A Big-League Bet on Pro Softball

Kim Ng had big plans. For more than thirty years, ever since she was an intern for the Chicago White Sox, she had spent her summers working long hours. She eventually became an assistant general manager, first for the New York Yankees and then for the Los Angeles Dodgers, before becoming a senior vice-president at Major League Baseball. In 2020, she was named the general manager for the Miami Marlins—making her the first woman ever to serve as a G.M. in a major men’s sports league. In her third season there, the Marlins made the post-season, for only the second time in two decades. But, shortly afterward, the team’s owner proposed creating a new position, president of baseball operations, to whom Ng would report. Ng decided not to renew her contract and stepped down in 2023. That following spring, as her house in Florida was on the market, she mapped out a road trip with her husband across the United States: a few weeks in New England, then out West, up through Montana, to Oregon, where they’d spend the fall.

Then Jon Patricof called. Patricof is the C.E.O. and co-founder of Athletes Unlimited, a network of professional women’s sports leagues, including softball, volleyball, and basketball, that employ innovative scoring systems and involve players in the decision-making process. Ng had met Patricof five years earlier, but they hadn’t kept in touch. On the phone, he told her that A.U. was going to create a more traditional professional softball league, with a consistent group of teams based in permanent locations, playing according to the game’s standard rules. (There would also be a tournament, the A.U.S.L. All Star Cup, that would use A.U.’s innovative rules to crown an individual champion.) And he wanted her to lead it.

Ng’s career as an executive had happened entirely in baseball. But she was a softball player once—an infielder, at the University of Chicago. Her four younger sisters also played—two of whom, like Ng, competed at the college level. Toward the end of her time in the M.L.B. commissioner’s office, she worked on baseball and softball development, and served on the board of U.S.A. Softball. The first time she walked into Devon Park, in Oklahoma City, where the Women’s College World Series is held, she was overwhelmed by how big an event it was. “I was, like, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve got to bring my mother. I’ve got to bring my sisters,’ ” she said.

Still, when Patricof made his offer, Ng demurred. Then she started asking questions—“as is my nature,” she told me recently. During the next several weeks, she and Patricof discussed the explosion of interest in women’s sports, and about the unusual structure of Athletes Unlimited and what it had learned from its three years in existence. Ng left for her cross-country journey, but they kept talking. She and her husband made it as far as Newport, Rhode Island, before telling Patricof she would come on board—for the time being—as a senior adviser. Instead of driving West, Ng got on a plane to Wichita, Kansas, to attend A.U. softball games, and then to Rosemont, Illinois, for the second part of the season. Her husband drove out to meet her a few weeks later while he was on his way to Oregon.

In April, A.U. announced that Ng would be the commissioner of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, which begins its first season this Saturday with four inaugural teams. On Opening Day, in Rosemont, the Talons will play the Bandits, and, in Wichita, the Volts will face the Blaze. After that, the teams will play in several other cities: Sulphur, Louisiana; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Norman, Oklahoma; Omaha, Nebraska; Seattle, Washington; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Round Rock, Texas. The championship series will take place in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, from July 26th to July 28th. Then, in August, the players will head back to Rosemont and to Holly Springs and Greenville, North Carolina, for twenty-one more games, in the All-Star Cup. The plan for next year is to expand to six teams, each with a home city.

Last year, two million people on average watched the Women’s College World Series finals, between Oklahoma and Texas, and the series drew record crowds. Ratings for the women’s finals have averaged more than a million viewers on ESPN for years—sometimes beating the numbers for the Men’s College World Series. Earlier attempts to convert the popularity of the college game into a serious and sustainable professional league have failed. But the landscape for women’s sports has changed radically in recent years, and there’s never been an effort quite like this one. A number of the game’s legends who have not previously engaged with the pro leagues are involved. “Some of the people who have been sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see that the sport was in the right hands—Kim tipped the scales for a number of people,” Patricof said. Cat Osterman, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, will be the general manager for the Volts. The Olympic gold medallist and San Diego State head coach Stacey Nuveman-Deniz will coach the Bandits. Lisa Fernandez, another gold medallist and a coach at U.C.L.A., is the general manager of the Talons. Jennie Finch, a former College World Series champion who was once on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and the ESPN commentator Jessica Mendoza, both Olympians, are advisers. Cheri Kempf, the longtime commissioner of the shuttered pro softball league National Pro Fastpitch, is an A.U. executive. And, on Thursday, M.L.B. announced a long-term investment in the league—a stake reported to be in the eight figures—along with broadcast and sponsorship support. There’s “usually a challenge getting everyone on the same page,” Noah Garden, an M.L.B. deputy commissioner, told me. “That hasn’t been the case here. The visions are so aligned. I’ve almost never seen that.”

A.U.’s entrée into the sport during the organization’s first several years of existence affirmed their faith in the sport’s power, Patricof told me, and in the importance of working closely with players. “I think what I did not anticipate was, honestly, the pace and growth and investment in women’s sports more broadly,” he said. “I was the biggest bull and proponent. It even exceeded my expectations.” Now, he added, the challenge was to capitalize on it. “We do live in a really dynamic environment where you have to be prepared for growth beyond your base-case expectation. Are we going to be set up to capture that growth?”

Ng has always been reluctant to talk about what it was like to be the only woman in the highest ranks of Major League Baseball. But she acknowledged that it feels different to walk into a room full of softball players. Last December, she attended a private reception at a National Fastpitch Coaches Association convention. There, all the A.U. general managers and coaches gathered in the same place for the first time. The camaraderie among them struck her. She’d seen it in similar spaces in baseball, but she was “rarely a participant of it,” she said. “I didn’t play baseball in college with them. I wasn’t in the minor leagues with them. I wasn’t roommates with them in college.” There’s overlap between the two worlds, and between the two games, but Ng had a sense of kinship and a feeling of opportunity that were new.

It is for the athletes, too. Many of them turn to coaching after college, scatter across underfunded leagues in the U.S., or play professionally in Japan. A.U. has been focussed on concentrating the talent. “The athletes that are on the advisory committee and are part of this are the best in the game,” Nuveman-Deniz, the Bandits’ coach, told me, “another thing that hasn’t always been able to be said.” As a general manager of a Major League Baseball team, Ng said, “I felt like I carried the torch in this certain way, just to try and open doors for women. In some ways, this feels—it’s just different.” She felt out the words carefully, elaborating, adding nuance. The challenge for the new league is to widen opportunities for women, and for athletes, and to bring them into the mainstream, she told me. “Where I got to in baseball—that was inspiring, but how many people in reality actually get to become general managers? I think you open the door to dream,” she said. “What we’re trying to do here—there are so many girls playing softball. This could truly be a reality.” ♦