This is excellent news for Asian Americans in sports. Looking around, there aren't any other Asian American coaches or general managers, though Kim Ng has come close a few times in baseball. In football we haven't had an Asian American head coach or GM in the pros or in college sports, though Norm Chow has been offensive coordinator for the Tennessee Titans. To my knowledge there are no strong candidates in basketball either.
SEATTLE -- Don Wakamatsu became the first Asian American manager in major league baseball history when he was hired Wednesday by the Seattle Mariners. The 14th manager in Mariners history, Wakamatsu was bench coach for the Oakland Athletics last season. Before that he spent five years with the Texas Rangers. The 45-year-old was among a field of seven candidates interviewed by Mariners general manager Jack Zdurencik. None of the seven had previous major league managerial experience.
Posted by Alvin at November 19, 2008 10:18 AM
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Your sports blog predicted that Wakamatsu would be the first Asian American manager in baseball in February--bravo!
And, depending on how broad your definition of "Asian" is, you can count Ken Niumatalolo, the head coach at Navy, as an As Am head coach. He's Samoan, and the first Div I coach from that country or from Polynesia (and BTW has continued Navy's rise from the mediocrity of the service academy sports teams; he's on track to be the first Navy coach in a long time to have a winning first season).
I follow him and other Asian American sports figures on my blog:
http://www.examiner.com/x-739-AsianAmerican-Sports-Examiner
We called it here nine months ago.