You probably thought that Steve Cohen was going to be the biggest New York name in baseball this week. Not only did he become the richest owner in baseball history when he got the Mets, but he said all the right things as soon as he did.
I was walking with Robert Kraft across a parking lot in Foxboro one morning a long time ago, watching him interact with Patriots fans, when he stopped and said, “No owner owns the fans. We’re all caretakers of a public trust.” Kraft was the first I ever heard use the expression. He was right, of course. That’s what Cohen sounded like the other day, when he didn’t just sound like the richest Mets fan on the planet, one who instantly made Mets fans think as if they’ve already scored the biggest free agent in baseball.
But then along came Derek Jeter on Friday, the most famous Yankee since Mickey Mantle, to remind you all over again that everybody better pay attention to him down in South Florida now that he is running the Marlins. Steve Cohen, new Mets owner, said a lot of good things. Capt. Jeter, who runs the show with the Marlins, did something great when he hired Kim Ng to be his general manager.
And if you think that somehow Jeter only chose Kim Ng because she is a woman, as if he wanted to make a statement instead of an incredibly intelligent hire, than you have missed the arc of Ng’s career. She has been preparing herself to get this kind of opportunity for over 20 years, with the Yankees and the Dodgers and working for Major League Baseball in the essential area of baseball operations. If she were a man, people would look at the road she took to this moment and say, “Okay, it was her time,” and think nothing more of it.
But now the first Black CEO of a Major League Baseball team — Jeter — has a woman as vice-president (Caroline O’Connor) and a woman as the first female general manager in baseball history. She started as an intern with the White Sox and after that nothing and nobody could stop her. You always hear the old tropes when professional sports teams are looking to fill a position like this about hiring the best man available. Not anymore. Not in baseball.
There are a lot of stories in baseball about interns rising to the top of the front office the way Brian Cashman of the Yankees once did. Kim Ng is the intern who doesn’t just come to this moment just from being a college softball player one, she was one at the University of Chicago.
This is part of the statement that Jeter released on Friday after the Marlins made the announcement of Ng’s hiring:
“Her leadership of our baseball operations team will play a major role on our path toward sustained success. Additionally, her extensive work in expanding youth baseball and softball initiatives will enhance our efforts to grow the game among our local youth as we continue to make a positive impact on the South Florida community.”
Jeter has been in Miami now for three years. He has already seen the Marlins go from 105 losses in 2019 and finishing 40 games behind the Atlanta Braves in the National League East to finishing in second place this season behind the Braves, despite essentially beginning the short season in quarantine in Philadelphia. Then the Marlins swept the Cubs in a wild card series before the Braves took them out in the next round.
What we have seen so far with Jeter is that he is unafraid of change, of any kind. He just got rid of Michael Hill as his team president. He just watched another former Yankee captain, Don Mattingly, be named Manager of the Year in the National League. The Marlins are always going to be a New York story, just because of Jeter and Mattingly. New Yorkers are always moving to Florida. But Jeter and Mattingly didn’t do it to retire. What they are mostly doing, in real time, is retiring the notion that the Marlins can’t be somebody again in the big leagues.
I asked Mattingly the other night if he ever thought the kind of season the Marlins had was possible after 17 positive COVID-19 tests, before they did get to the second week of the season.
This was his answer:
“You know me. I always think anything is possible.”
Now his baseball life has taken him to the Marlins, and working for Jeter, who didn’t buy into the Marlins, who didn’t take over the running of the team, because he thought he was going to lose. Why would he, after being the greatest Yankee winner of the last half-century, after a Hall of Fame career that saw him be the centerpiece of the last Yankee dynasty? And you know how he broke in as an executive:
He got his old team to take most of Giancarlo Stanton’s ridiculous contract off his hands, a contract that may inform how the Yankees do business for years to come. He traded Stanton, the National League MVP in 2017 for the Marlins. He traded Christian Yelich, who would become the league’s MVP in 2018. But Jeter had a vision of the kind of team that he wanted to build in Miami, and it didn’t include the money he was already paying and money he was going to have to pay Yelich. And by this season the Marlins were in the playoffs.
Now he has made a historic hire in Kim Ng, and the reason is simple enough: Jeter thinks that she can help him make new baseball history for himself, as a World Series player and a World Series executive.
Here is a part of Ng’s statement on Friday:
“This challenge is one I don’t take lightly. When I got into this business, it seemed unlikely a woman would lead a Major League team, but I am dogged in the pursuit of my goals. My goal is now to bring Championship baseball to Miami. I am both humbled and eager to continue building the winning culture our fans expect and deserve.”
The great Billie Jean King had a perfect one word description to end her congratulations to Ng (pronounced Ang) on Twitter Friday.
“Progress.”
Ng sure made some. So did the Marlins. And so did Derek Jeter. Still somebody to watch in baseball. Old-school guy, hardly doing things the old way in South Florida.
YANKS CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE THEIR DJ, GIANT GAME FOR BIG BLUE & THE BEST GOLF SHOT YOU’LL EVER SEE …
Does Giuliani demand a recount after the Masters is over on Sunday?
I think the Yankees would be nuts to lose DJ LeMahieu, who has been their best player for two years.
And I frankly think the Mets would be nuts not to go after him hard.
I am going to keep asking this question about LeMahieu:
When was the last time the Yankees let their best player just walk away?
You want to know the real state of the NFC East:
The Eagles are in first place at 3-4-1.
And if the Giants beat them on Sunday, they will have the same number of victories as the Eagles.
Are you starting to get the idea that somebody with a 4-0 record might make the Final Four in college football?
Tua sure has let everybody know he’s in the league now, right?
If you haven’t seen Jon Rahm skipping that ball across the water for a hole-in-one on No. 16 at Augusta the other day you ought to, just because it is the best golf shot you will ever see.
The scene at Notre Dame Stadium last Saturday night, when all those kids rushed the field after Notre Dame beat Clemson in this time of COVID when the falls feels like the spring all over again, is one of the dumbest and most reckless you will ever seen.
And, by the way?
Please don’t try to tell me that the stadium was only one-fifth full.
Where did they bus in all those kids from — Terre Haute?
Drew Brees sure did win the Battle of the Grandpa Quarterbacks the other night, didn’t he, though?
We lost a good one the other day when we lost Paul Hornung to dementia at the age of 84.
My pal Curtis Strange continues to be one of the smartest guys talking about golf on television.
As does Rich Lerner of The Golf Channel.
I always love Augusta being discussed at Masters time as if it’s St. Peter’s Basilica, no kidding.
You start to get the idea that all the water on the course is actually holy water.
But I also loved hearing all those bindlestiffs in the Trump administration talking this week about a second term for him as if he’s going to have one.
Sure he is.
And later on Sunday afternoon, Tiger Woods is going to be putting a green jacket on me.
Finally today:
Happy birthday this week to my mom, Lee Lupica.
The world has changed around her this year, more than it ever had in her long life.
But the life she still has with my Pops, after 70 years of marriage, remains a wonderful one.
And a wonder to behold.
