Charles Francis Barrett was born on June 14, 1871, son of John Barrett, an immigrant from Canada, and Mary (Dolan) Barrett. It was a large family, with at least nine children, according to the 1880 census. According to The Sporting News, John served as a member of the St. Louis Fire Department. With so many mouths to feed, Charley left Jefferson school at the age of 14 to work for the St. Louis Messenger Service. A year later he was promoted to the job of clerk. He later worked for the Mound City Livery Company as a telephone operator and director of the company’s nighttime messenger service. The nighttime job allowed Charley to play baseball during the day. As a member of the Emerald Cadets, a Catholic organization, Barrett organized a baseball team.

Barrett began playing semiprofessional ball in his native St. Louis for the Fairs ballclub and then played for the George Diel club until he was signed to a professional contract by Lou Whistler for his Chattanooga club in 1901. In 1902 Barrett played for Sedalia of the Missouri Valley League and Colorado Springs in the Western League. Longtime baseball man Joseph J. Quinn had seen Barrett play on the sandlots of St. Louis. He recommended him to millionaire gold-mine owner Thomas Burns, who was starting a club in Colorado Springs.

In 1903 Barrett played with Dallas and Fort Worth of the Texas League. In 1904 he moved on to Houston of the South Texas League. In 1905 he played for Beaumont/Brenham, San Antonio, and Galveston of the South Texas League. An outfielder, Barrett could run but not hit, compiling a lifetime batting average under .200.

After his minor-league career Barrett returned to St. Louis to work in a sporting-goods store. For a time he managed a team in the local semipro Trolley League. He also informally scouted, recommending St. Louis-area players to minor-league clubs. His official scouting career began in 1909 when he attempted to persuade St. Louis Browns president Bob Hedges to open a ticket office in the sporting-goods store. Hedges knew Barrett’s name from his minor-league playing days as someone who had recommended players and offered him a job as a scout with the Browns. Barrett accepted, beginning his long ivory-hunting career that would last until his death in 1939. Barrett also managed the Houston club in the Texas League for part of the 1909 season.

Barrett stayed with the Browns through 1916, developing a close relationship with Browns front-office magnate Branch Rickey. Offered more money, Barrett worked as a scout for the Detroit Tigers in the 1917 season. In 1918 he returned to St. Louis to again work for Rickey, who had moved over to the Cardinals. Considered by some to be Rickey’s right arm, he helped the executive develop the famous Cardinals farm system.

Barrett referred to it as chain-store baseball. The idea was to have a large number of farm clubs allied with the Cardinals, playing at different levels so prospects could work their way through the system, theoretically gaining experience and improving until they were ready to be major leaguers. The excess players could then be traded or sold to other organizations. Rickey often referred to it as gaining quality from quantity.

It is interesting how little changes in baseball over time. Teams today have different philosophies in player development. Some move players slowly through their system, wanting them to have success at a level before promoting them. Others will move top prospects through the system faster, wanting to “challenge” them. In 1935 Barrett was quoted as saying the Cardinals wanted more D and C level teams (in a system topped by A and AA). He said they liked to send players as low as they could, so that they could be big frogs in little puddles.

Barrett frequently led or helped with Cardinal tryout camps, a favored way for the Cardinals to scout talent. In his career it was estimated he traveled over 500,000 miles, by car, bus, train, airplane, and even a tractor. At one point in his career Barrett ordered a special license plate for his Lincoln Zephyr car, bearing the words “Cardinals scout” with the Redbird logo upon it. He said he wanted people to know who he was so they might tip him off to local prospects.

Charley often went to great lengths to sign a player, even signing three players out of Cuba. The Sporting News told the story of Barrett traveling down a muddy road on his way to scout a player. His car got stuck but he was able to reach a phone to call the father of the prospect, who promptly sent a man with a tractor to pick Barrett up and bring him to the tryout spot. The player wasn’t signed.ii

Charley related another unusual signing story, that of pitcher Tim McCabe. Barrett stopped off at Farmington, Missouri, to visit the local county fair. He paid his 50 cents to get in to the fair and soon discovered a ballgame was one of the attractions. Ever the sharp-eyed scout, Barrett wandered over to watch the game, paying 25 cents for a seat in the grandstand. He quickly spotted McCabe’s work on the mound, signing him immediately after the conclusion of the contest.iii

Even the great ones sometimes get it wrong. A story was told on Barrett that he was scouting at the University of Oklahoma and spotted Colonel Buster Mills. He didn’t have a roster so he asked a player who the good outfielder was. The player replied Wahl. Barrett sent a contract back to Oklahoma and Wahl duly signed. A Cleveland scout then came in and signed Mills and Barrett later made a minor-league deal to get Mills into the Cardinals system. The story may be apocryphal but Mills did have a teammate at Oklahoma in 1930 named Tifford Wahl.

Scouting right up to the end, Barrett died on July 4, 1939, at his home on Wabada Avenue in St. Louis. The Cardinals team physician, Dr. Robert Hyland, signed the death certificate. He was survived by three sisters and a brother. He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. He never married, The Sporting News saying “For even a woman of the Mrs. Roosevelt type hardly could keep up with him.”

Barrett’s 66 signings include: Mack Allison, Bill Beckman, Les Bell, Ray Blades, Jim Bottomley, Bunny Brief, Bud Byerly, Ray Cunningham, Jumbo Elliot, Homer Ezzell, Rick Ferrell, Max Flack, Art Fletcher, Rube Foster, Jesse Fowler, Ival Goodman, Bert Griffith, Charlie Grimm, Don Gutteridge, Chick Hafey, Andy High, Charlie High, Hugh High, Walter Holke, Al Hollingsworth, Joe Jenkins, Syl Johnson, Johnny Keane, Bob Keely, Billy Kelly, Bill Killefer, Bob Klinger, Grover Lowdermilk, Pepper Martin, Tim McCabe, Heinie Meine, Walt Meinert, Benny Meyer, Bing Miller, Heinie Mueller, Buddy Napier, Earl Naylor, Mickey O’Neil, Fritz Ostermueller, Bill Pertica, Rube Peters, Cotton Pippen, Hub Pruett, George Puccinelli, Art Reinhart, Pete Reiser, Flint Rhem, Muddy Ruel, William Rumler, Lou Scoffic, Hank Severeid, Ray Starr, Allyn Stout, Homer Summa, Jeff Tesreau, Frank Truesdale, Elam Vangilder, Gus Williams, Jim Winford, Ab Wright, and Johnny Wyrostek.

Sources

Missouri death certificate

Baseball-reference.com

The Sporting News: various issues

Newspapers including the Anaconda (Montana) Standard

www.ancestry.com including censuses of 1880, 1910, and 1930

SABR Scouts committee databases

Notes

In rural counties from the Ohio Valley to the Great Lakes basin, super-scout Gene Bennett became the face of the Cincinnati Reds organization during more than a half-century of evaluating talent for the franchise.  The team changed ownership seven times since he began scouting in 1958. Thus far 11 different general managers have deemed Gene Bennett’s services indispensable to Reds operations.

He didn’t keep count, but between 1958 and 1988 Gene Bennett signed at least 100 players to professional contracts.  For that job performance, Bennett has been awarded with nearly every major award a scout can win. Even so, Bennett’s activities during the rest of the year may well leave an even more lasting legacy.  In the course of decades of volunteer activities to improve the educational and recreational opportunities for the youth of his hometown, Gene Bennett became an integral part of the renaissance of amateur baseball in the Tri-state region. 

Gene Bennett was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, and resided for all of his life in Wheelersburg, a smaller city in the same county.  He played two sports in high school and fell in love with an underclassman. Gene graduated from Wheelersburg High School in 1946 and married two years later.  He and Loretta Maxine Bennett have two children and five grandchildren.  Bennett played amateur baseball in local night and Saturday leagues until a Reds scout signed him to a professional contract in 1952.  After five years of minor-league baseball, Bennett retired as a player and became a part-time scout.  In 1991, the Reds officially promoted him to their front office.  Bennett is currently the Senior Special Assistant to the General Manager.

Very little of Gene Bennett’s life happened by accident. His forceful ebullient personality is at the core of the story of how this self-proclaimed country boy flourished in the hyper-competitive world of professional baseball for a half century. Such longevity required both extraordinary talent and an extraordinary love of the game.

A SPORTS-MAD COUNTY AND A HOLE IN THE STADIUM FENCE

The Ohio River winds through the Appalachian Mountains to form the western border of West Virginia, the southern border of Ohio and the northern border of Kentucky.  Ohio’s Scioto County is situated a few miles downstream from where the cities of Ashland (KY) and Huntington (WV) are separated only by the state line and the college sports loyalties of their inhabitants.  By the standards of Scioto County, both are big cities.  The population of the county peaked in the early 1940’s at 86,565 and was smaller in the year 2000 than it was in the 1950s. Portsmouth is the county seat. Wheelersburg is the only other true city. 

Farmland is the principal scenery and the principal traffic hazards are slow-moving trucks carrying the output of strip mines. The surrounding counties of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia are very similar. Anyone who talks with Gene Bennett for more than a few minutes quickly realizes that although his current job takes him out of the country, it will never take the country out of Gene.

Scioto County was deeply enmeshed in the history of American professional sports long before Gene Bennett signed with the Reds.  Jim Thorpe played semipro football for the Portsmouth Steel-Shoes. The NFL’s Detroit Lions began as the Portsmouth Spartans.  Branch Rickey lived in Portsmouth during the offseason, and local resident Al Bridwell, the man at bat when Fred Merkle made his infamous base-running error, was another figure of note.   The wild finish of the 1908 pennant race was still being rehashed over hot stoves while Bennett was growing up. 

Residents of the Tri-state region have always celebrated this sports heritage. Today there are gigantic murals on the Portsmouth floodwall depicting the exploits of professional and amateur athletes from the area.  Through the joint efforts of local unions and businesses, Branch Rickey Park has been restored.  The same ball field on which Walt Alston managed and Whitey Kurowski played now hosts the Gene Bennett Classic, involving top amateur baseball teams from across the nation.  The populace and leadership alike plan to establish Portsmouth, Ohio as a Mecca for professional baseball scouts by making the invitational tournament one of their annual rites of summer.  

Rickey placed one of the Cardinals’ farm teams in Portsmouth in 1938 and ten-year-old Gene Bennett was part of a group who watched games through a gap in the fence. Not content with this distant view of the game, he wriggled through the opening to get into the stands for free. The Portsmouth Redbirds spent only three seasons in town, but “Gene Bennett went out to the ballpark and he never came back.”

Bennett didn’t play any organized form of baseball until age 14.  There was no Little League in his youth; kids played baseball whenever enough of them came together in the same place. His high school team was small, and the uncertain weather of the region allowed no more than 12 games between the end of the basketball season and the close of the school year. Bennett mostly played outfield, but also pitched and played some second base.

Although high school baseball opportunities were limited, amateur adult play was abundant in the area as Bennett grew up.  Every coalfield had a team, and you didn’t have to work there to compete.  In fact, expenses to the game were paid in the more competitive leagues, such as the one in Huntington where Bennett was playing when discovered by Reds scout Buzz Boyle.  

After graduating in 1946, Bennett took a job at a grocery store. He was planning on getting married, but had to wait for two years until his intended graduated from high school.  A knack for gauging a prospect’s commitment level to baseball and to the scouts’ franchise is an essential element in scouting; selecting Loretta Maxine proved to be Bennett’s most critical application of this ability. Without such a loyally supportive wife, his scout’s wandering would not have been possible.  Health permitting, they will celebrate a 65^th wedding anniversary in 2013.

Biographies circulated to reporters and similar interested parties by the Reds have indicated Bennett’s year of birth should be either 1930 or 1931.  Gene was actually born July 29, 1928. In the six years between high school and the minor leagues, he completed three years of courses at Southeastern Business College, suffered a serious shoulder separation playing amateur baseball, experienced a close encounter with the Draft Board, recovered from the injury, and became a father. It was at age 24, rather than age 21, that Gene Bennett began his professional baseball career. 

BALLPLAYER AND SCOUT

The Reds signed Bennett as an outfielder.  His first manager was Johnny Vander Meer of double no-hit fame.  The 38-year-old Vander Meer had been given his release by the Cleveland Indians two years before, after being hammered for six runs in his only major-league game of 1951.  Vander Meer advocated leaving as little as possible to chance: “The harder you work, the luckier you get.”   

Injuries hampered Gene Bennett’s development into a major-league level talent. By 1957, “My shoulder got to where I couldn’t throw much.  That was a big time problem back then because the things you had to do then — you really had to run and you really had to throw. It’s not like it is now. When you couldn’t throw, the chance of you going on to excel was pretty tough.”   

An injured 27-year-old might have opted to see if next season might be better. At his actual age of 29, Bennett could tell that he was no closer to reaching the big leagues as a player than he had been when he graduated from high school.  Playing while hurt wasn’t much fun and so he informed the Reds management that the 1957 season would be his last.

The Reds offered Bennett a chance to manage at the Class D level. They added that if he would rather be a scout then a position was available.  Rather than accept right away, Bennett told them he would think about their offers.  He was the father of two, but wanted to stay in the game. Being a manager was full-time, which meant it paid better and more regularly. Being a scout would be a part-time job, which would synchronize better with offseason jobs and business ventures.

Branch Rickey was already famous as an innovative and highly-successful baseball executive before he and Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball.  Like Bennett, Rickey’s offseason home was in Scioto County.  Being an avid reader when it came to Branch Rickey and baseball, Bennett was quite aware of Rickey’s expertise in financial matters.  The two men had met before. As general manager of the Pirates at the time, Rickey knew that Bennett had been playing for the Reds organization.   One afternoon, when the two men happened to shop in the same place, Bennett opted to make his own luck by striking up a conversation with the great man. 

“Branch Rickey was a very important man, not the sort you could just call up on the phone and ask for advice,” Bennett explained. “But there he was on the street. He already knew who I was, so I went over to talk to him.”  After some general baseball talk, Bennett brought up his situation. “I told him what the deal was, that I wasn’t going to play anymore and the Reds told me they’d like me to be manager of a Class D league or even possibly be a scout.  I asked him, ‘If you was in my shoes, which one would you do?’”

The wording of Rickey’s answer changes from telling to retelling, but the gist remains the same.  Rickey pointed out that Bennett’s employment as a scout would be dependent on his own actions. If Gene worked hard and made good decisions he could keep the scout’s job for a long time.  As a manager, Bennett could work just as hard, make all the right decisions, and still be quickly fired if his team lacked talent. His choice now clear, Gene Bennett called the Reds and accepted a part-time position as a scout. According to Bennett, the Reds had told him they only had six or seven other scouts at that time.   “I immediately set out to create a network of ‘bird dogs;’ eventually I had one in every tree.”  

Bennett could not be everywhere in his territory at once, so he needed to have a pair of eyes wherever a talented amateur player might play.  A bird-dog is a contact who reports that a young player with possible major-league potential is playing in a local game.  In this, Bennett was emulating the scouting technique by which Connie Mack discovered so many major-league stars. 

The technique itself is no secret, but personality is the key to making it work. One needs to be the sort of person who routinely does small and large favors for others so that the recipients welcome the chance to return those favors in the form of tips and scouting reports.  These contacts can easily switch allegiance, or reserve their best tips for a higher bidder. As happened for Mack, Bennett’s 40 bird-dogs remained loyal for decades.  Several became full-fledged scouts for the Reds.  Some, such as Leroy Jackson in Louisville, still work for him today. They are listed on the Reds ledgers as “commission scouts”.

Rickey had cited the desirability of holding tryout camps and the necessity of watching a prospect more than once, and Bennett was a true Rickey disciple in these matters. He also worked in techniques common to present day recruiting in college football and basketball.  In amateur scouting, Job A is locating prospects.  Job B is making a determination of which ones could help the franchise. Job C is getting their signature on a professional contract.  Bennett used the tryout camps to address all three. 

Bennett never wanted the kids to have to drive more than 75 miles to get to the tryout.  Nor did he hold them in a big city unless it was competing with someone else’s tryout camp that same weekend.  Attendance was normally 150 to 200 players, so Bennett brought a five-man evaluation team: himself, Steve Kring to hit fungos, two men to handle the pitchers, and always the local bird-dog, who had handled publicity and issued personal invitations.

“I watched each and every one of the kids….., stood beside them only four feet away, I wanted to see how they gripped the ball, how they positioned their glove and feet.  …..I talked with each of them, encouraged them to call me Gene…. I didn’t want it to be some stranger in their living room when I arrived with a contract.”

Bennett made a point of talking to their parents as well.  When he saw a promising high school sophomore he would write a letter inviting the boy to another tryout session the following year.  Just as he sold insurance, mobile homes, and other products in the offseason, Bennett was selling the Cincinnati Reds organization. Bennett was and still is a top-notch salesman.

To succeed in his job as scout, Bennett had to acquire the skills of a high-school guidance counselor. He was encountering young men with enough physical tools to succeed, yet lacking the mindset to deal with the minor league apprentice they faced before reaching the major leagues.   In professional sports besides baseball, a rookie normally has to undergo a rigorous tryout camp, where the issue to be resolved is mainly whether he is sufficiently mentally and physically skilled to beat out his competition for the limited roster spots.  After that, however, he is just as much a part of the team as if he were a college recruit arriving on campus.   He may have to watch from the sidelines, but he wears the team uniform and counts himself as one of the team.  A baseball player, on the other hand, normally requires a minor-league apprenticeship of at least two full years. 

Instead of the physically grueling tryout week, the prospect faces a mental ordeal that lasts years. There are long bus rides to places like Danville, Virginia. He experiences cheap hotels, small crowds, dilapidated stadiums, low pay, and little or no publicity.  That requires either a very different mind-set, or the kind of character that cheerfully looks past obstacles to the long-term goal.  Bennett got to know the recruits personally. That gave him a realistic chance to determine which were up to the apprenticeship and which would give up before reaching their full potential as ballplayers. 

“I wanted to only sign kids who were really enthusiastic, who really wanted to play for the Cincinnati Reds someday.” If they were thinking about college instead, then Bennett would back off.  He had Barry Larkin all but signed, but Larkin’s family wanted him to go to college.  Bennett promised that his Michigan scout would keep watching Larkin’s development as a player. In 1985, the Reds made Larkin a first-round amateur free agent draft choice.

