From NYT: “Major League Baseball celebrated the hiring of a woman as a sign of progress on diversity in its executive ranks. Every comparable hire over the last two years has been a white man.”
Kim Ng Stands Alone Among MLB’s New Top-Level Executives - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
CPBL had a female GM before her.
“It’s tough for a leopard to change its spots,” said Dave Stewart, a Black American who has done almost everything in baseball: a pitcher for 16 major-league seasons, a broadcaster, a pitching coach, a special assistant, an assistant general manager, a G.M. and, now, an agent.
“I’ve been singing this tune as a player since the mid ’80s,” Stewart added later in the phone interview. “And then when I became an executive and was bypassed for a job that I was more than qualified for when I was in Toronto, I said it once again publicly — that there was an issue with baseball and racism. Whether they say it’s racism or whether they say it’s prejudice, it’s still a problem.”
Dave Stewart has worked at all levels of baseball, from player to agent to executive. He says baseball’s issues with diversity are hard to shake. “It’s tough for a leopard to change its spots.”
Like other people of color around baseball, Stewart wasn’t surprised by the top executive hires this off-season. Their frustration arises from the continued lack of opportunities, especially after corporations around the United States pledged to tackle racial inequality following George Floyd’s killing while in Minneapolis police custody in May.
Only four heads of club baseball operations are identified as nonwhite by M.L.B.’s diversity goals — about 13 percent of M.L.B.’s 30 teams. They are Kenny Williams, who is Black, of the Chicago White Sox; Farhan Zaidi, who is of Asian descent, of the San Francisco Giants; Al Avila, who is Latino, of the Detroit Tigers; and Ng. That is a stark contrast to the demographics on the field, where 40 percent of major-league players are identified as nonwhite by M.L.B. — the majority of whom are Latino.
She’s also the second of Asian descent in the ML Who was the first? Not coming to mind.