Sunrise, Sunset

“The toughest job in baseball is being the General Manager”

– Ken Harrelson

An old friend of mine has “the most boring job in the world”, at least according to him. He works for one of the world’s largest paint manufacturers, looking at color shifts as the paint goes from wet to dry. No, seriously. He quite literally watches paint dry. His official title is “Paint Watcher”. He claims that a part of the appeal of this role is having spent his younger working years on oil rigs and Alaskan crabbing boats. After having had two of the most dangerous gigs in the world, watching a wall of paint turn from Cream to Eggshell suits him just fine.

I can’t say as I’d blame him. Some gigs just carry the weight of the world with them.

Such is the life of a Major League Baseball General Manager. While that role in any professional sports organization carries a lot of pressure and expectation, few roles have the breadth and depth required of the MLB GM. You’re keeping your teams stocked at every level, Majors to Minors, with eyes on operations across the globe to bring the best talent your way. You’re trying to win now, win tomorrow, and win a couple tomorrows after that as well, with stakeholders to impress above, across, and below you. The rare individuals who excel at the role seem to have the ability to focus on the most-important minutiae while keeping a thousand plates spinning. It’s a very rare club to belong to. Which made it all the more interesting to see a couple of attention-worthy moments in that club over the course of the last week.

When the Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng a week ago, it brought to a head one of the longest-anticipated hirings in the last couple decades. When Ng made history as the youngest Assistant GM in the history of baseball, she was 29. As she finally ascends to the head spot in Miami, she is 52. Beyond that lengthy stretch, she’s spent a ton of time with the league offices as a Senior VP of Baseball Operations. No slouch, that. Beyond finally shattering that glass ceiling after 23 years, she also finds herself as the first woman in her position at that level in any of the four major US sports leagues.

Ng finds herself at the head of a team that finally climbed back into the playoffs this last season after a 17-year absence. She finds herself immediately needing to shore up a bullpen, and make some decisions about who will be catching for that crew. Fortunately for the Marlins and CEO Derek Jeter, Ng has a reputation for tirelessly digging deep in her roles. Where she takes the team from here will be the ultimate test of how long she continues to climb at this level, but she more than has the acumen and credentials to get it done.

If Ng makes it at this level as long as this next guy already has, she’ll be 70.

Speaking of youngsters to their roles, Theo Epstein was the youngest GM in the history of the game when he landed the Boston Red Sox gig at the age of 28. The BoSox had a history of nearly-but-not-nearly-enough since the curse of the Bambino. Epstein brought them to the promised land not once, but twice, including by ruining a perfectly fine Rocktober. To prove that he had the mettle to keep breaking curses, Theo took his talents to North Chicago and busted yet another monster the Cubs had been battling for 108 years in bringing them another Championship. Surely a Hall of Fame appearance awaits, whether Epstein takes the year off as he plans, jumps right back in, or if he simply decides to pursue other ventures. His stamp is already firmly imprinted wherever next steps take him.

The sun is rising on a new era in baseball and men’s sports just as the sun is setting on a chapter of a Hall of Fame story. There are some seismic shifts at the very top of America’s pastime, right as we all could use some good news to focus on. Here’s hoping that both Ng’s debut and Epstein’s next steps bring even more groundbreaking moments along the way.