Bennett made a point of being scrupulously honest in his dealing with prospects and their families.  Verbal frankness may have cost him a few signings in his early days, but it established his credibility and made him welcome in living rooms throughout the territory even before the first Bennett-groomed prospect reached the majors. Once local hero Don Gullett went from high school to the majors with just one year in the minor leagues. Bennett had rival scouts boxed out.  The Reds were the team for which parents in the rural counties of Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana were rooting. And for the young ballplayers, Bennett represented the gateway to the Promised Land, a roster spot on the Big Red Machine.

Very much in the Branch Rickey tradition, Bennett put great importance on the ability to run and throw: “If I was looking at a position player, I looked [for] a player that could really run. I looked for a guy that had an outstanding arm, and then I test his eyes to see if he could see. If you sign players like that, if they ever hit, you don’t have a baseball player, you got a star.  If he don’t hit, you got an outstanding utility player.” 

When asked about hitting, Bennett responded that the two things he looked for were a quick bat and good vision of the ball. “If it was possible to teach hitting, I would have simply come to Louisville and pick out 10 good athletes and we’d make major league players out of them in a year. Unfortunately, that won’t work…You just never know who will hit and who won’t… But I do know that without a quick bat it’s mighty hard to be a good [major league] hitter.”

When scouting pitchers he looked for guys who can throw hard, and throw strikes.  “If you’ve got competent pitching instructors, they can teach that guy a changeup or a curve, or something like that. But when you get a guy that can throw that ball up to 95 miles an hour, he don’t have to have much other stuff.”

Even though it was the hope of signing a future Hall of Famer that motivated Bennett, he became noteworthy for the volume of players he brought to the Reds.  This volume itself had value to the major-league team.  A franchise like Cincinnati cannot afford to stock itself entirely with stars, and excess quantity can be traded to acquire quality. In 1976 General Manager Bob Howsam held a meeting with the scouts and informed them that Reds policy for dealing with free-agency losses would be to sign and develop talent faster than it departed.

Bennett had been given the green light. He was already looking over as many as 5,000 prospects each year. Now he could sign five, six, even 10 prospects per year if he spotted that much talent.  According to Bennett, six was the most he ever signed, and in his first nine years of scouting, he signed no future major leaguers.  Be that as it may, starting in 1967 Bennett went on a two-decade-long hot streak that got him promoted to the full-time position of regional scouting director in 1975. In commenting upon Bennett’s scouting productivity the local paper admitted “Gene Bennett hasn’t signed every [Reds] player in the past six decades, it only seems that way.” 

On Bennett’s recommendation, the Reds drafted Dave Tomlin of Maysville with their 29^th-round draft pick in 1967. The left-handed pitcher spent parts of the 1972 and 1973 seasons as a reliever for the Reds before being included in the Clay Kirby/Bobby Tolan trade with the Padres in November 1973.  While Tomlin was undergoing his minor-league apprenticeship, Bennett cornered the market on a left-handed pitcher who would have immediate major-league impact. 

“Don Gullett, had he not had that shoulder problem, he would probably have gone down as one of the greatest pitchers in American baseball. I’ve signed good pitchers, but I never saw a high school kid in my life that even came close to this guy. I hear people today say ‘This guy’s better than Gullett,’ but Gullett’s changeup is better than anyone’s fastball.”

Within a year and a half of his signing, the teenage Gullett was pitching in the 1970 World Series.  The following year he went 16-6 as a starting pitcher with a 2.65 ERA.  Gullett became the number one starter of the World Champion “Big Red Machine” by age 24. His .686 winning percentage through age 28 ranks ninth-best all-time through 2010 for pitchers with 100 or more decisions.  Surrounding Gullett on that lists are super-luminaries Juan Marichal, Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, John Clarkson, Kid Nichols, and Jim Palmer.  Unfortunately, injuries curtailed Gullett’s availability after 1974 and ended his career altogether in 1978.  

In 1975, Bennett was promoted to regional scouting director and his area of responsibility was expanded to include Indiana, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada. Bennett went right to work training his scouting force and setting yet more bird-dogs in place.  Bennett was now being paid enough to work full-time as a scout and the results won him a dozen Topps Scout of the Month awards and Topps Scout of the Year for 1988.  

Bennett and the scouts he supervised brought in both role players like Skeeter Barnes and Eddie Milner, and all-stars like Jeff Russell, Chris Sabo, Paul O’Neill and Barry Larkin.  Like Tomlin and Charlie Leibrandt, these players went on to lengthy major-league careers.  Had Bennett not been overruled by other members of the Reds’ front office, this list would also include Leon Durham, John Smoltz, and Derek Jeter.   

The Jeter case remains a sore spot in Bennett’s usually sunny disposition. “I had a deal worked out with him already,” Bennett said. “A cross checker came in and looked him and saw him play and said ‘He’s all right but he ain’t no first round pick.’ [Cross-checkers] are the smart guys that would come in and see a guy pitch two innings and bat twice, and they was the judge and the jury.” 

It was only during the 1992 amateur draft that Bennett learned that the Reds would not use their first pick (#5 overall) on Derek Jeter.  “They said, ‘The Cincinnati Reds take Chad Mottola,’ and I said, [sarcastically], ‘Yeah, the Cincinnati Reds just took Babe Ruth, too.’ Then real quick I heard them say, ‘New York Yankees take Derek Jeter,’ and I said ‘Holy cow!’”

Cross-checkers likewise nixed Durham and Smoltz.  Durham wore glasses; and there was a considerable prejudice against such players. Bennett’s view was that since the glasses gave Durham unusually acute vision at the plate, they were an asset rather than a liability. The St. Louis Cardinals agreed. They made Durham a first-round pick, and then used him to acquire future Hall of Famer Bruce Sutter.  “Smoltz was short-arming the ball”, a trait that Bennett realized was easily corrected.  The Tigers signed Smoltz in September 1985, corrected his motion, and by mid-1987 were able to trade him straight up for veteran Doyle Alexander. Smoltz went on to win 213 major-league games and saved another 154. 

While Bennett was building his resume as a remarkable amateur scout, during the offseason he was building a reputation as a better than average basketball referee.  He started with high school games, and then officiated for the NCAA from 1970-1991. As Bennett pointed out when asked about job conflicts, even a regional scouting director has nothing to do during the offseason. His work officiating high school games earned him a place in the Ohio High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame in 1993.

ICON IN THE FRONT OFFICE

Starting in the mid-1980s, the Reds began having problems keeping the advance pro scout position filled into their satisfaction. Bennett was the man they called upon in the interim.  After 1988 he went into the field primarily as a cross-checker.  In late 1992, Bennett was named Special Assistant to General Manager Jim Bowden.  He was 64; his boss was 31.

Bennett recently described his duties as special assistant.  “I haven’t scouted a Class A game since 1991…These days I mostly scout major-league games, but basically I do whatever I am told, including sweep the floor.  I don’t put much stock in titles.”  Bennett’s new position had two basic duties; watch as many major-league games as possible and be prepared to give his advice concerning any player at the professional level.  Such activities are widely referred to as “advance scouting”, but when Gene Bennett uses the term “scouting” he means taking in amateur games or holding tryouts.

Bennett’s time as field scout was over, but the players he signed continued playing in the major leagues and as they prospered so did Bennett’s reputation.  Gene had worked with and trained many other scouts and when their success brought them press attention, Bennett’s name sometimes came up during interviews. Matt Arnold is now Director of Professional Scouting for Tampa Bay. The Blue Jays rely heavily on the judgment of Don Welke. Former Reds scouts Alex Cosmidis (Cubs) and Gary Hughes (White Sox) were East Coast and West Coast Scouts of the Year in 2009.

The basic cause of these changes of allegiance was economic. With its world championship in 1990, Reds management had proved it could rebuild the team to a championship level in the face of losses to free agency. Other teams coveted that ability and made offers to Reds personnel. When these offers were not matched by the Reds front office the scouting force began to shrink by attrition.  In his acceptance speech for Midwest Scout of the Year in 2009, Bennett offered special praise to the ones who stayed with the Reds:  Fred Hays (Michigan), Leroy Jackson (Louisville), Harry Steinriede (Cincinnati), and Steve Kring (now responsible for Georgia and South Carolina.)

Bennett emphatically denies the story that circulated about owner Marge Schott’s contempt for scouting.  In Bennett’s version, a reporter overheard a humorous rejection of a raise for a particular scout.  It is worth noting that his denial did not say that any scout received a raise in compensation. 

Bennett’s involvement in his home community was a natural outgrowth of his children attending the same high school that he and his wife had attended. He was president of the athletic booster club for 17 years. During that time he lobbied local leaders to rebuild the high school football stadium. Partly as a result of these ultimately successful efforts, when Wheelersburg High School created its Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001, Gene Bennett was the first man honored.

Scioto County does have Little League teams today. They play on a six-field complex in a public park with Gene Bennett’s name on it. Shawnee State University in Portsmouth has a scholarship fund which enables local children to attend the local college the way Bennett attended Southeast Business College.   That, too, bears his name. 

Branch Rickey Field had fallen into considerable disrepair when area activists began discussion of an amateur invitational baseball tournament.  Local governments were in no position to pay for any renovation but persuading local unions and business to donate time and material solved the problem. Bennett was one of those doing the persuading.  In June 2010 the first Annual Gene Bennett Classic took place with teams coming from as far away as Texas.  It is Bennett’s desire that as many local people as possible see firsthand what really good baseball is like.

Bennett was Topps Scout of the Year again in 1995, despite his reassignment to advance scout duties.  The same is true of his 1994 selection as Scout of the Year by the Mid-Atlantic Baseball Scouts Association.  In 1996 this same organization named Bennett to their Hall of Fame.

Bennett’s influence extended beyond recommending baseball players. Veteran umpire Charlie Reliford credits Bennett for his hiring by the National League. “Gene would always tell my boss, ‘You better buy his option before the American League gets him.’” Reliford was hired in 1991 and has thus far called two World Series, three League Championship Series, four Division Series, and two All-Star Games.

Bennett was part of the search committee the Reds set up to find a new general manager.  The committee chose special advisor Jim Beattie in February of 2006, but Bennett and west coast scouting supervisor Larry Barton, Jr. convinced owner Bob Castellini to hire former Minnesota assistant GM Wayne Krivsky.  This time Bennett’s recommendation did not work out as he expected. And yet 17 months later, when the front office ended its game of musical chairs, the winners were Gene Bennett and his friend and protégé Walt Jocketty.

Krivsky made numerous changes in management as well as on the roster.  Even though he has cited her among his reasons for accepting the position, Krivsky told scouting coordinator Wilma Mann that her services as “mother superior” to the field scouts were no longer desired.  Barton quit a few months after that, citing fundamental differences over trades and roster composition as well as Krivsky’s unwillingness to take advice.   Director of player development Johnny Almaraz resigned a few days later, also citing a reduced role in team decision making. The Reds front office was making more headlines for its turmoil than its trades.

Two years into Krivsky’s three-year contract, Walt Jocketty became special advisor to the president.  Jocketty had trained with Bennett as a scout and rose to become general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. When the team got off to a 9-12 start in 2008, owner Bob Castellini dismissed Krivsky and installed Jocketty in his place.  Shortly afterwards, Jocketty named Bennett as Senior Special Assistant to the General Manager.  Gene said, “Not bad for a country boy.”

A PLACE IN COOPERSTOWN?

The role of scouts was relatively obscure to the average fan of the 1970s, yet they play an undeniably vital role in professional baseball.  As Tommy Lasorda noted in 2010 at the Spirit of the Game fund-raiser, “Without scouts there would be no players.” Yet the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was doing little or nothing to recognize their contributions.

The Scout of the Year Foundation was formed in 1984 with the expressed goal of changing this.  Its long-term goal was the admission of scouts as full members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Its intermediate objectives were to promote excellence and professionalism within the profession and to raise public awareness of baseball scouting to the extent that a permanent exhibit at Cooperstown would be created similar to what sportswriters enjoy.

With the assistance of such sponsors as Topps, the Baseball Blue Book, and Louisville Slugger, the Scout of the Year Foundation holds an annual awards dinner during the major-league winter meetings.  Each year three scouts are honored: one from the West, one from the Midwest, and one from the East.  In addition to attracting press attention, the awards created a permanent record of whom the scouting community regarded as the best of the best.  Bennett was the Midwest honoree for 2009.

Major League Baseball eventually reacted to the rising public awareness of scouting. The Commissioner’s office began to publicly support the fundraising of the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation.  Founded in 2003, in response to the acute financial distress of many former scouts, the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation makes grants to scouts and their families. The bulk of scouts are paid very modest salaries, making continuation of health insurance benefits a pressing concern.  Older scouts were especially vulnerable to budgetary cutbacks instituted after the publication of the book entitled Moneyball.  Bennett actively supports the work of this Calabasas-based foundation and made a point of mentioning its work during his phone interviews with the author.

Fundraising for this foundation includes proceeds from memorabilia donated and then auctioned at an annual gala now titled “The Spirit of the Game”. The highlights of this Hollywood-style celebration of baseball include the presentation of the foundation’s lifetime achievement awards. On January 2009, Gene Bennett was the first presented with the Legends in Scouting Award.  

The award and its subsequent publicity came as no surprise to the people of the Tri-state region. For them Gene Bennett was already one of their living legends. They had a mural to prove it. 

Postscript

Gene Bennett died at the age of 89 on August 16, 2017, in Portsmouth, Ohio.

An earlier version of this biography appeared in “Can He Play? A Look at Baseball Scouts and Their Profession” (SABR, 2011), edited by Bill Nowlin and Jim Sandoval.

Sources

Interviews with Gene Bennett on August 2 and August 11, 2010. All quotations from Bennett are from these interviews unless otherwise attributed.

“Murals to Honor Gene Bennett” by Jim Walker. IrontonTribune.com. Originally published and posted January 7, 2010;

 “Red letter career” staff , Ironton Tribune July 14, 2006.  

Ibidem Scioto County Department of Health confirmed the date Bennett provided. 

This raises the question of how the US Army got his birthdate wrong. Bennett suggested that, as he was never actually sworn in, the author’s web search found records that pertain to a different Gene Bennett from Wheelersburg, Ohio.

Acceptance Speech for 2009 Midwest Scout of the Year, by Gene Bennett, December 10, 2009. Video Is attached to “Bennett Honored as Top Midwest Scout: Earns award during 58th year with organization.” Reds.com.

“Bennett Talks about Career” by Ryan Scott Ottney, Portsmouth Daily Times, E-edition.August 18, 2010.

“Sign ‘em up Gene” by Jim Walker. Ironton Tribune, January 27, 2009

“Bennett to receive MLB Scout of the Year award” by Wayne Allen. Posted to Communitycommon.com, December 6, 2009. CommunityCommon.com  is a weekly newsletter dedicated to events in the tri-state counties. The Topps awards are cited in multiple places including Walker, op cit, and by GM Walt Jocketty when introducing Bennett in “Acceptance speech.” 

“Jeter a Red? It could have been” by Tim Sullivan, Cincinnati Enquirer.  Enquirer.com on October 15, 1999.

“Around the Bases: Episode 28 Special Assistant to the GM Gene Bennett” on Shorebirds .com, home of Delmarva Shorebirds.  Bennett is interviewed in the announcers’ booth during a minor-league game.  Shorebirds.com.

“Umpire Ready for Trip Home” by Mark Maynard, Ashland Kentucky Independent.

“Departing Reds staffer takes shots at Krivsky” Dayton Daily News, December 5, 2006  by Hal McCoy, and “Reds Farm Director resigns” by Staff. Baseball America, December 14, 2006.

“Professional Baseball Scouts Dinner 2010 video clip” quote by Tom Lasorda,  Official site for Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation.

Cuba was the focus of Cambria’s major contribution to baseball history. He signed well over 400 young Cuban ballplayers to professional contracts from the mid-1930s until he died in 1962. He was a celebrity on the island – the major link between the baseball-hungry country and the major leagues. For much of his career, he was virtually the only link. Cambria and Griffith began signing Cuban talent as early as 1932 and firmly established themselves in the country by the middle of the decade. A few years after that, Cambria relocated to the island at least on a part-time basis, spending much of the year in Havana scouting players and following up on tips from the “bird-dog” scouts he planted throughout the nation.

Joseph Carl Cambria was born in Messina, Italy, on July 5, 1890, perhaps 1889. His first name was Carlo before it was Americanized. In 1890, his father, John (Giovanni) Cambria, a shoemaker, left Messina and settled in Boston. Joseph and his two older brothers, Charles (Pasquale) and John (Giovanni), immigrated to the United States in 1893, landing in New York on August 2. Their mother may have died in Italy between 1890 and ’93; she didn’t make the 1893 voyage, and the senior John is listed as a widower in the 1900 U.S. Census.

Joseph attended public schools in Boston and became a naturalized citizen on March 14, 1916, while living in Lowell, a manufacturing city about 40 miles from Boston. Like many in the area, Cambria was a big baseball fan. He played amateur and semipro ball in Boston, Roxbury, Lowell, Medford, other towns, and into Rhode Island. He joined his first professional club, Newport of the independent Rhode Island State League, in July 1909, replacing a center fielder named Martin who had broken his leg. Cambria, a short right-hander, made his pro debut on the 11th. The Newport Daily News commented, “Cambria, a dark, pleasant-looking player from Medford way, was secured for the outfield.” In a game on August 1, the Daily News reported, “There was (a) two or three-bagger of (Louis J.) Lepine’s which Cambria caught with his bare right hand in the eighth, shutting off a run and bringing the spectators to their feet.” Cambria received praise by the paper throughout the season for his splendid fielding in center.

Cambria returned to Newport in May 1910 “considerably heavier than he was last year.” He played with the club the entire season. In 1911 he joined Berlin, Ontario, in the Class D Canadian League, manning center field for the pennant-winning Green Sox. In 102 games, he batted a so-so .245. In 1912, Cambria patrolled center again and also played a little second base for the club. On May 27, he placed four hits in five at-bats off four different pitchers. However, after 38 games, Cambria broke his leg, and his playing career came to an end. He was hitting .231 at the time.

