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CHICAGO -- Jin Wong was close to being out of baseball.

In fact, when White Sox general manager Chris Getz called this offseason about the possibility of Wong becoming an assistant general manager, Wong had interviews scheduled in the morning and the evening with respective firms to pursue a new career path in wealth management.

“I had to do a lot of soul searching,” Wong said recently. “But at the end of the day, my wife [Libby] said when I hung up the phone, ‘I saw a little twinkle in your eye,’ and that was an opportunity to come in and help [Getz] to establish his vision and see if we can get this organization back to the winner’s circle.

“It’s a second opportunity to be part of something from the ground floor. It’s certainly a historic franchise. There are a lot of resources and a great fanbase. It's an interesting adjustment to make, but by all accounts, Chicago is one of the greatest cities on the face of the Earth.”

Wong worked for the Royals from 2000-23 and spent the past two as vice president/assistant general manager. So Kansas City was the only area his 12-year-old and 10-year-old sons have really known.

They are excited for this fresh start in the Chicago area and to explore the possibilities and expand their horizons. This move from Kansas City to Chicago is minor compared to what Wong’s parents faced in moving their family from Malaysia to Washington, D.C. when Wong was a kid.

“My parents are immigrants, but I’m also an immigrant. I was born in Malaysia, and I emigrated here,” Wong said. “My father worked for the World Bank, and we moved halfway across the world when I was 4 and we settled in Northern Virginia. It was tough for not only my dad, but my mother didn’t know a soul. Spoke great English, but it’s still hard.

“When you are a kid, when we are all kids, kids are brutally mean. It’s not lost on me that I heard a lot of it when I was a kid, and it took me a while to get comfortable in my own skin.”

Baseball began for Wong as a player with the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., where he earned Division III All-American honors in 1996. He was a center fielder who could run and throw a little bit.

Teams hadn’t really started signing plus-plus runners at the time, and while he went to some tryouts, Wong realized he wasn’t going to get a look. So he moved into the front-office side, beginning after his graduation in 1997 through an internship with the Braves.

Wong’s first job interview was with Hall of Famer Henry Aaron, one of the most important figures in baseball history.

“The Braves called and said, ‘Hey, Mr. Aaron would like to interview you on the phone or in person.’ I said, ‘Tell me where. Tell me when. I’ll be there,’” Wong said. “It was [an internship] program geared toward minorities, and I was lucky enough to get in.

“I saw Hank a couple of years after that at a hotel, and the one thing I regret was not actually going up to him and saying, ‘I was an intern in your program, and I’m going to K.C. as a full-time member of the baseball operations staff, and I wanted to thank you.’ He was one of the greatest.

“Certainly, super lucky to have spent time with him as a part of his program. He opened the door, his program did, for me and my career.”

With the White Sox, Wong oversees contract negotiations, salary arbitration, budgeting and payroll management.

“He’s got a wide-ranging skill set,” Getz said. “He has experience in this game.

“We had a working history, so there’s a rapport and trust. He’s got a strong track record in arbitration and understands rules and regulations. He has solid relationships with agents and members of Major League Baseball. When he became available, it seemed like a good fit.”