Lane alum Ryan Wong has graduated from Cubs RBI to front-office internship

A few years ago, Chris Thompson got a tip about a young pitcher at Lane and went to take a look.

Thompson is the manager of youth baseball and softball initiatives for Cubs Charities, and part of his job is scouting players for the Cubs RBI travel-ball program.

The pitcher was Ryan Wong, then a freshman pitching for Lane's sophomore team.

"I'm watching his preparation, the way he's handling himself," Thompson said. "He didn't carry himself as a freshman, [was] very polished.

"I watched him the first two innings and I knew he was someone who should be on our radar."

Wong wound up pitching for the Cubs RBI teams for four seasons from 2018-21. And though he aged out of the program, his days in the Cubs organization weren't over.

Now a rising senior pitcher at Caltech, Wong is in his second summer of interning with the MLB team he's been cheering for his whole life. After working in business operations last year, he's with the baseball operations staff this summer.

"It's definitely surreal," he said. "I grew up a Cubs fan, my dad grew up a Cubs fan. Playing for Cubs RBI was a dream come true. I joined between freshman and sophomore year. It was hard leaving my old team, my best friends from high school were there."

But besides providing a chance to play against better competition, it allowed him to make a difference off the baseball field as well with community outreach activities such as volunteering at a food pantry.

Now a few years older, he's finding that working in the front office is even better.

A computer science and information data science major, he said, "I could see myself working in baseball or sports full time. Just the past two seasons with the Cubs have opened my eyes to what my career path could be."

Last year's internship taught Wong "how to navigate my way around a corporate office ... really making and maintaining relationships" while working with business data.

This year, Wong also had internship offers from the Guardians and Angels along with an invitation to interview for an internship at MLB headquarters in New York City.

But the lure of learning more about the baseball side of things with his favorite team proved too hard to resist.

"I really didn't know what went into baseball operations," Wong said. "It's like nothing you can really imagine."

But there's still a sweet spot for him, because he's still crunching numbers and trying to help the organization figure out how best to use the mass of data at its disposal.

Wong's rise through the ranks from youth player to college intern comes as no surprise to Sean Freeman, his coach at Lane.

"He was obviously a very smart kid, had great grades," Freeman said. "I always knew he was going to do something great with his life."

Wong, an Academic All-Stater as a Lane senior, has a high baseball IQ as well, according to Freeman.

"He was always a smart baseball player," Freeman, who started coaching Wong as a 12-year-old in the Hamlin Park youth program, said.

And now he's putting that intelligence to use beyond the diamond.