Cambria returned home, finding jobs in both Boston and Lowell. Around 1917, he married Boston native Charlotte Kane, five years his senior. The couple never had children. After military service during World War I, Cambria and his wife relocated to Baltimore. He found employment managing a supply house and later purchased the Bugle Coat and Apron Company, a laundering business, on North Chester Street in Baltimore. The couple ran the business together until they sold it in 1938. Joe dove into professional baseball club ownership in the early 1930s, and Charlotte took over much of the management of the laundry business.

The Bugle Company entered a baseball club of the same name in the Baltimore Amateur League to kick off the 1928 season. The Bugles did well in the league and Cambria made it a semipro outfit in August, taking on stiffer competition from surrounding states and local teams like the Baltimore Black Sox, an African American club. Cambria played a little for the Bugle squad. The team lasted through 1932. In 1928 and ’29, Allan Russell, a ten-year major leaguer, pitched for the club. In 1930, Walter Beall, who spent five years in the majors, did as well. Starting in 1930, Cambria sponsored several teams that barnstormed through the area after the pro season.

To accommodate his clubs, Cambria purchased and revamped a ballpark at Federal Street and Edison Highway in Baltimore in the mid-1920s, renaming it Bugle Field. In 1929, he enlarged the grandstand to accommodate his growing ambitions. He leased the park for and promoted boxing and wrestling matches. Football games were also played on the grounds.

In December 1929, Cambria purchased his first professional club, the Hagerstown Hubs of the four-team, Class D Blue Ridge League. He picked up the franchise for the cost of its indebtedness. His goal as an entrepreneur was to make money by selling off talent. The Baltimore Sun wrote at the time of the purchase, “It was with the idea of developing material for major and minor leagues that Cambria came into this city. … It is by the sale of players he hopes to earn his profits.” He immediately brought in seasoned baseball executive John “Poke” Whalen to scout and sign players and develop connections throughout the game. Cambria kept to the same business plan throughout his ownership career: keep costs low; pay little for talent; sell talent when the opportunity arose; build the franchise at the gate as best as possible; sell out or relocate if things got too bad.

Cambria was at a disadvantage in the Blue Ridge League; he owned the only unaffiliated franchise. The other league owners could rely, at least partly, on assistance from a major-league club. Despite the handicap, Cambria made money. Hagerstown finished in third place in 1930 with Cambria managing part of the year. To spark interest in Baltimore, the Hubs trained at Bugle Field. Also, Cambria quickly aligned himself with the Washington Senators, developing a tight lifelong relationship with Clark Griffith, owner of the Senators. Even before the 1930 season began, Hagerstown sold its first players to Washington. Cambria owned quite a few ballclubs over the next decade and a half, and each maintained a working relationship with the Senators. Griffith even co-owned some of them.

Over the winter of 1930-31, Cambria sparred with the Maryland legislature trying to strike down the Blue Laws that prevented Sunday baseball. He loudly declared, “Without Sunday ball, I don’t see how the Hagerstown club can exist in the league.” For his propensity for talking and pushing into league and other matters, he earned the derogatory nickname Jabbering Joe. The team moved into the Class C Middle Atlantic League in 1931. Failing to obtain legalized Sunday ball, Cambria moved the franchise to Parkersburg, West Virginia, on June 28 and again to Youngstown, Ohio, on July 12. Cambria managed the team on the field the entire season. The club boasted some of the best hitting in the league, led by Babe Phelps, Sam Thomas, and Bill Pritchard, but landed 23½ games behind the champion Charleston Senators. The Cumberland Evening Times in Maryland summed up his season: “Cambria sported the worst ball club in the league, a coterie of misfits that proved duck soup for the other clubs of the league.” The paper implied that he sold off his best talent for cash. In April 1932, Cambria switched the Youngstown club to the Class B Central League. The team finished fourth and he sold the franchise.

In 1932, Cambria purchased the Baltimore Black Sox from longtime owner George Rossiter, a local saloon owner. He revamped Bugle Field for the team, obtaining nicer seats from the crumbling Maryland Park, and extended the grandstands to accommodate more covered seating. He built a clubhouse with showers, added a press box, and installed lighting equipment by early summer. The promotion-minded owner purchased a pair of ponies to walk the streets of Baltimore displaying advertising for the club. Cambria had high hopes for the team, backed by a local black population of 142,000, the fourth highest in the country. The Black Sox and Bugles worked out together before the season.

The Black Sox competed in Cum Posey’s East-West League and barnstormed extensively, as all black clubs did to make ends meet. However, the ends didn’t meet in Baltimore. In fact, the Black Sox spent nearly the entire second half of the season on the road after the league disbanded. The team was run on the “co-plan”; players were guaranteed only their transportation expenses, and had to split the gate with management to earn cash. Cambria tore up all the players’ contracts to institute the new system. This made it easier for the men to jump teams, which they started to do with frequency at the end of the year. The next year, 1933, was a rougher year still financially. To start, the Black Sox’ previous investors sued Cambria for the Black Sox name and won. The squad was simply called the Sox until a settlement was reached near the end of the year. Also, a Negro Leagues player and owner, Ben Taylor inserted a second nine in Baltimore, the Stars. Competition for talent and attendance was stiff.

The Black Sox competed briefly in Gus Greenlee’s new Negro National League in 1933, amassing a poor 13-18 record after being accepted into the fold in May. When Cambria applied for readmission to the league in 1934, several of his star players announced their intention to leave the club. Ultimately Cambria couldn’t come to terms with the players and Greenlee rejected his application for readmittance. The players were declared free agents and Cambria disbanded the Black Sox.

In February 1933, he had purchased Albany of the International League from the Chicago Cubs for $7,500. He operated the franchise through 1936. True to form, Cambria sold as many players as he could. Off the bat, he sold Babe Phelps, Tommy Thompson, and Ray Prim to major-league clubs. Some estimates placed his take at nearly $40,000. For developing and selling talent, Cambria earned another moniker, Salesman Joe. With the sales, he made money in 1933, not an easy task for a minor-league club during the Depression. He also solidified his relation with Clark Griffith, establishing another working agreement with Washington.

During the pennant run in 1933, the Senators lost money. The costs of acquiring players were sapping all profits. Griffith figured that he had to find a better way to field a major-league team. He consequently developed a close working relationship with Cambria. As a result, acquisition costs dropped to about $100,000 in 1936, and all the way down to $49,500 by 1944. The Senators placed second in the American League in 1943 and 1945 despite spending relatively little to fill their roster.

Cambria supplied the Senators with talent for two decades. When Griffith needed a ballplayer, he called Cambria and a player was soon headed to Washington. The Griffith/Cambria relationship was unique in sports history. Cambria lived frugally, though he always had investments on the side. His loyalty to Griffith was such that he turned down significantly higher offers for Mickey Vernon and George Case, among others, and relinquished them to the Senators for considerably less cash. Such a relationship didn’t exist anywhere else in sports. For example, other major-league executives were willing to pay $10,000 for the speedy Case but Cambria sold him to Griffith for $1,000 and a promise to make up the difference if Case made good. In fact, most of the players came to Griffith in this manner. His outlays were few and secured by the fact that the ballplayer had to prove himself before money was forked over. Cambria took part in this relationship willingly; he was committed to the betterment of Griffith and the Senators. In essence, he believed that he served a higher purpose, and as such, financial benefits were secondary.

In return the Senators handled much of Cambria’s administrative concerns and provided valued advice. Griffith also helped with the initial costs and continued expenses and administration of the minor-league teams that Cambria owned. More than once, Griffith interceded between Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Cambria to smooth over issues and minimize fines and other penalties. Landis, a foe of the farm system, could be overbearing; a wheeler-dealer like Cambria needed a man like Griffith running interference for him. In all, Cambria did well financially. He bought talent cheaply, mostly high schoolers or young semipro players. If a young man showed a glimmer of hope, Cambria sold him to Griffith or another club if the Senators passed. He also made money buying and selling clubs.

A few interesting matters took place during Cambria’s time with Albany. In 1934, he established a sort of training school for ballplayers. Young men would meet at Hawkins Stadium in Albany when the home team was on the road to work out and train. In 1935, he made national headlines for signing Alabama Pitts fresh from Sing Sing Prison. (Pitts had a relatively undistinguished minor-league career.) In 1936, Cambria entered a team in the Eastern Hockey League based in Washington. After Albany’s 1936 season, he offered the manager’s job to Babe Ruth. Ruth rejected the offer, believing he deserved to manage a major-league team.

More importantly around that time, Cambria dived into the facet of the game that would become his trademark, developing Cuban talent. Part of the story rests with Griffith. As manager of the Cincinnati Reds in 1911, he had brought the first two Cuban players to the majors, Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans. Cambria also saw firsthand the value of good Cuban players; moreover, he heard stories about talented athletes on the island. The Havana Red Sox had visited Baltimore during 1929 and ’30, playing the Bugles frequently. The Havana team won well over 100 games in 1929 alone. Cambria also heard stories about Cubans from the Negro League players of the Baltimore Black Sox and opponents. American promoter Alex Pompez and others had been showcasing Cuban talent for decades.

Griffith and Cambria started signing Cuban players in 1932, purchasing Ysmael “Mulo” Morales from Pompez. Morales joined Albany the following season. Bobby Estalella joined Albany in 1934 and made the parent club’s roster the following year. Cambria’s all-star exhibition squad in Baltimore in 1934 also contained several Cubans. In 1936, Cambria brought eight Cubans to Albany’s training camp. One, Tomas de la Cruz, was also picked up from Pompez. Cambria, though, started to make his own trips to the island to gain connections and scout players. In December 1936, he sold the Albany team to the New York Giants for $50,000 plus more than $18,000 in debts. The Giants shifted the franchise to Jersey City.

In 1935, Cambria purchased the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, team of the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League. Over the next winter, the ballpark flooded, damaging the facilities, and he moved the team to York, Pennsylvania. On July 2, 1936, the team moved again, to Trenton, New Jersey, all the while staying in the same league. In 1938, Trenton moved into the Class A Eastern League and the club relocated again in 1939, to Springfield, Massachusetts. Cambria kept the club until he was forced to divest when Commissioner Landis ruled after the 1940 season that a major-league scout couldn’t own a minor-league club. Cambria sold to his brother John, who was president of the General Thread Mills Company of Boston. The sale exposed an interesting relationship. John Cambria, in fact, had helped his brother finance many baseball ventures. Over the years, he was part-owner in numerous clubs. Even after the Landis ruling, Joe secretly kept a relationship with the Springfield franchise through his brother. Washington also maintained a working relationship with the club. In 1944 Cambria transferred the club to Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

From 1937 to 1940, Cambria owned the Salisbury, Maryland, club of the Class D Eastern Shore League. Pitcher Jorge Comellas, a Cuban, made a particularly strong showing. Cambria moved him from Trenton to Salisbury in 1937. He went 22-1 with 21 consecutive victories. The club won the pennant in 1937 and 1938. On September 5, 1940, the players called a strike, canceling the games that day. They demanded their back pay before they would take the field again. With the financial troubles and Landis’s ruling, Cambria relinquished the club after the season.

Cambria owned the St. Augustine franchise in the Florida State League in 1938. In 1939 and 1940, he ran the Greenville, North Carolina, club of the South Atlantic League. In May 1940, he took over Newport, Tennessee of the Appalachian League. Cambria had to divest his interest in these clubs before the 1941 season because of the Landis ruling. No longer able to take an overt and active role in minor-league operations, Cambria single-mindedly focused on his role as the Washington Senators’ main scout. In truth, it could be argued that his interest in minor-league clubs since the early 1930s was merely an extension of his responsibilities to the Senators.

For years Cambria was Clark Griffith’s chief source of labor, the only full-time scout for much of the time. (Joe Engel worked full time as a Senators scout at times.) By 1938, Cambria was working more or less full time for the Senators. For sheer numbers, he was perhaps the most productive in seeking and landing talent of all scouts in history. By that time, he was spending much of his time living in Havana. Cambria’s wife had been sickly and an invalid since the mid-1930s. He divided his time between Cuba, his other baseball interests, and his Baltimore home until her death in September 1958. He virtually relocated to Havana in the early 1940s.

Besides his Cuban mother lode, Cambria signed many Americans. Among those he signed who made the majors were Allen Benson, George Case, Webbo Clarke, Joe Cleary, Gil Coan, Frank Compos, Reese Diggs, Cal Ermer, Lou Grasmick, Bill Hart, Joe Haynes, Joe Krakauskas, Ed Leip, Mickey Livingston, Ed Lyons, Paul Masterson, Walt Masterson, Hugh Mulcahy, George Myatt, Russ Peters, Babe Phelps, Jake Powell, Ray Prim, Hal Quick, Pete Runnels, Sandy Ullrich, Mickey Vernon, Johnny Welaj, Taft Wright, Early Wynn, and Eddie Yost. Cambria never paid much for talent, including his American finds. He once stated, “You could pay more for a hat than I paid for Vernon, Yost, Case, and Masterson.” He went even further: “I never gave anybody a nickel bonus. I don’t believe in making a boy a financial success before he starts.” Cambria signed most players for his clubs and the Senators out of high school for little or no bonus. He scouted and signed many of them from semipro clubs and the low minors, including independent clubs. He’d brag about landing a player for the price of a meal or even an ice cream cone. This fit in nicely with the slim farm budget the Senators had under Clark Griffith. Perhaps Cambria could have wrangled a few more all-stars with the budget allotted after the club moved to Minnesota – nearly $1,000,000 in 1962 alone.

Sometimes Cambria had ties to so many players that he couldn’t keep track of them all. In October 1940, one of his part-time bird dogs called him to a game in Havre de Grace, Maryland, a trip of 150 miles from where he was, to check out a prospect named Merton Fennimore. Cambria arrived and the bird dog pointed out the young ballplayer. Cambria immediately recognized him as Eddie Feinberg, a player he already owned rights to. Feinberg had disappeared the previous year after being farmed out by Greenville.

Cambria’s lasting fame in baseball circles stems from his mining of Cuban talent. Wrote the Hartford Courant, “They poke a lot of fun at Uncle Joe. They say he chases his prospects up trees and lassos them, or smokes them out of their caves; that every time a young fellow in Cuba hits the ball out of the infield he hears about it.” A sportswriter in Cuba, Jess Losada of Carteles, acidly referred to him as the Christopher Columbus of baseball, denoting his thirst for and taking of the island’s treasures.

Latin American ballplayers Cambria signed who made the majors include Luis Aloma, Ossie Alvarez, Vincente Amor, Julio Becquer, Alex Carrasquel, Jorge Comellas, Sandy Consuegra, Yo-Yo Davalillo, Juan Delis, Bobby Estalella, Angel Fleitas, Mike Fornieles, Ramon Garcia, Preston Gomez, Vince Gonzalez, Mike Guerra, Evelio Hernandez, Connie Marrero, Marty Martinez, Rogelio Martinez, Willie Miranda, Rene Monteagudo, Julio Moreno, Ramon “Cholly” Naranjo, Tony Oliva, Oliverio “Baby” Ortiz, Roberto Ortiz, Reggie Otero, Camilo Pascual, Carlos Pascual, Carlos Paula, Pedro Ramos, Armando Roche, Freddy Rodriquez, Raul Sanchez, Luis Suarez, Gil Torres, Roy Valdes, Jose Valdivielso, Zoilo Versalles, Adrian Zabala, and Jose Zardon. In all, Cambria probably signed well over 400 Cuban prospects. He typically signed between 10 and 20 a year. Cambria’s influence was felt throughout Latin America. Alex Carrasquel was the first ballplayer from Venezuela in Organized Baseball. Likewise, Cambria sent the first Nicaraguan to a major-league camp, Gilberto Hooker in 1956 with Washington.

Cuba indeed proved a windfall for the Senators. For example, Camilo Pascual was signed for just $175. Cambria’s esteemed status in Cuba was such that Pascual turned down a $4,000 offer from the Dodgers to sign with Washington. The scout typically offered the young Cuban players $75 a month and then put them on a plane headed for Key West. They’d catch a bus to their final destination. The Cuban presence was, in essence, the core of Senators during the World War II years, helping to revive the club. Since Cubans were exempt from the military draft in the United States, Griffith invited as many as possible to spring training. With the influx of talent the Senators jumped to second place in 1943 and 1945 with a meager budget.

Cambria became a fixture in Havana. He made his headquarters and took a room at the American Club. He realized that sooner or later the island’s talent funneled into Havana. Hence, he developed a wide array of bird dogs who fanned out through the countryside and stationed himself in Havana, patrolling the fields at Gran Stadium every day or watching games at local schools or wherever young men congregated. He became a fixture on the island, affectionately known as Papa Joe. Everyone knew the “fat little Italian” who walked around in the baggy white linen suit with an untucked shirt with fake pearl buttons and a Panama hat. A cigar was ever-present in his mouth. He always carried a supply of his own brand, Papa Joe Cambria cigars, to hand out. He cut an impressive figure traveling to big events in a limousine. Interestingly, Cambria never thoroughly learned Spanish, typically traveling with an interpreter. Though he most likely understood the language, he didn’t speak it. He mixed his Italian with a few Spanish words to help him get by, a rudimentary, pidgin form of communication. He relied heavily on local sportsmen like Merito Acosta and Cheo Ramos to handle intricate affairs. He was also tied to Gran Stadium president Bobby Maduro.

Cambria just didn’t keep an apartment in Havana; he invested in the community, owning rental properties, an apartment building and a string of saloons. One small restaurant was attached to Gran Stadium, set behind the center-field scoreboard. He also co-owned the Havana Cubans of the Florida International League. He became a celebrity in Cuba, the man who represented the Washington Senators, the predominant link between Cuba and the major leagues. Since the island was baseball-crazy, Cambria was an important figure indeed. He was a personal friend of President Fulgencio Batista and formed an even stronger bond with Fidel Castro, whose revolution overthrew Batista.

