55
working off the ideal. But you don’t always
get that. So you just have to keep rolling.”
NG, 52, GREW UP playing stickball in
Queens, N.Y. One manhole cover served
as home plate, a parked car to the right
was fi rst base, another manhole cover
down the street was second, and a parked
car to the left was third. She was always
the only girl. “I grew up a tomboy, for
sure,” Ng says. “Always the oddity.”
Her father, who died when Kim was
11, had introduced his daughter to base-
ball. She slept under a poster, sponsored
by Burger King, of the 1978 World Se-
ries champion New York Yankees. Base-
ball’s slow pace—the average sports fan’s
biggest complaint about the game these
days— actually drew her in. “It gave me
time to ask questions,” Ng says. “It gave
me time to socialize and to be curious, and
not necessarily be completely entranced.”
When her family moved to Long Island ,
she took up organized softball. She was
then the star of her team at Ridgewood
High School in New Jersey and continued
her career at the University of Chicago,
where she hit .388 as a junior. She played
multiple infi eld positions and emerged as
the unquestioned team leader. “She was
one of those loud people on the fi eld,”
says Rosalie Resch, an assistant athleticdirector during Ng’s years on campus.
“There was no question how many outs
there were.” In one photo from the time,
Ng is kneeling at the front of the dugout,
eyes homed in on the Chicago hitter, more
immersed in the action than anyone else.
Her senior year, Ng served as president
of the school’s Women’s Athletic Associa-
tion, a group of students representing the
interests of female athletes, and wrote
her public-policy thesis on Title IX, the
landmark law mandating equal opportu-
nities for female student- athletes. She de-
cided to pursue a career in sports, maybe
in marketing or sports information. But
soon after graduation in 1990, Ng inter-
viewed for a baseball- operations intern-
ship with the Chicago White Sox. Dan
Evans, then the team’s assistant GM, was
impressed with her smarts—and the fact
that she didn’t get fl ustered when she en-
tered his offi ce and found a spit cloth on
his shoulder and his 3-month-old baby
napping in a crib.
He hired her for the unpaid gig, which
led to an awkward conversation between
Ng and her mother. “Here I am paying
$25,000 a year for the University of Chi-
cago,” says Ng’s mother Virginia Cagar,
who wanted her daughter to go into bank-
ing like she had. “I asked her, ‘Well, what’s
your salary?’ And she hemmed and hawed
and fi nally came out and said, ‘Ahhh,
nothing. I’m working for free, Mom.’ I
said, ‘Return on investment. What hap-
pened to it?’ ”
At one point, Ng had three jobs: she’d
fi nish work with the White Sox, then
change in her Toyota Tercel on the way
to her assistant coaching gig with her
alma mater’s softball team. Then she’d
head to a research assistant’s position
at the University of Chicago’s Chapin
Hall, which focuses on children’s policy.
She bought a cushion at Walmart and
crashed on the dorm-room fl oor of her
younger sister, who was still a University
of Chicago student. “A total housing vio-
lation,” Ng says.
But it paid off as she started rising
through the White Sox ranks. She’d hold
the radar gun, do data entry, alphabetize
draft cards. She’d carry legal pads around
the offi ce, peppering Evans with ques-
tions, taking diligent notes. “She learned
everybody’s job because she was willing
to help with anything,” says Grace Guer-
rero Zwit, who has worked nearly 40 years△
Clockwise from top: Ng with Tommy
Lasorda in 2005; playing softball at
Ridgewood High School in 1986; at
a 2018 celebration for a women’s pro
baseball team; receiving an award
from Derek Jeter in 2000; with
Yankees GM Brian Cashman and
former manager Joe Torre circa 2000;
as Yankees assistant GM in 1998