Kim Ng grew up playing softball, was good enough to captain the University of Chicago softball team, then moved on with her life.
Maybe if a sustainable professional league for softball existed, her life would have unfolded differently.
“It’s very personal,” Ng stated Thursday at the MLB headquarters in Midtown. There, Major League Baseball declared a strategic investment in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, where she acts as commissioner.
MLB has acquired a stake in the AUSL, marking its inaugural partnership with a women’s professional sports league to assist in “growing the AUSL as a sustainable organization,” according to a statement by MLB.
As popularity spikes for the WNBA and NWSL, MLB is taking a chance on a league that will debut June 7 with four teams and a barnstorming schedule.
The league will travel across 12 cities (none located in the Northeast) and culminate in a best-of-three series scheduled for July 26-28 at the University of Alabama’s Rhoads Stadium.
The AUSL plans to become a city-based league beginning in 2026.
MLB will work to raise the visibility of the AUSL through a variety of platforms, including marketing and social, and select games will air on MLB Network and MLB.com.
“Major League Baseball’s investment in the AUSL represents an opportunity to support softball’s long-term growth and expand our engagement with these outstanding athletes and their fans,” commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
Manfred again will be working with Ng, who, after stints with the White Sox, Yankees and Dodgers, was the senior vice president of baseball operations for MLB from 2011-20.
In that role — which preceded her time with the Marlins as the first female GM in MLB — she supervised MLB’s initiatives for girls and women and served on MLB’s Diversity Pipeline Advisory Committee.
“For me, a lot of my career has been about helping women and paving the path for women,” Ng said. “And trying to mentor women when I could. So I think this falls right in line with that. And [the goal] was to use my platform to help out and create more opportunities.”