Castro was a baseball fan from his youth. He’d hang around the ballpark to watch the ballplayers, particularly impressed with the Negro Leaguers who headed to Cuba every year. As a kid, he did odd jobs for the ballplayers and developed relationships with them. Cambria scouted Castro as a pitcher at the University of Havana, noting that he had a decent curve but not much of a fastball. During the government’s transition after the revolution, Castro guaranteed Cambria’s safety and insisted that everyone show him respect. At times Castro’s forces even sent men to guard the baseball man. After the United States severed relations with Cuba, Cambria remained influential in easing baseball-related matters between the countries, particularly in obtaining US visas and Cuban exit permits for the players. He was actually one of the few Americans permitted to reside in Cuba after the revolution.

To some, Cambria represented the raping of one of the country’s honored resources, talented ballplayers. At first the Senators’ signings were a boon to the Cuban League, instilling pride in local talent and sparking interest in the league. Soon, though, it was noticed that Cambria was sucking up much of the country’s talent and shipping them to the US. Furthermore, he wasn’t just doing so in Havana; he branched out and secured young amateur talent closer to their homes throughout the nation. He signed a lot of teenagers. By 1944 the impact was being felt; the amateur leagues were in decline. With so many young men inked to professional contracts, the amateur leagues’ base of talent was shrinking considerably.

Cuban sportswriter Jess Losada began a campaign against the American imperialism, hence his remark about Christopher Columbus. Bob Considine of Collier’s magazine chimed in to attack Cambria from the American perspective. Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American was also critical of Cambria’s efforts. He accused the Washington scout of overlooking talented ballplayers with dark skin in favor of perhaps weaker lighter-skinned athletes. Not without cause, some in Cuba resented Cambria and his tactics. He signed players cheap and, as noted, he signed a lot of them. They were often required to sign blank contracts, to be filled out and assigned at Cambria’s whim – sometimes at a much later time. Naturally, these mass signings depleted the amateur ranks and hurt the local game. A signing ballplayer risked his amateur eligibility at home. Many were sent to the United States to play in the pro leagues. This not only stripped the island of talent but, considering that most of the Senators’ farm teams were in the South, these young men ran into American racism. Nevertheless, Cambria was held in high regard by most. In 1948, he was named commissioner of nonprofessional baseball in Cuba. (At times Griffith and Cambria sent players back to Cuba in a productive manner. Over the winter of 1939-40, they sent a few men for extra practice and seasoning in the Cuban League, an early effort by a major-league club to hone talent in a winter league.)

Cuba had a lot of talent, and Cambria wished to showcase it in America. In 1946, amid the postwar minor-league explosion, he and Bobby Maduro founded the Havana Cubans and helped form the Florida International League as a home for the club. Cambria was named secretary-treasurer of the team. Clark Griffith soon bought into the club and formed a working agreement. This was a natural extension of Cambria’s efforts – another place to park all the Cuban talent he was signing. He also supplied an extensive list of Cubans to various Texas teams and leagues from 1948 through much of the 1950s. Washington farm clubs like Williamsport featured many Cuban players; in 1945, for example, the club had 12 Cubans on the roster.

In August 1947, Cambria was called before National Association president George Trautman to account for his financial dealings in Cuba. Three Cubans on the Dodgers’ farm club in Montreal had claimed that they could make more money playing on the Class C Havana team than Branch Rickey was paying at Triple-A Montreal. Rickey reported this and Cambria was nailed for paying his players under the table. His books showed a $9,000 entry for scouting expenses that was deemed a fund for paying players above the salary limit. He was fined $500. It wasn’t the first time Cambria was fined for his tactics. Commissioner Landis penalized the scout $1,000 in December 1939 for signing a young pitcher to a blank contract with a fictitious date and without designating an assigning team. In each instance, Clark Griffith ran interference with the commissioner’s office. As Cambria exclaimed in 1950 when he ran into additional trouble, “I leave it all up to Clark Griffith. He’ll take care of everything.”

To help counter Cambria’s influence, sportswriter Losada invited the Cincinnati Reds to the island to set up shop. Cambria no longer had the island to himself. The Reds fielded a Triple-A team called the Havana Sugar Kings in the International League from 1954 to 1960. Much of the roster was filled with local talent, including longtime major-league pitchers Orlando Pena and Mike Cuellar and infielders Leo Cardenas and Cookie Rojas.

Clark Griffith died in 1955. Cambria stayed with the Senators organization and relocated with the club to Minnesota. He maintained a house in Baltimore where his invalid wife resided but still spent a great deal of time in Cuba. For example, at the time she died in 1958, he was in Havana. Cambria himself continued to work until becoming ill in 1961. He frequently lamented about his fondness for Griffith and his loyalty to the organization, and often relayed his wishes to be buried in a Senators uniform. In fact, at a press conference in Minnesota, Twins owner Calvin Griffith joked that Cambria would now have to be buried in a Twins jersey. At the time, Cambria played along with the joke. When Calvin left the room, Cambria turned to the reporters and reiterated, “I haven’t changed my mind. I still want to go out in a Washington uniform. Washington was Mr. Griffith’s club.”

By March 1962, Cambria was very ill. He was flown from Havana to Minneapolis for treatment. Cambria died at Barnabas Hospital in Minneapolis on September 24, 1962. At the time of his passing at age 72 he had scouted in Cuba for over 25 years.

Note

There are indications in early immigration and Census records that Cambria was born in 1889 rather than 1890. Immigration records on August 2, 1893, list him as 4 years old and the 1900 U.S. Census shows a birth date of “July 1889.”

Photo credit

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Sources

Special thanks to Ray Nemec for an exchange of information on Joe Cambria and his career.

Ancestry.com.

Appleton Post-Crescent, Wisconsin, 1961.

Baltimore Afro-American, 1930-34, 1943.

Baltimore Sun, 1928-58.

Baseball-reference.com.

Big Springs Daily Herald, Texas, 1956.

Bjarkman, Peter C. Diamonds Around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.

Bready, James H. Baseball in Baltimore: The First 100 Years. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Burgos, Adrian Jr. Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Charleston Gazette, West Virginia, 1931-36, 1948, 1956.

Chicago Defender, 1934.

Chicago Tribune, 1961.

Christian Science Monitor, 1961.

Cumberland Evening Times, Maryland, 1929-37.

Daily Sitka Sentinel, Alaska, 1956.

Dunkirk Evening Observer, New York, 1933.

Echevarria, Roberto Gonzalez. The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Fort Pierce News-Tribune, Florida, 1953.

Frederick News-Post, Maryland, 1930-31.

Greeley Daily Tribune, Colorado, 1939.

Hagerstown Daily Mail, Maryland, 1930-44

Hartford Courant, 1936-47.

Holway, John. The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History. Fern Park, FL: Hastings House Publishers, 2001.

Johnson, Lloyd, and Miles Wolff, eds. The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Second Edition. Durham, NC: Baseball America, Inc., 1997.

Kingsport Times, Tennessee, 1940.

Lowell Sun, Massachusetts, 1938, 1944, 1952.

Lubbock Morning Avalanche, Texas, 1935.

Middletown Times Herald, New York, 1936.

Monessen Daily Independent, Pennsylvania, 1931.

Nebraska Lincoln Star, 1934.

Newport Daily News, Rhode Island, 1909-10.

New York Times, 1944.

North Adams Transcript, Massachusetts, 1939.

Ogden Standard Examiner, Utah, 1936-39.

Oleksak, Michael M., and Mary Adams Oleksak. Latin Americans and the Grand Old Game. Grand Rapids, MI: Masters Press, 1991.

Pittsburgh Courier, 1933-34.

Ruck, Rob. The Tropic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican Republic. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

SABR Encyclopedia.

Snyder, Brad. Beyond the Shadow of the Senator: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2003.

Sporting Life, 1912.

Steadman, John F., “Papa Joe’s Still Finding ’Em,” Baseball Digest, September 1962.

Syracuse Herald, 1936.

Syracuse Herald Journal, 1940.

The Sporting News, 1932-62.

Troy Times-Record, 1943-44.

Washington Post, 1936-58.

Williamsport Gazette and Bulletin, Pennsylvania, 1937, 1944-45.

Zanesville Herald-Journal, Ohio, 1938.

Chapman was a college player and coach.  He played professionally in the minor leagues.  He served as a baseball ambassador in Japan.  He worked as an attorney and a history professor.  He was the author of ten books and the leading expert on Hispanic history in his time.

He was a tennis champ, bridge expert (he won several duplicate bridge tournaments with his wife), and golf champ.  Chapman was awarded the Mitre Medal of the Hispanic Society of America.  He played a leading role in the founding of the Hispanic American Historical Review, serving on the editorial board from 1917 to 1941.  He was a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Finally he worked as a full-time baseball scout while continuing to be a history professor.

Charles Edward Chapman was born on June 3, 1880, in Franklin, New Hampshire, son of Frank Hilton Chapman, a druggist, and Ella Frances (James) Chapman.  He was one of five children, his siblings were brothers Eben Lord, Frank William, and John Henry, and sister Lucy Boardman.

Chapman said his interest in baseball began at the age of 3 when his parents took him to a game where a foul ball just grazed the side of his head.  He began to play in sandlot games, showing his toughness by catching the ball with his bare hands no matter how hard the “big boys” could throw it.  He gravitated to the catcher position early on as a player but was eventually to play professionally every position on the diamond except shortstop and center field.

Chapman was a member of the Phillips Andover Academy Class of 1898, He played the infield on the baseball team.  He entered Princeton University in September 1898 and spent two years on the baseball team. He served as secretary/treasurer of the sophomore class.  On the 1899 squad he was a substitute and during the 1900 season he was a regular in the lineup as an outfielder.  Chapman said his highlight there was delivering a hit that drove in the winning run in a game against rival Yale University. 

Chapman then transferred to Tufts University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1902.  He played halfback on the football team and was captain of the baseball squad in 1902. He led Tufts to a 17-6 record for the season. The 1902 Spalding Guide has a picture of the Tufts college team, including Chapman.  A scholar, he was named to Phi Beta Kappa.

In the summers Chapman played minor-league and semipro baseball. According to Outing magazine, the Princeton left fielder played under the name of Al Rogers.  Eligibility rules were much laxer then and many players played professional baseball while still retaining college eligibility.

SABR’s minor-league database records numerous stops for Chapman beginning with the 1901 Meriden Silver Citys club of the Connecticut State League, where he played in 65 games with a .295 batting average.  In 1903, he played second base with the New England League’s Haverhill Hustlers, hitting .224 in 31 games.  In 1904 Chapman played for Manchester of the New England League, hitting .253 in 64 games while primarily playing first base.  In his career Chapman played all over the diamond.

In 1902 Chapman played for a semipro team.  The Worcester Daily Spy reported that on June 9 the Whitinsville, Massachusetts, team was to come under the management of Chapman, then captain of the Tufts team.  Chapman was a player-manager.  He said he could make more as a player-manager there than he could in Organized Baseball.  It was reported that in one game major-league stars Nap Lajoie and Elmer Flick played for him, the stated reason being that they were not allowed to travel to Philadelphia because of litigation over the American League’s signing of National League players.

Four players, including Flick and Lajoie, had jumped their contracts with the Philadelphia Phillies to move to the Philadelphia Athletics.  Phillies owner John Rogers took them to court, eventually winning an injunction from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that proscribed the men from playing anywhere in the state except for the Phillies.  Flick and Lajoie had since moved on to play for the Cleveland club and simply avoided playing in the games in Philadelphia

In 1902 Chapman entered the Harvard Law School, and earned his law degree in 1905.  While a law student he was an assistant coach in football and baseball.  He was admitted to the bar in Massachusetts and California in 1906.  Chapman embarked on a six-month postgraduate trip to California, Hawaii, Japan, and China, returning on the ship Manchuria just after the earthquake in San Francisco.  The trip was to change his life, both ending his professional playing career and opening  doors for a new career in California.

While Chapman was in Japan, a hotel clerk overheard him talking about baseball, and Chapman found himself invited to help coach the Imperial High School team of Tokyo.  While at this task he injured his arm throwing. When he returned to the United States, he had a tryout with a Pacific Coast League team but his arm was dead.  He played semiprofessional baseball off and on the next few years in the San Rafael, California, area.

Chapman practiced law for one year in California, with the San Francisco law firm  Maddux and Maddux.  He worked on major cases for the United Railroad and Western Electric, and also dabbled in real estate working for Crawford, Robertson, and Company,

Sausalito, California, was where Chapman brought home a bride in June 1907, marrying Elizabeth Adams Russell, also of the Tufts class of ’02. They had one son, Seville Dudley Chapman, who went on to earn his own Ph.D, and taught in the physics departments at Stanford University and the University of Kansas.  Meanwhile, Charles played some semipro baseball from 1908 to 1911, including Bay Area stops in San Rafael and Larkspur.

Charles Chapman studied at the University of California in 1908 and ‘09, earning a master’s degree, then moved to Southern California for a year and taught history at Riverside High School (now Riverside Poly High School) in the 1909-1910 school year.  Poly is the alma mater of major-league players Bobby Bonds, Greg Myers, Jo Jo Reyes, Ben Blomdahl, Wayne Gross, Gary Lucas, and Donnie Murphy.

Chapman returned to the University of California at Berkeley as an assistant in the history department from 1910 to 1912 while continuing his studies toward earning a Ph.D. in history, a goal accomplished in 1915.

Serving as a Native Sons of the West Traveling Fellow, Chapman engaged in research in the archives of Spain (1912-1914), studying at the University of Seville, where his son was born and aptly named.  There he completed the Catalogue of Materials in the Archivo General de Indias for the History of the Pacific Coast and the American Southwest. He returned to Berkeley as an instructor in history in 1914; upon being granted his doctorate, he was named an assistant professor in 1915. He was promoted to associate professor in 1919 and to full professor in 1927.

In 1916, Chapman traveled to Argentina to represent the university at an international conference on bibliography and history.  He visited many other Central and South American countries while on this journey.  He made many research trips to Latin America throughout his teaching career, finding time to watch some local baseball.  He was once quoted in a Baseball Digest issue about players in the Cuban winter league, commenting on the fact that the league was racially integrated.

Chapman spent 1920-21 as an exchange professor at the University of Chile at Santiago.  After his return to the United States in 1921, he wrote to St. Louis Cardinals General Manager Branch Rickey naming prospects who had caught his eye.  He so impressed Rickey that he was hired as a part-time recommending scout.  Rickey had sent scout Charley Barrett to meet with Chapman, and Barrett sent in a positive report, recommending that Chapman be hired.

Charles was divorced from his first wife sometime in the 1920s and was remarried, to a much younger woman, Amie Fleming, about 25 years his junior.  Apparently the Fleming family approved of the marriage as the 1930 census stated that Charles and Amie lived in the household of her father, Charles.  The 1930 census also showed that his first wife, Elizabeth, and their son, Seville, remained in the Bay Area, living in Berkeley.

In 1931 Chapman earned second  place in a Sporting News contest on predicting pennant contenders, listing where teams would be in the standings at the midpoint of year (July 4), earning himself a $50 prize.  In April of that year Chapman, 50 years old, played his last organized baseball game: He caught for the faculty team against the Skull and Keys Society at the University of California, helping win the game 6-2 “by hitting safely in four times at bat.”  Chapman himself recorded that he had two doubles in the game. 

Chapman was a Pacific Coast scout for 20 years, working for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1921 to 1932 and the Cincinnati Reds from 1932 to 1941.  He mainly scouted the Pacific Coast League, with some college scouting mixed in.

In 1933 Chapman signed infielder Tony Robello, who had a brief major-league career and went on to become a scout himself, Robello’s most prominent signing being Johnny Bench.  Along with Robello, Chapman is credited with signing Dick Adams, Lincoln Blakely, Taylor Douthit, Lee Grissom, Chick Hafey, Syl Johnson, Ray Lamanno, Les Scarsella, and Bobby Adams.

In 1936 Chapman was involved in preliminary planning for the formation of a Class D league in the San Joaquin valley, but the league did not come to fruition.

Chapman died on November 17, 1941, at the Peralta Hospital in Orinda, California, from complications of a heart attack he had suffered three weeks earlier. He was 61 years old. He was buried in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California.

Chapman published the following books and about 150 articles in various professional journals.

• The Founding of Spanish California (1916)
• A Californian in South America (1917)
• A History of Spain (1918)
• Catalogue of Materials in the Archivo General de Indias for the History of the Pacific Coast and the American Southwest (1919)
• A History of California: The Spanish Period (1921)
• A History of the Cuban Republic (1927)
• Colonial Hispanic America: A History (1933)
• Republican Hispanic America: A History (1937)
• The Busher’s Guide: Advice for Young Ballplayers, with Hank Severeid (1941)

See also:

Charles E. Chapman, “A Second Rate Scout” unpublished article from the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

Charles E. Chapman, “Adventures of a Professorial Scout” unpublished article from the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

Photo credit

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Sources

Los Angeles Times, January 3, 1936: A12 

The Sporting News, July 23, 1931: 3; March 2, 1933: 5; May 24, 1934: 2

Tufts College Alumni Bulletin, September 1942, V16: 15

Tufts College Graduate, 1907, Vol. 5, No. 2

Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 4, 1938

New York Times, November 18, 1941

Phillips Andover Academy Archives

Biographical Record of Leading Citizens of Essex County, Mass.
Ship records from ancestry.com

Baseball Digest 1958

www.thebaseballcube.com

www.sunsite.berkeley.edu

Bill Clark was born in Clinton, Missouri, on August 18, 1932, and graduated from Clinton High in 1949. He received a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1958, having taken a few side trips along the way. It’s tempting just to list his varied accomplishments in bullet-point format; even that would take up a few pages.

Bill’s father was a radio repairman until rationing hit during World War II and he could no longer obtain the parts he needed. Bill’s mother was a housewife. Bill was an only child. The family struggled economically. Bill’s father kept his shop open during the war, cannibalizing other parts, but found it increasingly difficult to provide. He sold his Model A Ford and took the job of janitor at the post office, riding his bicycle year-round to get to work. Bill traveled on two wheels as well, not learning how to drive until he got into the Army.

