, Blaze, Talons, and Volts—don't have home markets. Rather, the league will barnstorm to different locations—Rosemont, Ill., Wichita, Kan., Sulphur, La., Chattanooga, Tenn., Norman, Okla., Omaha, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Round Rock, Texas, and Tuscaloosa, Ala.—to play games around the U.S. What's the strategy behind that?
There was a very short period of time in which to launch. So Jon and Jonathan just wanted to get out there and really get an understanding of the markets. When you're talking about partnering with venues and markets, you want to have an understanding of who the stakeholders are, who the actors in the landscape are, and you want to make sure that you have really good partners who want you to be there, who are committed to making the partnership work. It's like dating. You're going to date before you get married. Now's the dating process,
From 2011 to 2020, you worked in the MLB front office, and on May 29, MLB announced it was investing in the AUSL. Can you characterize the scale of MLB's investment?
Listen, money is very important, but really for us, a lot of this is about how you're building your business. And it's making sure that you're creating long-term revenue streams and proving to potential sponsors that there is support behind you. It's really about people believing in what you are bringing to the table, people believing in women's pro sports, people believing in women's pro softball and our future. I think that's what the MLB deal signals to the world.
And what do you think MLB support, financially and otherwise, allows the AUSL to do that it might not have otherwise been able to do without it?
MLB and softball are from the same family. There's no reason why the fans from MLB should not consider softball to be their fraternal twin. I think, in terms of amplification and visibility, when you start thinking about the fan bases, this is a fan base that has been built over 100 years. And it's a fan base that spans 26 markets. So you're talking about incredible reach. When you draw these fans over, it's going to be a great meeting between softball fans and baseball fans.
How does the reentry of softball into the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics—the games will be played in Oklahoma City—play into the AUSL strategy?
It is very much in the forefront of our minds. It is incredibly helpful that we have the Olympics coming down the road, that it will be based in the United States, and that we have some runway to lead up to it and to make it a part of our intentional strategy. There's no doubt in my mind that the Olympics, for this sport, has been the main driver of the most eyeballs in a short period of time.
Do you miss running an MLB team?
At times. There are specific times of the year that I thought were just so cool, like spring training, and the trading deadline, and the feeling when you know you're in the hunt to improve your team. Being able to see those really tangible results quickly. Those are some of the items that I miss about being with an MLB team. If I wasn't working in this job, I think I would miss the camaraderie. And I think there's no other camaraderie like being with a team. I think you get to know each other well, very well. You spend a lot of time with each other, and there's a lot of trash-talking and fun that you engage in on a fairly regular basis.
Given your turnaround of the Marlins, a team that hasn't enjoyed much success over the years, you'd seem to be an attractive candidate for a GM position. If an opportunity came forward, would you be interested in that?
I don't know exactly what the future holds. For me, right now, this is what I am focused on. To see the great momentum over the last couple of months has been just so amazing. And I think there is quite a lot that we can do here. We've encouraged people to just sort of absorb the moment of where we are right now, and to understand that they are very much a part of history. They should try and have this founder's mindset, that this is something to build. This is not something that we take lightly, nor should we take it lightly. I have never been consumed with looking for the next step. I'm not at the beginning of my career, and so it's really about doing something with a purpose and making sure that, wherever I am and whatever I'm doing, I leave it in a better place. I think I did that with the Marlins for sure. And I think I will do that here as well.
Is there a lesson you learned from being GM of the Marlins that you can apply to being the commissioner of the AUSL?
It's not just lessons with the Marlins. There are lessons from all of my previous endeavors. One of the biggest lessons that I've learned is that you have to take people along with you on your journey, and you have to communicate. That means up and down.
One very practical thing is having seen and experienced the great success that MLB has had on pace of play. I think that's one thing that sort of drives a lot of my thoughts about how to make the game even more appealing to softball fans. I just talked to the athletes the other day, and I showed them our MLB outcomes due to pace of game and some of the rule changes. A 2023 survey says that 86% of 18- to 34-year-olds indicated they're more likely to watch MLB games due to the new rule changes. So part of this is education. It's about showing those very distinct, very eye-opening outcomes, so that they understand why we are doing this. That's part of the communication aspect.
In closing, how about a prediction? What's going to be the state of pro softball in the U.S. in five years?
I think it's going to be healthy. It's going to take us some time. We have to ride this nice wave that we've gotten here. It's going to be eye-opening for potential fans and potential sponsors. It's going to be very similar to the entire women's sports movement. We're getting metrics on our social platforms and MLB's platforms. People are understanding the power of this. The merging of the two fan bases, it's going to be organization-changing for us. That then leads to fans in the stands. Huge fan engagement. Great family experiences at the games. I think viewership is going to go up quite a bit. And I think we will have even more people knocking on our doors, wanting investment opportunities, whether it's at the franchise level or at the league level. We're going to be very intentional and very concerted in our effort to connect with the college market, to draw those college fans, help them see that there is this elite talent that is coming over and that they can follow in the pro landscape. And then we jump right towards the Olympics, and then use that as another tremendous springboard for ourselves. So I think the future is really, really bright.