Freaky Sports

Freakanomics posted a podcast titled “How Sports Became Us“. Baseball executive Kim Ng talks about how her path to being a sports executive, and the pattern recognition errors other made meeting her:

NG: You know, I’m walking into the major league clubhouse of a visiting park. And I have all the right credentials and the security guard would say, “No, you can’t go in there.” I’d say, “Well, I actually can go in there, look at my credentials.” And there’s just the automatic presumption of who you are or, probably in this case, more of what you’re not. You’re not an executive, you’re not an official with the ball club — you’re media, you’re an interpreter. You are something of that nature. And that takes into account both gender and being of color. So I can tell you a funny story. I was traveling with the Dodgers and the executives, and the coaching staff sit up in first class. I’ve got Joe Torre to my left. And I’ve got Don Mattingly, Rick Honeycutt, some of our coaches in first class as well as the players are boarding. And the flight attendant comes up to me and she says, “So, what did you do to get on this plane?” And I looked at her and I said, “Do you really want to know?” And she said “Yeah.” And she leaned in closer and I said, “Do you see all these guys?” She said “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, they all report to me.”

I have to say, that if Ng is in the building, shouldn’t one tell the guards that there is a female executive who might want access to the clubhouse? It would have avoided this kind of embarrassment.

from baseballmusings.com https://ift.tt/2N9qbG6