Baseball really arrived in Bill’s life only after the war, the year he turned 13. “I had no contact with sports except boxing. My dad loved to listen to Joe Louis fight. We’d gather ’round the radio and listen to Joe Louis, and boxing. There was no baseball in Clinton during the Second World War.” [1] There wasn’t even sandlot ball. He recalled the first baseball game he ever saw, in the city park, in September 1945, the month after the war ended. It was a game between those who had not been in the service (the Rejects) and those who had just returned home from the war (the Go-Devils).

The next year an American Legion team was formed in Clinton and he made the club as an outfielder “mainly because I showed up. I was a right-handed swinger, and never a hitter.” He could hit the occasional curveball, but couldn’t catch up with fastballs. Nonetheless, he did play on the Legion team for three seasons. There was no high-school baseball in the area until into the 1970s; Clark played high-school football for three years; “they gave me a suit that was too big for me.”

He’d begun doing the announcing for the local semipro team, the Clinton Chicks (Clinton had 16 chicken hatcheries in town), which played against touring teams that came through the area like the House of David, and one of the Kansas City Monarchs teams. In 1948 he went to a baseball tryout camp himself – a three-day camp. He was cut the first day. On the spot, he decided he would become a big-league umpire – and started telling everyone about it. So when the Monarchs came to town and the regular umpire was ill, Clark was handed some catcher’s gear – no cup – and umpired a game when the Chicks took on Buck O’Neil and the Monarchs.

After graduating from high school in 1949 Clark worked all summer cleaning incubators in the chicken hatcheries for ten hours a day and saved enough money to enroll in George Barr’s Umpire School in Sanford, Florida, beginning in January 1950. He’d begun working in the hatcheries when he was 12. “By the time I was 13, I was drawing a man’s salary.”

After Barr’s six-week program, Clark was ready for work as an umpire but first had to address the matter of his military service obligation. Almost everyone else in the umpire school was 35 or 40, mostly ex-military men. Clark was 17. He started college on a scholarship but flunked out because of high blood pressure; he’d passed out on the football field. He thought his high blood pressure might excuse him from the service. He enlisted, failed his first physical, but was kept overnight and a second officer passed him. Private William Clark arrived in Korea at the tail end of the Korean War, working on an Army airstrip and becoming a truck driver transporting gasoline from the port at Inchon to the airstrip. For the last two of his 36 months, he was a corporal.

There had been some baseball in the service, starting during basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, when a colonel called Clark out of artillery training; it turned out that he was the only trained umpire on the post and the post championship game was on that evening. In Korea he umpired a fair amount of softball. After being mustered out, he worked semipro and Legion ball almost every day. With the help of the GI Bill, he was able to go to college.

Clark chose journalism, encouraged by the fact that his hometown newspaper had published something on the order of 50 letters he’d written from Korea. “I had the calling to write,” he says. “Every person has in them a gene that demands they write. Some overcome it and some succumb to it.”

He went out for football at Missouri, but when they learned he’d been paid as a baseball umpire, he was disqualified as an amateur and unable to play. “So I turned to weightlifting.” He still worked baseball games, umpiring as many as five doubleheaders a week – always behind the plate.

The University of Missouri School of Journalism had always been considered one of the best programs of its sort. The morning paper in Columbia is the Missourian, published by the journalism school and honed in competition with the Columbia Tribune. Clark chose the sports-writing sequence at school. As a veteran he could have claimed the college-football beat, but instead he elected to cover the biggest high school in town. “I wanted the grassroots level in sports. It was a situation where you just became friends with everybody in the community and in central Missouri.” Already, Clark was thinking like a scout, digging down to the grassroots. He also began a bowling column, which he kept writing for 20 years. He was active and ambitious, and by the time he was a senior in college, he was the president of the Missouri Sportswriters Association, a statewide organization that included writers from the major St. Louis and Kansas City papers. “I guess they couldn’t find anybody else,” he said with a laugh.

Clark took a job at the Lexington Leader in Kentucky, but just three months later he returned to Columbia for good, offered the opportunity to manage the newspaper distribution agency for the Kansas City Star at double what he’d been making in Lexington. On top of everything else, he’d been a Star delivery boy for three years while in college, twice a day six days a week – a 4 A.M. and a 4 P.M. route – but only once on Sundays. He had started a family by this time, marrying Dolores Denny Clark in 1955. The couple eventually had five children, the first born in 1957 – and the work was important.

In 1958, the year he graduated from journalism school, Bill wrote his first book, a yearbook and a history of the Central Missouri Racing Association. It was modified stock-car racing, and Clark became a familiar guy in the pits.

It was in 1956, two years earlier, when Clark first began scouting baseball. He’d been umpiring Legion games, small-college games, and some high-school ball in Columbia. (He also worked that spring in the Central Mexican League, his first foray into international work other than the Army.) He told interviewer Dave Paulson, “The first thing they handed me when I got there was a list of about 15 phrases. They said, if you hear one of these phrases, the guy’s gone.” [Interview with Bill Clark by Dave Paulson, June 28, 2003]

Working at the Missouri Legion tournament in Jefferson City that summer, he was approached by a Milwaukee Braves scout named Dick Keeley. He said, “Boy, every time I go to see a prospect, you’re behind home plate. You work a lot, don’t you?” About 125 to 150 games a year, Clark told him. “Want to make you a bird dog,” Keeley said. They shook hands on it. For the next seven Christmases, Clark got a $50 bill in the mail. He and Keeley would talk every time the scout was in the area, and he ended up signing a couple of players Clark had recommended. In the process, he learned what Keeley was looking for. Later that year, he finished out the season umpiring in the Nebraska State League – Bill Clark rarely stayed still.

“Between innings I would write down notes on the back of the lineup cards, and I would just give him the lineup cards.” He worked with Keeley until 1962, when he felt a “burning desire to go back into pro ball as an umpire.” After a month in Florida and the Pioneer League, he was down to his last $95 and owed $125 in rent – “it was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made.” Fortunately, he found a couple of jobs, working overnight in an all-night eatery, “slinging hash and beating drunks on the head,” and a position as assistant recreation director in Columbia, essentially in charge of the recreation part of the parks and recreation department. And he took a staff position at the newspaper, sports writing. In his spare time, he refereed basketball and football. He claims he’s officiated at one level or another in some 22 different sports.

Then a Pirates scout named Chet Montgomery turned up, planning to run a tryout camp in Columbia. He needed a field, and Clark supplied him one in exchange for being made a bird dog for Pittsburgh. “I got paid nothing. I didn’t even get my $50 at Christmas, but it really developed. I took what vacation time I had and he took me with him to work tryout camps.” It was the summer of 1963 and Clark worked as a recommending scout for three years, gaining more experience while traveling to Omaha and throughout Kansas with Montgomery. Clark soon was upgraded, earning a stipend of $500 a year, before Montgomery left to join the Cincinnati Reds. The Pirates needed a full-time supervisor for 1968 and offered Bill $8,000 – more than the $6,000 to 6,500 he was making with the city.

The Pirates job was to serve as an area scout in several states, looking over his own network of bird dogs. It was Clark’s first full-time work as a scout and he covered Missouri, Kansas, half of Iowa, Illinois south of Interstate 74, western Kentucky, western Tennessee, and Nebraska. After just one year, he took a similar job with the Seattle Pilots in 1969, covering all of 11 states, West Virginia, Indiana, and Minnesota among them. When the Pilots moved to Milwaukee, he found himself with a financially strapped organization but with two years left on a three-year contract. He had business cards from four organizations over a four-year period.

Chet Montgomery, now with the Cincinnati Reds, requested permission to talk to him and Clark ended up scouting for Cincinnati for 18 years. He joined them as the team’s Midwest scout.

The first player Bill Clark signed who made it to the major leagues was Jerry Bell, whom he signed for the Seattle Pilots. Clark drove to work him out, but got lost around Nashville and by the time they finally linked up, Bell was back home. Bell called over a friend as his catcher, and Clark worked him out under the streetlights in his neighborhood. “I signed him from under a streetlight workout. I think I gave him $500.” Even though some other teams were after Bell, the way it worked out in the February 1969 draft, he became Pilots property.

There were others he recommended but the team didn’t sign – such as Eric Rasmussen, who pitched in the majors for eight seasons. Rasmussen was from Wisconsin but Milwaukee’s scouting director passed on him. Clark hasn’t always taken credit for signings, in part because it’s a collegial process, but he’s also been credited with signing players he never saw. It cuts both ways. “There are a bunch of guys who played after I became an international supervisor. I had to approve everybody. Whether I signed them or not, I still approved their contract. It goes with the territory.” Roland Hemond has remarked that Clark was always determined to give primary credit to the scouts who worked at ground level; in a note to SABR’s Rod Nelson in 2001, Hemond wrote, “Bill was always giving the territorial or area scouts credit, even though some of the players would have not been signed without Bill’s judgment and decision. Andruw Jones may be a prime example.”

With the Reds, Clark had three or four part-time guys under him and, over the 18 years, as many as 100 bird dogs at one time or another. These recommending scouts, or associate scouts, would typically get $100 if a player they’d pushed was signed. If he made Double-A for 60 days, the scout got another $500, and if he was in the big leagues for 60 days, there’d be another $1,000. It doesn’t seem like much, but it wasn’t bad money in those days.

Clark worked under Cincinnati scouting director Joe Bowen, whose brother Rex was the special-assignment man for GM Bob Howsam. In the late winter and very early spring, he would “snowbird” – head south to work with the Southern scouts before the weather permitted baseball in the Midwest or North.

The job lasted until owner Marge Schott asked the question about her team’s scouts: “Why should I pay all these guys money – big money – when all they do is watch games?” Six to eight scouts were let go. Clark had been approached a year earlier by Paul Snyder of the Atlanta Braves, but was proud of the Reds’ scouting crew and didn’t want to see it broken up. Schott eliminated that concern, so Clark was free to call Snyder, and was hired almost overnight. The only thing he needed to negotiate for was a company car – he was putting on at least 50,000 miles a year, away from home at least 250 nights a year.

He’d gotten his feet wet in international scouting with Cincinnati. Manitoba and Saskatchewan were part of his territory. The Latin coordinator for the Reds didn’t like going to Central America, so he asked Clark to do so, setting up a tryout camp in Guatemala, where there were a number of Nicaraguans active in baseball – and where Bill had a son in the Peace Corps. He also went to Nicaragua when the Sandinistas were at their strongest. Bill found the work “a lot of fun.” He got in a little time in Mexico, too.

When Clark joined the Braves, he was hampered physically with joint problems – both knees and one of his hips. He’d run hundreds of tryout camps, hitting all the fungoes himself, work he truly loved. He dealt with public relations: “Coming out of the media world, I spent a lot of time with the media. I never saw a television camera that I didn’t enjoy being in front of.” There was a lot of administrative paperwork, too, from insurance certificates to liability waivers, but it was all part of the package.

Hitting was never high on his list of what he looked for. Following what Clark called the Branch Rickey school of scouting, thanks to both Howsam and Rex Bowen, who had worked under Rickey, Reds scouts looked for prospects who could run and throw and were athletic. Bill kept all his prospect data on registration cards, and still has 10,000 of them on a shelf in his home. With the Braves, hobbled by joint pain, he could not be active on the field. The Braves told him that a few other clubs were killing them in international scouting and they wanted to compete. “So they made me the international scouting director. And I had no idea what to do.”

After two years in which he did both domestic and international work, starting in 1992, he began to work internationally full time. He had to create a department almost from scratch. At the time the Braves had only one scout who had worked the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and the rest of the Caribbean. Bill’s first assignment was in Curaçao. It was the beginning of a successful run.

Clark made his first forays into each country by telephone, simply calling blind to the baseball federation in each country and asking to speak with anyone who knew English. “Little by little, I would piece [things] together. By the end of that first year, I had a full-time man in Australia, and I had a full-time man in Canada. The Braves had never had anybody in Canada. I had two well-paid part-time men in Europe. I had pretty good phone bills. That’s the way we got started. The second year I was out, we hit on Andruw Jones and we hit on Bruce Chen.”

After laying the groundwork, Clark started to rack up the miles. As soon as he got a man in Venezuela, he headed there to hold a tryout. There was a shortstop Clark wanted to follow, but as soon as he got back home, he learned the shortstop had signed with someone else. In international scouting, there was no draft. If you saw someone you liked, you had to head to his house right away. “You learned to pull the trigger immediately. You carried contracts to the ballpark with you every day. Every day.” There was an excitement to the hunt that one doesn’t often find in contemporary scouting. There was rarely a lawyer involved, but “when I first went to the Dominican, you paid the coach who was the buscon – the local agent, so to speak – you paid him a few hundred bucks for each player. And when you signed a player, about the first thing you did was take him to the doctor and have him wormed. And the next time you saw him six months after, he’s grown two inches and put on 20 pounds because he’s got no more worms. Before I left the game down there, there were a couple of ballclubs that paid up to $30,000 to the buscon for a player.”

Needless to say, some of the ballfields Clark visited were crude and rough. And one or two of the places he’s visited weren’t truly likely to produce any talent – Mali, for instance, where soccer was king. What took Clark to Mali was his daughter in the Peace Corps. But while visiting, he held a little workout. “I gave them these baseballs, and in a little while they gave them back and said, ‘We don’t want them. They’re too hard to kick.’ ” They had some really magnificent-looking athletes. Basketball is a fairly big sport in Mali. If I were a college basketball coach, I think I’d go to Mali and take a look.” But at least Bill got to ride a camel in Timbuktu.

After Bill had spent ten seasons with the Braves, Paul Snyder was replaced as the team’s scouting director. His replacement was too much of a micromanager for Clark. Bill had built for the Braves one of the best international operations around; perhaps their goal was to run it for themselves. He was fired.

The San Diego Padres called. They had a small program in the Dominican Republic, but almost nothing else, so Clark was back in his element, building up another international scouting program. After four years (2000-2003), the Padres let him go, too. He was 71 years old. The Padres were smart enough not to mention his age. But Clark was thinking union, and that may have been part of the picture.

It wasn’t the first time. In the early 1980s, he’d been thinking along those lines but when Bob Howsam returned as club president, he put that on hold. By the time he was in San Diego, his outspoken reputation may have hurt him. “I was known around the business by that time as a person who had made no bones about the fact that the scouts needed representation. I had gotten to the point before I got canned, I had contacted 900 scouts in the country, and had made no bones about the fact that I would be your leader in organizing, but not as your director. It was not going to be me. I did not want that.”

He did visit the National Labor Relations Board office in Atlanta with four other scouts, and learned what would be involved in petitioning for recognition as a bargaining unit. Talking with other scouts, he said, “I found all kinds of interest. I found all kinds of fear. People would say, ‘I’ve got a family. …’ It didn’t work. Fear overcame common sense.”

He’s got his opinions. Clark told Dave Paulson, “Owners couldn’t care less about scouts. They have no feeling for scouts. They are simply no different than corn fed to hogs. General managers vary. The Robert Howsams of the world lived and died with their scouts. They were as much a part of the organization as the big-league players. Other general managers couldn’t care less and they … I could name a few … but some of them are atrocious in their relationship with the personnel under them. New people come into the front office and their only interest is to bring their friends in. The security is brutal.”

The Padres move may well have been more of a case of simply bringing in a friend, than an anti-organizing effort, but Bill Clark’s baseball career as a scout had come to an end. Being an unrepentant dinosaur of sorts didn’t help, either. He refused to use a computer, and refused to have a cell phone. But he remained productive in other realms. Clark continued to write a four-times-a-week bylined column for the Columbia Daily Tribune. Contacted late in 2009, Bill mentioned some recent columns, often about baseball. He had written about scout Herb Raybourn, the value of the fungo bat over the computer, and DNA testing of players and parents in the Dominican Republic. He also wrote about how he had once almost illegally signed Albert Pujols. He has also reviewed a number of books by other authors.

Clark has three books to his credit, beginning with Saga of the Joints (1996), about the replacement of both hips and knees. In 2001 he wrote A 100-Year History of the Audubon Society of Missouri and in 2009 The History of the Show-Me State Games. Asked what might be next, he responded in late 2009, “I do plan to get things together to write about a life in scouting. At 77, I should not procrastinate.”

Along the way, Bill has enjoyed watching the birds in many countries he has visited. He has recorded some 2,000 species in his world list. “Not much of a list for a veteran birder, but better by far than any scout I’ve met,” he boasted.

Clark remained involved in officiating in amateur boxing, weightlifting, race walking, and cross-country, adding to his rėsumė of 38 years of high-school basketball officiating and 36 years in football. He was a founder of the Columbia Track Club, one of the Midwest’s oldest such organizations, and a founder of the fourth oldest marathon in the United States, the Heart of America Marathon. Much of his work has been in weightlifting and power lifting. In 1962 he started a prison lifting program inside the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, and four years later founded the National Correctional Recreation Association. He also founded the National Masters Program in lifting, a program that serves lifters 40 and older in some 50 countries today. He held the first all-women’s sanctioned competition in Columbia in 1976, over the objection of lifting leadership in the United States. Women now compete in Olympics lifting programs. A competitor himself, he held over 200 age-group records, and is a member of seven lifting halls of fame.

Clark was instrumental in reviving the Scouts Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), serving as chair and co-chair for several years. In 2007, after turning the post over to Jim Sandoval and Rod Nelson, Bill Clark was honored with SABR’s Roland Hemond Award, an award he originated as the chairman of SABR’s Scouts Committee to recognize major-league executives for their contribution to research and to scouting. “I didn’t qualify, but I happily accepted,” Bill said.

SIDEBAR

Not all owners prize scouts highly, and not all scouts admire ownership. Bill was asked to recount a story about Cincinnati owner Marge Schott:

When she took over, 1984 or whatever it was, every year we had fall meetings at the time of the last home series. We’d go in for the last three home games of the year and then we’d have meetings. So we’re in these meetings and in comes Marge. She gave us this song and dance: “This is going to be a hands-on operation. I believe in … I’m going to be in touch with every one of you.” On and on about how she’s going to run the operation. Then she says, “I need for you to come down to my office and meet a very important part of the administration of this ballclub.”

We all get up and we start down the hall, and Tony Rebello and I are dragging along toward the end. Tony looks at me and I look at him, and I said, “She’s going to take us down there to see that damn dog, I know good and well.” He said, “I’ve gotta piss.” And in we went. About five minutes later, everybody come back down the hall with this bad look on their face, and we just fell in on the tail end of the line and we went on back to lunch.

