By Brooke Brottman

Women made up just 20 percent of MLB team Vice President’s this year, and there were 21 women in on-field coaching or player development positions. The pipeline for women is narrow because most girls do not play baseball. Even if they do make it to professional baseball in some capacity, they still face challenges both common in other industries. However, the Miami Marlins have made history. Kim Ng became the highest-ranking woman in baseball operations in the major leagues when she was hired Friday as General Manager of the Miami Marlins. She is the first female General Manager in baseball history and is believed to be the first female General Manager in a North American men's pro sports league. Ng has spent 30 years in baseball, including 21 years of front-office experience with the New York Yankees, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Chicago White Sox.

Ng is more than qualified to be a General Manager. She started her career as an intern with the Chicago White Sox in 1990 and was hired by the team full-time the following season, then in 1995 she was named Assistant Director of Baseball Operations. Ng left Chicago in 1996 and spent 1997 overseeing transactions as the American League's Director of Waivers and Records. In 1998, the New York Yankees hired Ng as an Assistant General Manager, making her the youngest person to hold the position at the time. She won three World Series titles with New York before leaving in 2001 to join the Los Angeles Dodgers as an Assistant General Manager. Ng left Los Angeles in 2011 and became MLB’s Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations in the Commissioner's office.

As Vice President of Baseball Operations, she worked with the front offices of the Major League clubs and many other baseball leagues around the world. She led a team that set policy for and enforced international signing rules, established MLB's first system for registering international players for signing, managed protocols for signing international players, and negotiated agreements with international winter leagues. Ng is now the highest-ranking woman in an MLB front office. Raquel Ferreira serves as an Executive Vice President and Assistant General Manager with the Boston Red Sox, and Jean Afterman holds the same role with the New York Yankees.

The Marlins went 31-29 this past season and qualified for the postseason for the first time since 2003. They have built a strong team-based on young talent in recent years, including right-handed pitcher, Sixto Sanchez, and shortstop Jazz Chisholm, and are now looking to make the permanent jump from rebuilder to contender with Ng leading the pack. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of many female GMs in professional sports, but as of right now, she is still the first.  Ng demonstrates that it can be done and the difficulty in doing so. 

Right now, women are working in sports and sports media at every level: behind the cameras, in front of them, in front offices, in coaching, in officiating. There are women hosting shows, women writing columns, women helping you pick your fantasy team, women transcribing quotes from the locker room. It is very difficult to walk into a room and be the only woman, no matter how much confidence you have in yourself and your abilities. Women in sports, for the most part, get ignored until they get into a position where you can’t ignore them. When that happens, everyone comes running to offer congratulations and talk about how great they are and how well-deserved the new job is. However, that’s not what women in sports need from you. They need more support,  not just when they rise to the top, but also on the way up.

You can follow Brooke on Twitter @Brottman_10.