Dream Could Be a Bad One for Ng

Kim Ng is well prepared to be a groundbreaking general manager, which is why I hope she doesn’t get that chance with the Dodgers.

When it comes to coaches and general managers, diversity is normally a byproduct of prosperity or desperation -- and we know which category the Dodgers are in. That makes this job the wrong place and time for Ng to become the first Asian and female GM in major professional sports.

Success starts at the top, and because Frank and Jamie McCourt have not shown an organizational commitment to winning at all costs, Ng would be set up to fail, just another candidate to join the growing list of former Dodger general managers. Then it would be impossible for her to land another GM job. As hard as it would be for a team to sell a female general manager to its fans, imagine trying to sell them on a woman with a losing record. And the problem with being first is, Ng would represent every woman who hoped to follow her.

Chavez Ravine has been such a bad place for general managers over the last eight years that even male GMs can’t overcome the stigma. Of the four men who have held the position since Fred Claire got the boot in 1998, none has landed a similar job with another team.

The situation is as bleak as it has been in a while. We don’t know how closer Eric Gagne and shortstop Cesar Izturis will recover from their surgeries. We don’t know whom the Dodgers will get to replace Milton Bradley. There are questions at the corner infield positions. There are payroll restrictions and few tradable assets. The one strength, a solid farm system, might not kick in soon enough to benefit her.

Most of all, we don’t know who will manage the team.

Could Ng survive if a manager who wasn’t her pick second-guessed her decisions to the media?

Unfortunately, because somebody has to be first, these are some of the issues Ng, 36, would face in addition to representing a new era in baseball.

Her qualifications can’t be questioned. She went to a top-notch school, the University of Chicago. She has worked for the White Sox under Ron Schueler and Dan Evans, the Yankees under Brian Cashman and the Dodgers under Evans again in an era that’s starting to look like the good old days. She has helped negotiate contracts with the likes of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.

If stat-geek boys who didn’t play the game or drive rental cars from minor league town to minor league town can grow up to be general managers, why can’t girls do it?

Those who have worked with her say she’s thorough and professional in everything she does. She might be undervalued publicly because she doesn’t seek credit for things she has done, but that endears her even more to her associates.

And yet she’ll face unprecedented challenges because she’s an Asian woman. She already had to deal with a regrettable incident at the general managers meetings in 2003, when Met scout Bill Singer mocked her with an outlandish Chinese accent. (Singer was fired for his behavior.)

But this is a case where gender trumps ethnicity. Perhaps the biggest question is how she will be received in the clubhouse. One of the problems with Paul DePodesta was he wasn’t at ease with the players. Will Ng be able to interact comfortably with them in that ultimate boys’ room, when the players are in various stages of undress? Perhaps more important, would any potential employers have the confidence that she could?

Women are making progress in baseball. In the latest Racial and Gender Report Card, released by Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, baseball’s gender grade was upgraded from a D to a C compared to the previous year.

Normally important hires that vary from the norm (white males) come when a team has a surplus of good will or is in such dire straits that it might as well try something new. Omar Minaya got his break as the first Latino GM with the down-and-out Montreal Expos.

Of course, most teams don’t need a new coach, manager or general manager if things are going well.

But the Boston Red Sox have had their manager or GM job open up after playoff appearances in two of the last three years. So it does happen.

Ng has even made an appearance on the list of candidates to replace Theo Epstein in Boston. In that instance, her childhood roots as a Yankee fan would be a greater impediment than her gender.

I hope Ng can land her dream job ... somewhere else.

She can do more for the Dodgers than they can do for her. Frank McCourt could be a modern-day Branch Rickey, letting Ng do for female executives what Jackie Robinson did for African American players. Ng has been around for four years, which would bring some much-needed stability to the team. She’d deflect attention from the rash of terminations.

It’s such an opportunity for women, she would almost have to take it if offered. But she deserves better than this.

It’s the wrong job for her to make history, because soon enough she’ll be history, given the McCourts’ penchant for finding scapegoats when things go wrong.

Then she wouldn’t be known as the first female general manager. She would be just another ex-Dodger.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande go to latimes.com/Adande.