You’re gonna look at the damn dog. And she meant it.

You knew things weren’t good because they’d had a press conference the day before. She’d had doughnuts and they didn’t eat all the doughnuts. We came into our meetings the next morning and she was selling them for 25 cents apiece. Day-old doughnuts. To her own staff.

One of the reporters for one of the papers there wrote along these lines: “A year ago, when Marge Schott came here, we had the fear. … She introduced us to the dog and we had the fear that this dog was going to have something to do with running the ballclub. After a year of Marge Schott, we wished she would turn it over to the dog.” She barred him. She told the publisher, “He can’t come back into this stadium.” The publisher said, “Well, that’s all right. He’s our reporter. So if he can’t come back, nobody’s coming back.” She said, “You can’t do that.” He said, “You wanta bet?” So they let him back in.

Sources

Unless otherwise attributed, all quotations by Bill Clark are from an extensive interview done by Bill Nowlin on July 17 and July 19, 2007.

Appendix

An “X” indicates that Clark signed at least one player from each territory marked X.

A “T” indicates Bill held one or more tryouts in the country marked T.

• Canada – 50 times T, X – he held tryouts in Newfoundland, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.
• Mexico – 30 times T, X – about 10 of the 31 states with emphasis on Sinaloa, Sonora, Nayarit, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, Campeche, Yucatan, and Tabasco.
• Venezuela – 30 times T, X
• Dominican Republic – 30 times T, X
• Australia – 25-30 times T, X – every state and territory, and the Torres Straits Islands as well
• Panama – 20 times T, X
• Nicaragua – 15 times T, X
• Netherlands – 10 times T, X
• El Salvador – 8 times T, X
• Japan – 8 times T, X
• Taiwan – 8 times
• Korea – 6 times T, X
• New Zealand – 6 times T, X
• Honduras – 5 times T, X
• Costa Rica – T, X
• Argentina – T, X
• Colombia — 7 times T, X
• Aruba – 6 times T
• Curacao – 10 times T, X
• Brazil – 4 times X
• Puerto Rico X (if you consider Puerto Rico as a country)
• South Africa – 3 times X
• Barbados — T
• Chile – T
• Mali – T
• Peru — T
• St. Maarten – T
• St. Vincent — T
• Bequia — T (part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines)
• Sweden — T
• Trinidad – T
• Bahamas — T
• Hong Kong – T
• Guatemala
• Italy
• China (PRC)
• Czech Republic
• St. Croix
• Ecuador – T
• San Marino
• Belize – T

There are markings next to both Bahamas and Hong Kong that indicate Clark held a tryout in each.

He has also observed teams from the following countries play in international ball:

• Finland
• Norway
• Denmark
• France
• Poland
• Russia X
• Lithuania
• Estonia
• Romania
• Slovakia
• Ukraine
• Zambia
• Namibia
• Nigeria
• Zimbabwe
• Croatia
• Slovenia
• Hungary
• Mongolia
• Indonesia
• Philippines
• Cuba (20 tournaments)
• Marshall Islands
• Northern Mariana Islands
• Chuuk (island group in the southwestern Pacific)
• Kosrae (island in the South Pacific)
• Palau (island nation east of the Philippines)
• Anguilla (softball)
• Malaysia (softball)

Devine in his scouting career signed or recommended 36 players who became major leaguers, including four who are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame: Joe Cronin, Paul Waner, Lloyd Waner, and Joe DiMaggio.

While he was scouting for Pittsburgh Devine first gained a reputation as an astute judge of baseball talent.  In 1925 young Joe Cronin from San Francisco was spending the summer playing semipro baseball for a team in Napa, California, when Devine signed him to a Pittsburgh contract.   One year later Cronin was playing in the majors.

Also in 1925, Paul Waner was playing with the San Francisco Seals and Devine saw the potential of the 125-pound outfielder.  The Pittsburgh management felt that Waner was too small to ever play major-league baseball, but after the 1925 season, when Waner batted .401 and had 280 hits (in 174 games), they made the decision to purchase both Waner and infielder Hal Rhyne. 

In 1927 Waner batted a league-leading .380, and joining him on that 1927 Pirates team was his brother Lloyd, who had also been recommended to the Pirates by Devine.  The 1927 Pirates, with the Waner brothers leading the way, won the National League pennant, but were swept by the Yankees in the World Series.

Devine also signed Dick Bartell and Ray Kremer to Pittsburgh contracts, and in 1929 he recommended that the Pirates purchase Gus Suhr from the San Francisco Seals.

In 1931 Joe Baerwald, owner of the Mission Reds of the Pacific Coast League, hired Devine as an assistant to manager George Burns.  Halfway through the season the Reds were in last place and Baerwald fired Burns and replaced him with Devine.  Devine couldn’t get the Reds on a winning track either,  and they finished the season in last place.  In 1932 Baerwald ordered Devine and his assistant, Bobby Coltrin, to sign some local players in hopes that even if they didn’t win a few more games, they would draw fans through the turnstiles.

Devine and Coltrin went to spring training with 17 local players, including future major leaguers Ellsworth “Babe” Dahlgren, Italo Chelini, and Al Wright.  They did help the attendance figures but the Reds did not move up in the standings and after they finished in the basement for the second consecutive year, Devine and Coltrin were fired.       The firing proved to be a blessing for Devine; in November he was hired to scout for the Yankees and remained with the Yankees for the rest of his life.

Though Devine covered Northern California, the Pacific Northwest, and part of the Southwest, most of his signed prospects came from Northern California, notably San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay Area.  Bobby Coltrin, Devine’s assistant, worked with him in the San Francisco area, and in Southern California Bill Essick and his assistant, Dan Crowley, often worked with Devine. Essick and Devine worked together on the signings of Joe Gordon and Joe DiMaggio.

Making Joe DiMaggio a Yankee was undoubtedly the highlight of Devine’s career.   At the end of the 1933 season, after hitting in 61 consecutive games for the San Francisco Seals, DiMaggio was the most sought-after minor-league player in the United States.  However, in May 1934 he injured his knee and almost overnight the price to acquire him dropped from an estimated $75,000 to $25,000, if in fact any major-league team would purchase him for any price because of his injured knee.

There has always been conjecture as to how big a role Essick played in the recommendation of DiMaggio to the Yankees.  Even DiMaggio himself expressed doubt that Devine recommended him, believing that Essick had been the main force behind his sale to the Yankees.  However, Dick Dobbins in his book The Grand Minor League, wrote that he had acquired Devine’s papers from his estate, “and they make it clear Devine had aggressively followed DiMaggio’s career both before and after the accident and had not lost interest because of the injury.”

In August 1935 Devine wrote to Yankees general manager Ed Barrow, “DiMaggio is easily the best prospect in the league.  DiMaggio can do everything, run, throw, hit, field and has a very good temperament, as well as plenty of guts and hustle.  There is nothing wrong with DiMaggio’s leg, [I] am sure you have one of the very best prospects that has been in the minor leagues for years.”

However, no one is perfect. Probably Devine’s biggest error in judgment came in 1937 when he evaluated Ted Williams.  His report to Barrow, according to Dobbins’ book, was, “(H)e shows promise as a hitter, but good pitching so far has stopped him cold.  I am positive that there isn’t one player in the Pacific Coast League that would help the Yankees next year.” 

Often a scout is remembered for only one player he signed:  Tom Greenwade for Mickey Mantle, Cy Slapnicka for signing Bob Feller.  If Joe Devine were to be remembered for only one player, it would be DiMaggio, but in fact he will also be remembered for many others. Although DiMaggio was by far the greatest he signed, he wasn’t, by far, the last. Throughout the 1930s and ‘40s he continued to send players to the Yankees, among them Bobby Brown, Andy Carey, Jerry Coleman, and Charlie Silvera. In a spring-training exhibition game in 1951 in San Francisco, Yankees manager Casey Stengel started a lineup composed almost entirely of players from California:  Charlie Silvera, catcher; Tom Morgan, pitcher; Fenton Mole, first base; Jerry Coleman, second base; Billy Martin, shortstop; Gil McDougald, third base; and Joe DiMaggio, Gene Woodling, and Jackie Jensen in the outfield.  Andy Carey, Bobby Brown, and John Lindell were on the bench and Frank Crosetti was the third-base coach. Eight of those Yankees had been signed by or recommended by Devine. During the late 1940s and early ‘50s it was not uncommon for the Yankees to field a team with four or more starters who had been signed by Devine.

In Devine’s day it was common for scouts to establish a relationship with the prospects and even though it wasn’t legal to make an offer or sign a player until he was out of high school, to find many ways to ingratiate themselves with the prospect and his family.  Devine was an expert when it came to establishing a relationship with a player and his family. 

In the 1930s and ‘40s many players played for a semipro team organized by Devine and known as the Kanely Yankees.  It was just another way of keeping in touch with his prospects; future Yankees such as Silvera, Brown, and Coleman were playing on the team even before they were out of high school.

 Not all of the prospects were happy about signing with Devine. Len Gabrielson, who was signed by Devine in 1934, told Dick Dobbins, “(Signing with) the Yankees was a mistake.  If I had signed with some other club I could have had a better chance, but I liked Joe Devine.  I played in the winter league because of him. When I would go to spring training with the Yankees with my brother-in-law Bill Matheson (a shortstop), he’d see Crosetti and I’d see Lou Gehrig and we’d say, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ ”

Even when they had some doubts about making the Yankees, prospects would sign with them (and Joe Devine). Dick Dobbins’ book The Grand Minor League quoted Duane Pillette as saying, “When you sign with the Yankees you sign with the best club in baseball.  So I signed with Yankee scout Joe Devine.” And Harvey Frommer’s book A Yankee Century quoted Andy Carey as saying, “It didn’t occur to me that (signing with the Yankees) wasn’t the smartest move on my part to join a team with all that talent.”   

Devine once said, “You can’t scout desire.  There is no man alive who can say just how any player is going to develop.”  But he did have guidelines he used to evaluate the potential Yankees.  First, he rated their physical characteristics and their speed.  He rated mechanical skills below physical characteristics because he felt that skills could be taught.  Then he judged a player’s character, disposition, personal habits, and diet.  He wasn’t always right in his judgment, but his success can be judged by the number of players he signed who made the major leagues.

Devine died on September 21, 1951, in a San Francisco hospital at the age of 56. The previous July he had fallen and broken his arm while getting into a car and complications produced internal bleeding.  He recovered somewhat but then suffered a relapse.  At the time of the accident he was on a trip to visit the Yankee farm team in Twin Falls, Idaho.  Even after his death his legacy endured for many years, as several of his players were in the major leagues in the late 1960s.  One of them, Charlie Silvera, was still scouting at the age of 80 for the Chicago Cubs and still telling stories of Joe Devine and the role Devine played during the Yankee dynasty days.

Photo credit

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Sources

Dick Dobbins, The Grand Minor League (Duane Press, 1999)

Harvey Frommer, A Yankee Century (Berkley Trade, 2003)

Beside the aforementioned players Devine is credited with signing Ed Bahr, Lou Berberet, Milo Candini, Bernie DeViveiros, Bud Hafey, Tom Hafey, Bob Joyce, Frank Lucchesi (manager), Woody Main, Gil McDougald, Fenton Mole, Bill Renna, Hal Rhyne, Art Schallock, Bill Wight, Tiny Bonham, Wally Judnich, Frankie Kelleher, Gus Triandos, Jackie Jensen, and Woodie Held.

William Earl “Bill” Essick was born in Grand Ridge, Illinois, on December 18, 1880.  Bill’s only sibling, brother Lyle, was born seven years later.  Essick’s father, John, came from Pennsylvania, and his mother, Eliza, was born in Illinois.  John’s family had been in Pennsylvania for at least one generation, while Eliza’s parents were born in Ireland.  The family lived in Illinois, where John worked as a grocer. 

Essick loved music and became a proficient piano player.  To hone his talent he attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he majored in music.  While at Knox he played and pitched for the school baseball team.  Essick graduated in 1903 and played the piano at the commencement.[1] Despite his musical talent, Essick decided to pursue a baseball career over a music career.  For 1904 he signed with Salt Lake City in the Pacific National League, a competitor of the Pacific Coast League. Essick moved right into the rotation, and in 40 games he finished with 13 wins and 23 losses, the latter the league-leading figure. 

In 1905 Essick joined Portland in the PCL, a league one level below the majors.  He signed for $1,600, a respectable salary for a young high-minor-league player.   In Portland, Essick turned in a year highly similar to his previous season: he pitched often but with only moderate success and wound up with a record of 23-30.  While in Portland Essick met Eula Rachel Bennett from Corvallis, Oregon.  A grand-opera singer, Eula shared Essick’s love of music.  The two were wed a couple of years later, and the marriage lasted throughout Essick’s life.

For the 1906 season the McCredies, Portland owner William and manager Walter, his nephew, cut Essick’s salary to $1,400.  Essick balked but at that time a disgruntled ballplayer had little recourse.  To compensate for his agreeing to the salary reduction, Essick managed to finagle a commitment from Walter that should he be sold to a major-league team he would receive half the sale price.  Based on his 1905 performance, Walter probably saw little risk in this promise.

In fact Essick turned in one of the finest seasons of his career in 1906 and his solid pitching began to receive notice from major-league teams.  With his record at 19-6, Portland sold Essick and Larry McLean to Cincinnati for $2,500.  Essick pitched capably for the Reds over the remainder of the 1906 season, and he finished his first partial major-league season at 2-2 with a 2.97 ERA in 39 innings.  While in Cincinnati, the 5-foot-10, 175-pound Essick was given his lifelong nickname “Vinegar.”  Essig in German means vinegar, and Essick, playing in Cincinnati with its large population of German immigrants, was tagged with the nickname.

Unfortunately for his finances, Essick was apparently the victim of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire and the cheap dishonesty of shoestring minor-league ownership.  Essick wrote to Reds owner Garry Herrmann that the letter he received from McCredie promising him a portion of his sale price was in his trunk, which burned in the fire.  Without the letter, Essick wrote, the McCredies were not willing to honor the agreement and he hoped Herrmann would intervene on his behalf.  No record of the eventual disposition of Essick’s plea exists, but it is highly unlikely he ever received a portion of the sale price.

Cincinnati manager Ned Hanlon used Essick only sparingly at the start of the 1907 season, and in June the team sent him to St. Paul in the American Association, another league just one level below the majors.  Essick struggled at St. Paul over the second half of the season, finishing 5-13.  He would never return to the major leagues as a player.  Over the next few seasons Essick bounced around the American Association.  Kansas City acquired him from St. Paul at midseason in 1908, and in 1910 Essick moved on to Toledo.  While in the American Association he was a useful hurler but no better: he held a regular spot in the rotation, but typically ended up with a record slightly below .500. 

Essick was released by Toledo in April of 1911. He then signed on with the Minneapolis Millers.  His stint in Minneapolis was short; notably, during his first start he was relieved by future Hall of Famer Rube Waddell.  In May, the Millers traded Essick to South Bend of the Central League, a rung down in the minor-league hierarchy.  Just two months into his tenure with the club, South Bend relocated to Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He repeated at Grand Rapids in 1912; in both of Essick’s two years in the Central League he pitched respectably, hurling over 200 innings and finishing above .500. 

In 1913 Essick acquired an ownership interest in the Grand Rapids franchise and assumed an executive position, similar to today’s general manager spot.  And although pitcher Edward Smith was technically the manager that season, Essick was intimately involved in the team on the field.  In honor of Essick’s new position the team was nicknamed the Bill-eds, which stuck for one season.  At the time minor-league franchises were constantly under-capitalized and teams used as little staff as possible.  Today we would categorize Smith’s duties more as those of a field captain, and Essick handled many of the tasks we now associate with a manager.  In his new role Essick mostly conceded his playing aspirations and appeared in less than ten games.  He would not again play organized professional baseball.

The team Essick inherited had finished ninth in a 12-team league in 1912.  For 1913 the league restructured down to a six-team circuit.  Led by future big-league star Jeff Pfeffer, Essick’s squad won the pennant by 15 games.  That winter Eula gave birth to the couple’s first and only child, daughter Jane Elizabeth.  Essick returned the next year, now with second baseman George Hughes as the technical manager, but again effectively directing the club.  Without Pfeffer, Essick could not repeat and the team slumped to fifth. 

In 1915 Essick officially assumed the manager’s job as well, and the team, now nicknamed the Black Sox, rebounded to second.  In 1916 the league moved to a split season with the winner of the first half playing the winner of the second for the pennant.  Essick’s squad came in second in both halves; thus, even though they ended up with the best overall record in the league, they were ineligible for the post season series.  The circuit abandoned the split season format for 1917, and Essick led Grand Rapids to the championship.  In July that year the Three I League folded and league leader Peoria was absorbed by the Central League to take the place of struggling South Bend.  After the season, Grand Rapids and Peoria faced off in a best-of-seven contest; Peoria won the first three but Grand Rapids came back to win the final four and the series.

On the heels of a last-place finish in the PCL in 1917, Vernon Tigers president Thomas Darmody concluded that he needed a new manager.  To fill the post he hired Essick, who would have viewed moving to the Los Angeles area in the higher classification PCL as a promotion.   Essick recognized the additional confusion inherent in trying to rebuild a team during wartime.  Nevertheless in February 1918—roughly a year after America’s entry into World War I—Essick set out on an extended trip back to the Midwest to scout his old stomping grounds for talent, meet with his old employer and friend Garry Herrmann in Cincinnati, and travel to the East Coast to attend a National League meeting.  In the end, Essick assembled a squad that was much improved over the 1917 version.

The 1918 season was prematurely ended in July by the league’s reaction to the US War Department’s “work or fight” order and other wartime restrictions.  The “work or fight” edict created uncertainty around players’ military service status, and all the minor leagues (except the International) decided to shut down in midsummer.  At the point in July that the PCL elected to close its season, Essick’s Tigers were in first place, two games ahead of the Los Angeles Angels.   After the abrupt ending Vernon and Los Angeles agreed to face off in a postseason series to generate some extra funds.  The Angels won the series five games to two, creating a lingering dispute as to the rightful champion of the 1918 season.

