Kim Ng grew up enjoying softball, was ok to captain the College of Chicago softball workforce, then moved on along with her life.
Perhaps if a sustainable skilled league for softball existed, her life would have unfolded in another way.
“It is very personal,” Ng stated Thursday from the MLB headquarters in Midtown, the place Main League Baseball introduced a strategic funding within the Athletes Limitless Softball League, for which she serves as commissioner.
MLB has bought a stake within the AUSL, its first partnership with a ladies’s professional sports activities league to assist “grow the AUSL as a sustainable organization,” MLB stated in a press release.
As reputation spikes for the WNBA and NWSL, MLB is taking an opportunity on a league that may debut June 7 with 4 groups and a barnstorming schedule.
They’ll tour by means of 12 cities (none within the Northeast) and construct to a best-of-three collection held July 26-28 on the College of Alabama’s Rhoads Stadium.
The AUSL plans to grow to be a city-based league starting in 2026.
MLB will work to boost the visibility of the AUSL by means of a wide range of platforms, together with advertising and marketing and social, and choose video games will air on MLB Community 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 stated in a press release.
Manfred once more can be working with Ng, who, after stints with the White Sox, Yankees and Dodgers, was the senior vp of baseball operations for MLB from 2011-20.
In that function — which preceded her time with the Marlins as the primary feminine GM in MLB — she supervised MLB’s initiatives for women and girls and served on MLB’s Variety Pipeline Advisory Committee.
“For me, a lot of my career has been about helping women and paving the path for women,” Ng stated. “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.”
