Kim Ng knew people would care. When she became the Marlins’ general manager in November, she expected a few hundred messages, some calls, an
exhausting number of interview requests. Instead the response nearly incinerated her phone battery: She got thousands of messages. Michelle Obama tweeted about her. President Joe Biden asked her to speak at an event following his inauguration. (She accepted.)
All these people told her what her career move meant to them, and to their daughters. But most of them could not begin to understand what it meant to Ng. She had wanted this title for decades, but the minute she accepted it, it ceased to be about her.