Soon after the termination of the season, Essick tangentially sparked one of the American League’s biggest boardroom controversies.  Several major-league clubs began negotiating with Vernon pitcher Jack Quinn to play out the remainder of the 1918 season.  He had just agreed to terms with Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, when Essick informed him that he had been sold to the Yankees.  At the time there was a rule (not particularly well articulated) that players from lapsed minor leagues were free agents until play resumed, at which point they again belonged to their former club. 

An angry Quinn ignored Essick’s implied threat that he report to New York to avoid trouble and pitched for Chicago over the remainder of the 1918 season.  After the season the National Commission, the governing body of baseball, apologetically ruled that Quinn rightfully belonged to the Yankees.  Comiskey believed American League President Ban Johnson, first among equals on the commission, had purposely decided against him, and the two become bitter enemies, with lasting implications for the future of the American League.[2]  

 When Darmody acquired the Vernon franchise from Ed Maier in December 1916, he had agreed to pay roughly $65,000 but put little money down on his purchase.  After struggling financially through two wartime years, he was ready to quit.  Although at this distance it is difficult to determine exactly what occurred in the ownership ranks, it appears Darmody defaulted on his payments and Maier reassumed control of the club.  In May 1919 Maier then gave comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle an option to purchase the club for $65,000, again for little money down.  As a provision in this agreement, Arbuckle became the controlling executive of the franchise.  A huge celebrity at the time, Arbuckle was named team president.

Vernon started slowly in 1919, losing nine of its first 12 games.  But Essick turned the team around with the help of Bob Meusel, who would later go on to star with the Yankees.  Heading into the last weekend of the season, the Tigers and the Los Angeles Angels were tied for the pennant, with three games to play against each other: one on Saturday and a doubleheader on Sunday.  Advertised as one of the league’s most exciting finishes, these final games drew huge crowds.  Vernon won Saturday, setting up a Sunday matchup in which they had to win at least one of the two games. 

Sunday’s doubleheader at Washington Park drew 22,000 fans and another 5,000 to 10,000 had to be turned away.  The Los Angeles Times reported that this was the largest crowd ever to attend a minor-league baseball game, surpassing the 17,000 that once witnessed a game in Toledo against Columbus.  Vernon won the first game to clinch the pennant.  In the celebration after the game: “Lefty Flynn, former Yale gridiron giant, picked up Manager Bill Essick, tossed him across his shoulders and ran about the field.”[3]

On the heels of their dramatic pennant, the Tigers faced the St. Paul Saints, champions of the American Association, in what was billed as the Western World’s Series Championship.  This contentious series highlights the chaotic nature of minor-league baseball at the time and Essick’s aggressive style.  For the Series the Saints traveled to Los Angeles for a best-of-nine set in Washington Park.  A makeshift commission including Arbuckle and American Association President Thomas Hickey was established to oversee the Series, and two arbiters, Jimmy Toman from the PCL and James Murray from the American Association, were selected to umpire the contests.

Vernon won the first game relatively uneventfully, although Saints manager Mike Kelley showed he too had West Coast style by managing in shirt sleeves in a camp chair just outside the dugout.  Kelley created further commotion before the start of the second game when he demanded that the teams switch benches, partly because it was his right (the teams alternated which was technically the home team), and partly because he knew Essick and the Tigers preferred their traditional bench.  Essick refused to move his club from their home bench, so Kelley brought the issue before the commission.  When it ruled in Kelley’s favor, Essick leisurely removed his troops and equipment, causing a ten-minute delay in the start of the game.  Whether due to the loss of their lucky bench or St. Paul’s fine pitching, Vernon lost the second game, 5-0. 

The third game was marred by a near-riot when umpire Murray made what both the Los Angeles and St. Paul papers agreed was a horrible call at first base.  In the sixth inning with two out and runners on first and third, he called Vernon batter Hugh High out at first even though he beat the throw by at least a full step.  With Essick in the lead, the entire Vernon team charged onto the field and ran at Murray.  As they closed in, the Los Angeles Times described the scene: “The first wave of Tigers found a big Irishman … flailing away with both arms.  He was lashing blindly at those nearest him.  One of his swings missed [Zinn] Beck and Zinn stepped in with a beauty to the jaw.  Murray continued fighting back until the police came to his rescue.”[4]  When order was finally restored, Beck was ejected and fined $50.  Murray received a police escort off the field at its conclusion, but the mood had lightened somewhat because Vernon won the game, 2-1.

Kelley and Essick continued to search for an advantage:  Kelley complained that Essick watered down the area in front of home plate so that grounders triggered by Vernon’s spitball pitchers would not bounce for base hits.  Kelley was later accused of instructing his batters to argue balls and strikes to delay the game and cause the pitcher to lose his rhythm.  Vernon won a controversy-free Game Four to take a 3-1 lead in the Series.

The peace could not last.  In the fourth inning of Game Five, a brawl was barely averted when the Tigers accused a St. Paul runner of spiking their first baseman.  With bases loaded in the sixth, St. Paul pinch-hitter Red Corriden objected to a strike call by Toman and a number of Saints surrounded the umpire.  In the pushing and bumping that followed, Lute Boone yanked off Toman’s chest protector, breaking the straps.  That Boone was not ejected testifies to the anarchy rampant in this Series. 

When play resumed, Vernon relief pitcher Willie Mitchell beaned Corriden so badly that the ball ricocheted out to second base, and Corriden remained unconscious for a time while a doctor was summoned from the stands.  The beaning forced in what proved to be the winning run and St. Paul pulled to within three games to two.   In the clubhouse after the game, the Tigers battled each other as well. Catcher Al DeVormer accused of starting pitcher Rex Dawson of being “yellow”; he felt that Dawson should have been brushing back more Saints batters because the Saints pitcher was knocking Vernon’s batters down.[5]  The two squared off and Dawson punched DeVormer in the jaw.   DeVormer retaliated and more punches were thrown before the other players finally broke it up.

The Saints tied the Series 3-3 by winning a relatively argument-free Game Six.  More off-field controversy quickly developed before Game Seven, however.  Essick petitioned the commission to replace the injured Hugh High with Scotty Alcock.  The commission demurred and put the matter to St. Paul manager Kelley, who agreed that Alcock could play.  Essick then pushed his luck by requesting that he be allowed to use Los Angeles Angels first baseman Jack Fournier in place of injured first baseman Babe Borton. 

To support his case Essick unveiled a telegram that contained the pre-Series permission for St. Paul to substitute Toledo’s Hyatt for Charley Dressen, who could not make the trip west, and the stipulation that Vernon could do the same if necessary.  The commission dithered while Kelley objected.  He pointed out that the Tigers had already substituted Mitchell for Borton and that Fournier was not on the list of potential replacement players.  Eventually the commission ruled unanimously that Fournier was not eligible.  Essick blatantly ignored the decision and sent Fournier out to first base to start the game.  Kelley refused to play, and after a delay Toman forfeited the game to St. Paul.  As the fans began to file out to get their money back, Essick conferred with owner Ed Maier and agreed to play without Fournier.  Kelley, probably after some prodding from the commission, consented to relinquish his forfeit and play the game.  In the event, Vernon won to close within one game of the championship.

Game Eight featured another outburst from a Vernon player.  When Murray caught hurler Joe Finneran scuffing the baseball, he tossed Finneran a clean one and demanded the altered ball.  Finneran threw the ball at the umpire and it hit him in the chest protector.  He then charged Murray and threw his glove at him.  He grabbed the umpire’s chest protector, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it.  Before the situation further deteriorated, Essick grabbed Finneran to hold him back, and players from both teams intervened and restored order.  Finneran was ejected and fined $100.  St. Paul won the game to even the Series at four games apiece.

Vernon won the deciding game, 2-1, on a two-out single by Wheezer Dell in the bottom of the ninth inning.  The fans mobbed the field and carried Dell off in celebration.  Even in their moment of victory, however, the Tigers could not escape controversy.  As the throng was exiting the field, Tom Kennedy, a local celebrity and ex-boxer, tracked down umpire Murray and beat him severely.  Kennedy later claimed he had acted spontaneously in a fit of rage, but Murray disputed this account.  He noted that earlier in the game Finneran, while leaning over the railing and talking to Kennedy, yelled to Murray that “you are going to get killed after the game.”[6] 

American Association President Hickey liked the idea of a postseason matchup with the PCL winner but was disgusted with Vernon’s conduct.  While he recommended that a series with the PCL be scheduled annually, he proposed banning Vernon as long as it was owned by Maier and managed by Essick.

In the late Teens baseball was rife with gambling.  The Black Sox scandal, in which several members of the Chicago White Sox agreed to throw the 1919 World Series, may be the most famous consequence, but the PCL was afflicted just as severely.  By 1919 the situation had reached a critical stage.  The often fractious PCL owners hired William McCarthy as league president with a mandate to clean up the gambling, often occurring openly in the league’s ballparks.  The level of crookedness was such that McCarthy did not have to look far or wait long to uncover it.  Early in the 1920 season San Francisco released two pitchers, Tom Seaton and Casey Smith, for throwing games.  That summer McCarthy also banned notorious game-fixer and one-time major-league star, Hal Chase, then relegated to California’s outlaw leagues, from PCL ballparks for trying to bribe players.

For Essick and Vernon the scandal erupted in August 1920.  Vernon first baseman Babe Borton admitted he had bribed several opposing players to give less than their best in September 1919 against Vernon.   Borton claimed that the bribe money came from a $2,000 fund whose creation was substantially coordinated by Essick.   Each of the Tigers anted into the fund as did a number of interested fans.  Borton further revealed that before an important series in late September against Salt Lake City, Essick approached him and “wanted to know if I could get any of the Salt Lake players to lay down so that we might win the pennant.  I told him I would see what could be done.”[7]  Over the next several months conclusive evidence emerged that at least a couple of opposing players had, in fact, accepted bribes.

Not surprisingly, Essick and the Tigers vehemently denied any involvement in the bribery scandal.  McCarthy, as well, exonerated the Vernon players.  He concluded that a gambling ring fronted by Seattle gambler Nate Raymond had been the source of Borton’s kitty.  Essick declared, “As long as people listen to his [Borton’s] lies, he will tell them.”[8] In response to Essick’s countercharges, Borton reportedly filed suit against him for $50,000.  McCarthy moved to ban Borton and the few players against whom he had solid evidence. Several of the PCL magnates, despite their putative campaign against gambling, were reluctant to ban a couple of the more notable players caught up in the scandal.  This hesitancy created a rift within the league between McCarthy and the pro-cleanup owners on the one side and those who wanted to more or less ignore the issue on the other.

The public perception of the situation changed dramatically in September 1920 when the Chicago White Sox player fix of the 1919 World Series became public.  It now became politically untenable to publicly overlook the gambling misdeeds of players.  Furthermore, the Los Angeles district attorney concluded that he needed to investigate the scandal and called for a grand jury investigation to begin in October.   At the hearings all parties pretty much kept to their stories.  Borton maintained that the money had come from Essick and the players; McCarthy, Essick, and others provided evidence of a relationship between Borton, Raymond, and other gamblers and suggested that Borton was blaming the players out of fear of retaliation from the gamblers. 

On December 10 the grand jury released its findings.  It cleared Essick and the Vernon players of involvement in raising Borton’s slush fund.  The grand jury did conclude, however, that Los Angeles would have won the 1919 pennant had the series against Salt Lake City been played honestly.  It also returned indictments against Raymond, Borton, and two Salt Lake City players, Harl Maggert and William Rummler, who accepted bribes.  I can find no record of the ultimate disposition of Borton’s $50,000 lawsuit against Essick; in light of the subsequent grand-jury findings I assume it was dropped, dismissed, or never filed.  To conclude the story, two weeks later the judge dismissed the charges on the grounds that “conspiring to throw baseball games is not a criminal act.”[9]

There was also a baseball season in 1920.  At the end of the 1919 season Arbuckle decided he did not want the franchise badly enough to come up with the $65,000—Maier was now demanding cash after twice surrendering control for little money down.  Arbuckle let the option lapse, and Maier reassumed control of the team.  Essick was now working for his third owner in three years.  In one of his more significant moves, Essick had traded third baseman Bob Meusel to the Yankees prior to the 1919 season.

Although it is clearly difficult to reconstruct at this distance in time, it appears that the sale of Bob Meusel to the Yankees began (or at least materially enhanced) the relationship between Essick and New York.  Upon Essick’s recommendation of his star third baseman, the Yankees sent scout Bob Connery to evaluate Meusel.  In return, Essick demanded several players, including one who could not clear waivers. (Before a player could be traded from a major-league team to a minor-league team he had to first be put on revocable waivers—the other seven teams in the league had the opportunity to claim the player.)  Despite this apparent stalemate, Essick sent a letter to New York manager Miller Huggins further plugging his talents.  Connery returned to the Coast and eventually worked out a deal of four players for Meusel, who would go on to a long career as a Yankees outfielder.[10] 

Essick built and fielded a quality team for 1920.  He partially filled the void at third by acquiring Red Smith, a one-time regular major leaguer, from the Boston Braves.  Essick experienced several headaches with his pitchers as Byron Houck and Wheezer Dell both missed time in salary disputes.  Nonetheless, Essick managed the team to his third consecutive pennant and first untainted one.

Debilitated by injuries, the Tigers could not make it a fourth straight in 1921, and the team fell all the way to sixth.  By 1922 the team had begun to turn over and included a number of ex-major leaguers and minor league veterans.   Essick almost managed this squad to the pennant—they were tied for first as late as September 24—but in the end they fell four games short.  Jakie May, who had pitched the previous season with the St. Louis Cardinals, led the club at 35-9 with a 1.84 ERA.  After his dominant season, May’s stock soared among the major leagues.  Essick and Maier, who had cultivated a close relationship with the Yankees owners and general manager Ed Barrow, hoped to sell them May for a healthy price.  They overreached, however, and could not come to an agreement.

 This close association between the two franchises landed both in some hot water with Baseball Commissioner Landis.   Shortstop Ray French and pitcher Jess Doyle were technically the property of the Yankees and playing in Vernon under an optional assignment.  Major-league teams were limited in the players they could place out on optional assignment, so they greatly valued these slots.  To get around this limitation major-league teams occasionally reached gentleman’s agreements with minor-league teams that they would have first crack at a player even if his option period had expired—a not uncommon violation of the rules.  After the 1922 season the Yankees technically gave up their option and released French and Doyle to Vernon.  Barrow, however, indiscreetly made several inquiries that showed he still believed he controlled the rights to these players.  Upon learning of the illegal understanding, Landis declared the two free agents.

Vernon’s veteran squad slumped to last place in 1923.  Maier and Essick concluded the team needed to rebuild, and they unloaded several regulars.   Despite the new faces, however, the team could climb no higher than sixth in 1924, and Maier was becoming increasingly frustrated.  Essick again made a number of changes to his lineup and rotation for 1925 and touted several as future major leaguers—two in fact later turned in respectable major-league careers—but, overall, little improvement followed. 

Further complicating Essick’s rebuilding effort that spring, Maier publicly announced he was looking to sell the franchise.  Essick was now working on the final year of a three-year contract and tensions were developing with Maier.  The owner was unhappy with the team’s struggles on the field and focusing on either selling the franchise or shifting it to San Francisco.  Essick, discouraged by Maier’s outside distractions, wanted a new challenge as well.  On August 1 Essick and Maier mutually agreed to part ways; after nearly eight years at the Vernon helm, Essick was out of a job.

In December 1925 Essick met with the Yankees’ brain trust of owner Jacob Ruppert and de facto general manager Ed Barrow in New York.  The two were in the process of rebuilding and expanding their scouting staff after a disappointing season.  In the late Teens and early 1920s the Yankees acquired most of their top players by purchasing them from the Boston Red Sox.  By the mid-1920s this source had dried up and, in the buoyant economic times of the Roaring Twenties, no other major-league team was looking to sell off its best players.   The high minors had become a key source of talent: The rules of the time gave the minor leagues an unprecedented amount of control over these players, driving the acquisition cost up to unprecedented levels.  Top scouts of this era were generally required to identify useful players—often with the help of local bird-dogs—and secure them at a reasonable price from the minor-league owner.

Along with Essick the Yankees hired Eddie Herr, a former Detroit Tigers scout.  With their two new hires, the Yankees reorganized their scouting staff.  Essick covered the West Coast, and Herr was assigned the Midwest.  Holdovers Bob Gilks and Ed Holly focused on the South and East respectively, while Paul Krichell principally targeted the colleges.

Shifting from a PCL manager position to a major-league scout would not necessarily have been regarded as a promotion.  Nevertheless, the Yankees, even at this time, were the best capitalized, most aggressive, and most prestigious team in the league.  Furthermore, Essick would be able to stay in his adopted home of Los Angeles while scouting the West Coast and living a relatively unstructured life.

Essick always felt he had an eye for talent.  While in Grand Rapids he sent a letter to his old boss, Cincinnati owner Garry Herrmann, recommending a young outfielder at Evansville, future Hall of Famer Edd Roush. He also advocated with Herrmann on behalf of two of his own players: pitchers Alvah Bowman (who never developed) and Jeff Pfeffer (who did).  While managing Vernon, Essick also added his recommendation to the Yankees’ assessment of future Hall of Famer Tony Lazzeri.  Salt Lake City was demanding a high price for its star shortstop, and the Yankees evaluated him extensively. 

Once with the Yankees, however, Essick’s first big-dollar acquisition flopped.  During the middle of the 1927 season he recommended the purchase of shortstop Lyn Lary and second baseman Jimmy Reese from Oakland, with Lary as the primary target.  To acquire the two the Yankees paid $125,000; at the time the highest price ever paid in a single transaction for minor leaguers.  As a condition of the sale, New York allowed the two to play one more season in Oakland.  The Yankees also received an option to purchase two additional Oakland players.  Lary and Reese never panned out as expected, eventually leading owner Jacob Ruppert to become disillusioned with this method of talent acquisition.

