Swanson: She broke baseball's glass ceiling. Now Kim Ng is taking softball to the next level

7 min Click here to listen to this article Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print 0:00 0:00 1x This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. There’s no crying in baseball, but Kim Ng works in softball now. And as commissioner of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, the former Dodgers assistant general manager has been fielding lots of tearful feedback from fans overcome by the fact that softball players finally, finally have a big league of their own. “I can’t even tell you the number of people that have approached me, just openly sobbing with happiness,” she said. “It’s been incredible, experiencing all of that and understanding how long people have been waiting for something like this.” It really is like that. Ask Lisa Fernandez, softball pioneer and total boss: “I’ll be watching and get emotional, just looking at how far this game has come.” With MLB backing the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, or AUSL, for a second season and Ng back to steer it, sustainable professional softball is starting to feel real. Former UCLA pitcher Rachel Garcia plays for Athletes Unlimited Team McQuillin. (Grant Halverson / Getty Images) Fernandez remembers when it was a huge deal to get one softball game on TV, and now ESPN will broadcast 50 AUSL games and ABC will carry the championship. And after last year’s four-team 10-city barnstorming tour, the league will add two teams and anchor itself to locations in North Carolina, Illinois, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Utah. The ball gets rolling on Tuesday, just days after the conclusion of the Women’s College World Series — which last season averaged a record 1.3 million viewers on ESPN, including pulling 3.9 million for UCLA’s thriller against Tennessee. Big steps, baby steps. All going the right direction. “I would hope that we are the major league baseball of softball,” Ng, 57, said in a phone conversation. “That is a good number of teams, spread out across the country, with a huge following, all of our games televised. “That’s the goal. To be the MLB of softball.” Ng spent more than 30 years in the MLB, including a decade-long stint with the Dodgers. She was also the first woman to serve as a big-league general manager, leading the Miami Marlins from 2020 through the 2023 season. She declined her option after the team made its first full-season playoff appearance in two decades and then announced plans to introduce a president of baseball operations position that would’ve siphoned away some of her say-so. Miami Marlins general manger Kim Ng, left, sits in a golf cart and talks with manager Marlins Skip Schumaker during a 2023 spring training workout. (Lynne Sladky / Associated Press) Advertisement “Breaking that glass ceiling, that’s special to me,” Ng said. “But I think in a different way, this [work with the AUSL] is for sure one of the more meaningful things I’ve done.” She said a former MLB colleague recently asked her about the AUSL: “I said, ‘I’m working for the women now.’” The former co-worker corrected her: “You were always working for the women.’” Before that, as a kid, she was a softball infielder in Long Island and then at the University of Chicago. “I was scrappy,” Ng said, “which is definitely how I describe my personality and the way I approach most things in life.” It’s served her well. And now it’s serving softball, a sport that for decades has been among the most popular for girls in America, even without long-term playing prospects or pro players to strive to emulate. Compare it with basketball: About three-quarters of the WNBA’s current players have never even lived in a world without an established professional women’s basketball league in America. UCLA star hitter Megan Grant will play in the Athletes Unlimited softball league after wrapping up her record-setting college career. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times) The NBA-backed WNBA is celebrating its 30th season this summer with a lucrative new CBA and 15 teams, two of them expansion franchises, including one in Canada, and the Bay Area-based Golden State Valkyries valued at $850 million. There have been attempts to start up professional softball leagues before. Those weren’t just long shots, more like Megan Grant moonshots. But now we have Bryanna Lopez, a 12-year-old catcher from Alhambra, sitting in the Easton Stadium stands at UCLA, watching her heroes play and telling me, without hesitation: “I want to play professional softball. It’s a really big dream.” For players and a growing audience of folks like Kaitlyn Laabs, the superfan in a chef’s hat at UCLA games, who want to watch the home run queen Grant continue to mash. To see her teammates Jordan Woolery keep flaunting her flashy slash line and Taylor Tinsley sharpening her wicked arsenal of pitches. UCLA starting pitcher Taylor Tinsley and first baseman Jordan Woolery are poised to start their professional

Swanson: She broke baseball's glass ceiling. Now Kim Ng is taking softball to the next level

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