Baseball's Glass Ceiling — Baseball Bench Coach

My daughters enjoyed playing fastpitch softball in their youth. I managed, coached, and kept score for hundreds of their games. Fastpitch softball gave me an even greater appreciation of baseball. Softball is fast, has its own, unique strategy, and is certainly full of enthusiasm and emotions. Aside from the wonderful bonding that my daughters and I enjoyed being together for the practices, games, and softball and baseball road trips, I often felt that softball gave them an important dimension of competitiveness. And now today, we see women adding a new dimension to the game of baseball.

Kim Ng is today’s best example of breaking baseball’s glass ceiling. Ng is currently the general manager of the Miami Marlins and the highest ranking female baseball executive. She started as an intern with the Chicago White Sox, was hired full-time after graduation from the University of Chicago in 1991, and was promoted to Assistant Director of Baseball Operations in 1995. In 1998, the Mets’ general manager Brian Cashman brought her, at age 29, to New York as assistant general manager, the youngest ever to hold that position and just the second woman (Elaine Weddington Steward took a similar position with the Red Sox in 1990). In 2001, Ng joined the Dodgers as vice president and assistant general manager. Over the course of the next 20 years, she interviewed for the GM spot with at least five MLB clubs, landing the Marlins job in 2020. In 2015 Forbes ranked Ng #13 on the list of the most influential minorities in sports (she is Asian-American), and in 2021 Forbes selected her for the inaugural 50 over 50, comprised of entrepreneurs, leaders, scientists, and creators over the age of 50.

Who attempted to pry open the glass before Ng? Margaret Donahue began the process over a hundred years ago. In 1919 the Cubs hired her as a stenographer, and then promoted her to corporate secretary in 1926. Donahue did about everything for the organization. She came up with the idea of season tickets in 1929, later adopted by the rest of baseball and other professional sports. In addition to having Cubs tickets available at Wrigley Field’s box office, she introduced tickets for sale at Western Union telegraph offices. Today’s StubHub would have been proud of her ticketing innovations. Donahue also was a voice in the Cubs front office, working alongside the Wrigleys (owners William, Jr., and then, P.K., in 1932) and club presidents (William and son Bill Veeck). Donahue did it all – executed the players’ payroll, stored the game balls in a cabinet in her office, and ran the ballpark office staff.

The Cubs organization was one of the first to welcome women to the ballpark. Charlie Weeghman (majority owner of the Cubs, 1916-1919) introduced Ladies Day, free admission to the ballpark on Fridays for females 16 and over. Friday gates became huge at Wrigley Field in the 1920s. Indeed, in 1929 Wrigley Field had over 200,000 Ladies Day participants. Marketing to females and their families spread throughout baseball, and Ladies Day promotions became a hallmark at many ballparks well into the 1980s. Crazily, the practice ended with a New York State Human Rights Commission’s ruling of reverse discrimination in Abosh v. New York Yankees. Today, MLB games see almost equal attendance by men and women.

Women on the field originated during World War II with the founding in 1943 of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). P.K. Wrigley of the Cubs started AAGPBL as a way to maintain baseball in the public eye while many male players were away at war. The League was highly successful with over 600 women playing in its 12-year existence. In 1948, AAGPBL games drew over 900,000 fans. In the first season of play, the teams played a hybrid of baseball and softball, using a 12” ball, pitchers throwing underhand from 40 feet, and maintaining basepaths of 65’. The game became more and more like baseball over the 12 years. In the final season, the teams were using a regulation size baseball with overhand pitching and baselines of 85 feet (just short of MLB’s 90’). The League was famously depicted in the 1992 hit movie, “A League of Their Own”.

The significance of women in baseball today is seen in on-field coaching. In 2018, not one female coached in the MLB and its minor league affiliates. Today, there are eleven! Just three weeks ago, Alyssa Nakken of the San Francisco Giants made MLB history as the first female coach in a regular season game. She took over the first base coaching duties in the third inning of a game between the Giants and the Padres. Nakken began her baseball journey as an intern for the Giants in 2014. She was promoted to the MLB coaching staff in January, becoming the first full-time female coach in the MLB. When asked about her recent stint in the first base coaching box, she said: “I think we’re all inspirations doing everything we do on a day-to-day basis, and I think, yes, this carries a little more weight because of the visibility, obviously there’s a historical nature to it. . . But again, this is my job.”

It's just the job too of other females rising in minor league baseball. Boston, in particular, has taken some recent swings at baseball’s glass ceiling. In 2021, the Red Sox hired Bianca Smith as a minor league coach. In early January, Katie Krall was hired as a player development coach at Double A Portland, a Red Sox affiliate. The Yankees followed their rivals with the hiring of Rachel Balkovec. On January 11 she became the first female manager in MLB-affiliated baseball as she took the helm at Low-A Tampa. Krall said it best on the Zoom call announcing her hiring: “I definitely think that, at a point, we will get to a place where women will just be hired. . . . I guess that would be the ultimate goal: that it doesn’t become newsworthy anymore.”

With the leadership of Kim Ng off the field and the hiring of more leaders like Nakken, Smith, and Balkovec on the field, maybe we are getting closer to breaking baseball’s glass ceiling.

Until next Monday,

your Baseball Bench Coach