Over the next few years the Yankees’ primary target continued to be talented up-and-coming high minor leaguers.  Essick was at the forefront of this policy and recommended and received approval for several more high-priced Pacific Coast Leaguers.  Some panned out better than others.  Essick was the beneficiary of a bizarre superstition to secure a skillful hurler in August 1929.  As sportswriter Abe Kemp remembered, before Essick purchased future Hall of Famer Lefty Gomez from the San Francisco Seals for $45,000, Cleveland Indian scout Cy Slapnicka had a ten-day option on him. 

Kemp was with San Francisco owner Charley Graham at the ballpark when Slapnicka approached the owner.  He intended to sign Gomez, but told Graham he wanted to first head down to the locker room.  When he returned, Slapnicka informed a surprised Graham he had decided not to buy Gomez.  Graham naturally asked why.  “Well, I’ll tell you, Charley,” Slapnicka responded, “I saw Gomez undressed in the clubhouse, and anybody who’s got as big a prick as he’s got can’t pitch winning ball in the major leagues.”[11] Essick later spent $50,000 of New York’s money to purchase shortstop Frank Crosetti from Graham.

Another large check landed Sacramento outfielder Myril Hoag.  But in this instance Essick had to work much harder, and the ultimate payoff was much less.  After the 1929 season Essick went duck hunting with his pal, Sacramento manager Buddy Ryan.  The two agreed that the Yankees could have an option to purchase Hoag at the end of the coming season for $25,000.  To be enforceable these agreements had to be recorded with the commissioner’s office.  Doing so, however, used up one of a team’s precious 40-man roster spots; thus, major-league teams often skirted the rules by relying on their relationships with the minor-league operators.  In the event, Hoag had a terrific 1930 season, and other teams tossed much higher numbers at the Solons.  With the opportunity for a huge payoff, Sacramento’s owners had little interest in honoring the unenforceable agreement made by their manager.[12]  In the end Essick succeeded in holding Sacramento to its agreement, but needed to up his offer to $45,000.

Around this same time, when Portland released manager Bill Rogers, Essick was rumored to be in line for the job.  The Sporting News suggested he was unlikely to take the position because “(H)e is comfortably fixed in Los Angeles where he owns property.”[13]  Furthermore, Essick enjoyed the freedom of a scout’s life and had little interest in once again becoming a minor-league manager.  In general during the offseason Essick spent much of his time touring the West Coast visiting Yankee-controlled players and checking up on their health and training.  He also oversaw a baseball school in the Los Angeles area.

In early 1930s, after several high-priced minor-league flops and changes to the rules governing the ownership of minor-league franchises by major-league teams, Ruppert initiated a farm system.  As the Yankees’ stable of minor-league affiliates grew, the focus of the Yankee scouts gradually shifted to amateur players to develop in their farm system.

But the Yankees did not suddenly stop tracking top minor-league talent.  In 1934 Essick negotiated the acquisition of one of the all-time greats, center fielder Joe DiMaggio.  After a monster season in 1933—DiMaggio hit .340 and led the PCL with 169 RBIs as an 18-year-old—all of the wealthy franchises were offering San Francisco owner Charley Graham huge amounts of money for his star.  To Graham’s horror, however, DiMaggio suffered a serious knee injury in 1934 and many teams backed off. 

Essick, however, persevered.  After the season he persuaded Graham to give him a short-term option to acquire DiMaggio for $25,000 and five players controlled by the Yankees.  Financially strapped by the Depression, Graham needed the money and the players to help restock his team.  With the agreement in hand, Essick and scouting supervisor Joe Devine hauled DiMaggio to a Los Angeles doctor for an examination.  The doctor advised the duo that he expected no lasting damage from the knee injury; when they wired Barrow the results of the examination, he told them to close the deal.

Before the birth of their farm system in the early 1930s, the Yankees scouts may have concentrated  principally on high minor leaguers, but they still had a 40-man roster to fill out with prospects.   Shortly after joining the Yankees, Essick scouted high-school pitcher Gordon Rhodes in Salt Lake City.  As Rhodes remembered, Essick watched him lose a no-hit game 2-1 after which he signed an agreement that he would join the Yankees when he graduated.[14] In 1929 Rhodes made the big leagues and played eight years in the majors.

But it was in the mid-1930s that Essick made his mark signing several amateur and semipro players who would go on to respectable major-league careers.  Most importantly, over the 1935-36 winter he signed future star second baseman Joe Gordon from the University of Oregon.  Shortly thereafter he landed Jerry Priddy, another amateur who would go on to a long major-league career as a second baseman.  Essick signed Priddy out of Washington High School in Los Angeles.

The Yankees scout who signed a player played a key role in determining at which minor-league team and level the player would debut.  In Gordon’s case, Essick anticipated starting him in a low minor league in Joplin, Missouri.  Jess Orndorff of the National Baseball School in Los Angeles, where Gordon was training, convinced Essick that the relatively mature Gordon could start in Oakland, one step below the majors.  Gordon justified Orndorff’s and Essick’s confidence and hit .300 in the PCL.[15]

Essick secured several other future major leaguers as well. Johnny Sturm was hitting home runs in Missouri for several teams including one in the Missouri-Illinois Trolley League.  The Brooklyn Dodgers first approached him, but Sturm was advised to have Essick see him before committing.  In the game in which Essick scouted Sturm, the big slugger hit two home runs and Essick signed him.[16] Essick plucked Johnny Lindell off a semipro team in Monrovia, California, after he had spent a semester at the University of Southern California.[17] Essick also signed outfielder Les Powers while he was in college in the early 1930s.  Powers’ short major-league career was cut down in 1939 when he suffered a pinched sciatic nerve and could not walk for six months.[18]

In 1938 Essick signed Ralph Houk, a multi-sport high school athlete in Lawrence, Kansas.  Houk initially planned to enroll at either the University of Kansas or Baker University in Baldwin, Kansas.  But Essick persuaded him to sign with the Yankees.[19] Houk debuted in the majors after the war and carved out a career catching a few games a year as a backup.  He later gained a measure of fame as a successful manager.

Of course some got away.  Along with scouts from several other teams, Essick had tracked Ted Williams through his final years of high school.  When the time came to try to sign Williams, Essick offered him the opportunity to play at Binghamton in the Class A Eastern League for $250 for the first month and $500 if he made the team.  “He told me he wouldn’t be signing me unless he felt I could make the New York Yankees,” Williams recalled. “I suppose they say that to everybody. But they actually offered me the best deal of anybody.”  In the end Williams declined the Yankees offer: His mother wanted him to stay closer to home and Williams himself was apprehensive about moving across the county.  Furthermore, when Williams’s mother asked for $1,000 for herself, Essick rightfully feared he was about to be subjected to a bidding war and refused the additional request.[20]

 Essick also barely missed Hall of Fame shortstop Arky Vaughan.  Before heading to Fullerton, California, to try to sign him, Essick detoured to Long Beach to scout another player who played only on Sundays.  Meanwhile the Pirates were also scouting Fullerton and signed Vaughan just before Essick arrived.  As a consolation for the trip, Essick landed catcher Willard Hershberger.

By the late 1930s Essick was nearing 60 years old, and his successes dwindled off.  Although several signings eventually made it to the majors, none developed into dependable major-league regulars.  He signed two-sport letterman Ferrell Anderson just before the star football guard and baseball catcher graduated from the University of Kansas.[21]  Essick purchased Loyd Christopher from the Oakland Oaks of the PCL, but Christopher hurt his knee and never became more than a major-league bit player.[22]  In 1946 Essick signed Harry Bright after high school in Kansas City.  Bright was not a particularly sought-after prospect and Essick landed him for $800; he later quit baseball, and the Yankees sold him to a minor-league team in Oklahoma.  Bright eventually returned and made the majors with Pittsburgh in 1958.[23]

In the 1940s Essick’s nephew Doug, Lyle’s son, starred in football for the University of Southern California.  Labeled an end at the time, Doug’s position resembled that of a modern-day tight end or wide receiver.  After graduation in 1947 Doug spent two years as a pitcher in minor-league baseball in the California League but failed to advance.

 After World War II, as prosperity returned to the country, amateur player signing bonuses shot up.  Very few received more than $10,000 before the war, afterwards the dollars increased dramatically.  In the late 1940s Essick signed pitcher-outfielder Tom Morgan—his last acquisition—out of high school in El Monte, California, for a reported $20,000, a hefty bonus for the time.  Morgan had offers from the Dodgers, Pirates, Browns, and three other organizations and felt he could have received more from another.  But he wanted to be a Yankee and “was most convinced by Essick’s arguments.”[24]

Essick officially retired at the end of 1950.  His health began to fail in 1951, and at midyear he was moved from La Crescent Sanitarium to California Hospital with a heart ailment.[25]  On October 12, 1951, Essick died in his sleep from his heart problems.  He left behind his wife and daughter.  In Essick’s more than 45 years in baseball he held many positions, but it was as a scout for the New York Yankees that he made his most lasting mark.

Last revised: February 6, 2022 (zp)

Sources:

The historical Sporting News was extremely useful for following Essick’s baseball life.  Two short articles spotlight Essick’s career: “Vinegar Bill, the Ivory Scout” by Kyle Crichton in Colliers (March 12, 1938) and an article by Jesse Temple in the Galesburg Register-Mail on January 3, 2007.  Essick’s file at the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum contained a number of interesting items, including several letters written by Essick during his playing days.   For minor-league records I relied mainly upon information ordered from Ray Nemec, the SABR Minor League Database, and Baseball America’s Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (Third Edition).  The SABR Scouts Committee database of “Who Signed Who” is a valuable resource for providing leads in researching a scout’s career.  The census and other family information available at Ancestry.com proved extremely helpful for personal information generally unavailable in published sources.

For Essick’s years at Vernon, the Los Angeles Times was extremely useful, as was R. Scott Mackey’s Barbary Coast: The Pacific Coast League of the 1920s.  Runs, Hits, and an Era: The Pacific Coast League, 1903-1958 by Paul J. Zingg and Mark D. Medeiros also offered some helpful background.  Daniel E. Ginsburg’s The Fix is In: A History of Baseball Gambling and Game Fixing Scandals provided additional information on the game-throwing scandal.  An article at www.sportshollywood.com/vernontigers.html considers the team with an emphasis on Fatty Arbuckle.   Carlos Bauer discusses the 1918 season in detail at www.pclbaseball.com/pcl100/news/?id=6020.  Stew Thornley provided copies of the St. Paul Pioneer Press for the 1919 postseason series.

Two magazine articles help illuminate the scouting business and Essick’s role:  “What the Fan Doesn’t See” by Bill Bryson in Baseball Magazine (October 1946) and “I Wanna Be an Immortal” by Cleveland Amory in the Saturday Evening Post of January 10, 1942.  The author’s biography of Ed Barrow, Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankee’s First Dynasty (University of Nebraska Press, 2008) also provides the story of several of Essick’s more important signings and a useful background on the Yankee scouting system.

He rose out of the citrus fields of Southern California to become the first Mexican-born pitcher and the third Mexican-born player in the major leagues.  From picking citrus in the fields he went to picking players from the fields and became one of the greatest baseball scouts in major-league history.  Jesse Flores overcame hometown discrimination to almost singlehandedly build ballclubs for the Minnesota Twins.  He was inducted into the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987.  In 1985 Flores was selected as the West Coast Scout of the Year.  He spent 50 years in professional baseball.

Jesus “Jesse” or “Jess” Flores Sandoval came from humble roots. He was born on November 2, 1914, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, the son of Juan Flores and Fortina Sandoval.  Juan cleaned stables and then became a fruit picker.  He brought his family to the Orange County area of Southern California about 1923, settling in Campo Rojo (Red Camp) in La Habra, a workers’ camp made up mainly of people of Mexican heritage.  Most were orange and lemon pickers; a packing house that employed many of the wives was located nearby.  The 1930 census lists Jesse and his sisters, Inez and Mary, as fruit pickers and laborers.  Jesse was just 15 years old, taking on a man’s job.   

Jesse attended Washington Junior High (the author’s alma mater). As many young men of the time did, he dropped out after the eighth grade to work, picking citrus.  Citrus companies set up baseball leagues to keep the workers happy. The ballplayers (peloteros) played on fields across the street from the packing house, near the train depot.  Those ballfields are now part of Portola City Park, where Little League teams play.  In 1994 the fields were renamed in Jesse’s honor: the Jesse Flores Sports Complex at Portola Park.

Flores played for the Los Juveniles team as a third baseman and relief pitcher.  In 1938 the Chicago Cubs held a tryout camp at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, most likely led by Truck Hannah, manager of the Los Angeles Angels and sometime scout for the Cubs.  Jesse went to the tryout as a third baseman, but there were too many of them there, so he tried out as a right-handed pitcher, throwing a screwball, curveball, and fastball.

Flores made enough of an impression with the Cubs that they signed him, and he went to play in Bisbee, Arizona, for $80 a month.  There he led the Class D Arizona-Texas League in wins, with a 24-6 record, earned run average (2.38), and winning percentage.  He was promoted to Los Angeles in the Pacific Coast League in 1939. He held out for a $225-a-month contract before going 9-9 on the mound with a 3.54 ERA. He returned to Los Angeles in 1940, compiling a 7-5 win-loss record and a 4.43 ERA.  On September 14 of that season Flores threw one of the best games of his career.  He took a no-hitter into the ninth inning, but Marvin Gudat singled with two outs.

Flores was best known for throwing the screwball.  A Cleveland newspaper quoted him as saying, “I hit a batter square in the head.  He got up and walked down to first base.  I figured then my fastball wasn’t fast enough.  That’s how I started throwing the screwball.”

On January 19, 1941, Jesse and Consuelo M. Gomez were married in his hometown of La Habra.  They raised four children – daughters Armida and Isabelle and sons Jesse Jr. and Steve.  Both sons played minor-league baseball and then became scouts like their father before them.

The 1941 season saw Flores again with Los Angeles. He had a 12-15 record and improved his ERA to 3.23. In September Flores and outfielder-third baseman Peanuts Lowrey were sold to the Cubs by the Angels for cash and three players. They were to finish the season with the Angels and report to the Cubs for spring training.

Flores made his major-league debut on April 16, 1942, coming out of the bullpen, allowing four hits and getting the loss in an 11-6 win by the St. Louis Cardinals.  He pitched in four games with the Cubs, going 0-1 with a 3.38 ERA.  Deeming him not entirely ready for the big leagues, the Cubs sent him back to Los Angeles for the rest of the season.  With Los Angeles he went 14-5 with a 2.63 ERA.

Before he left Chicago, Flores made his mark in another way.  The Sporting News reported that Flores, Chico Hernandez, and Hi Bithorn recorded a Spanish-language broadcast to to be transmitted to South American countries by Cincinnati radio station WLW.  It was the height of World War II, and the US was seeking to seal the loyalty and friendship of Latin American nations. Flores, Hernandez, and Bithorn, all Hispanics, said in the broadcast that baseball added greatly to cementing the friendship between the US and the Latin-American nations.

That offseason Flores played in the California Winter League. In September the Cubs sold him to the Philadelphia Athletics.  Flores started the A’s 1943 home opener, giving up just two hits to the Boston Red Sox but losing 1-0.  He went on to appear in 31 games, winning 12 games and losing 14 for the last-place Athletics. After the season Flores played winter ball for the Long Beach Western Pipe and Steel Boilermakers.  He and many others came under investigation for violating a rule prohibiting major leaguers from playing exhibition games after 10 days from season’s end. 

In 1944 Flores pitched in 27 games, winning 9 and losing 11. Early in 1945 he visited Mexico for a vacation, and rumors flew that he would sign with a Mexican League team.  He denied the rumors. Another report said Flores had been recalled by his local draft board, but in 1945 he was again with Philadelphia, pitching 29 games with a record of 7-10. In 1946 he won nine games and lost seven. (On September 22 he surrendered Yogi Berra’s first major-league home run.) In 1947, his last season in Philadelphia, pitched 151 1/3 innings with a record of 4-13. In three of his five seasons with the Athletics, the team finished in last place.

After the 1947 season the Athletics sold Flores’ contract to San Diego of the Pacific Coast League. He had an 11-19 record for San Diego in 1948 with a 4.36 ERA. In 1949 he won 21 games and lost 10 with a 3.04 ERA.  He was the starting pitcher for the South team in the PCL’s all-star game.  His performance gave him another shot at the big leagues; the Cleveland Indians, who had a working agreement with the Padres, purchased his contract. He pitched in 28 games for the 1950 Indians, all but two out of the bullpen, and had a 3-3 record.

Flores spent 1951, 1952 and part of 1953 with Sacramento of the Pacific Coast League.  In April 1952 he missed a no-hitter when he gave up a hit with two outs in the ninth. Flores then pitched for Oakland and Portland, and retired as a player at the age of 40 after pitching for Modesto of the California League in 1955.           

Back home, Flores organized and played for a semipro team, the La Habra Tigers, while he worked as a postal clerk.  In 1960 he returned to professional baseball as a part-time scout for the Philadelphia Phillies, and in 1961 he joined the Minnesota Twins as a full-time scout, covering the area from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border and east to San Bernardino County.  Flores saw the author play a few times and proved his excellence as a scout by never offering  a contract.

Flores became a scouting legend in Southern California, signing many players for the Twins.  It seemed that everyone connected with baseball knew him, respected him, and admired him.  Stories were told around La Habra about Flores helping the less fortunate.  He was a humble man; even though I spoke with him a few times growing up and my father knew him well, I never knew he had played major-league baseball until well into my adulthood.  Jesse didn’t talk about his own exploits.

Flores remained with the Twins through 1989, then spent the last two seasons of his scouting career with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1990-91).  Jesse Jr. joined him as a Twins scout from 1971 to 1988.  Son Steve also became a scout.

Flores was in the hospital recovering from knee-replacement surgery when lung problems were discovered.  He died on December 17, 1991, at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange.  At his funeral, a eulogy was given by one of the players he had signed, Bert Blyleven, who was later voted into the Hall of Fame. Flores was survived by his two sons, two daughters, and 11 grandchildren. His wife had died before him.

A Jesse Flores Memorial Game is played in Southern California every year to honor Flores and showcase high-school prospects.

Players signed by Flores include  Paul Abbott, Ruben Amaro, Erik Bennett, Bert Blyleven, Lyman Bostock, Bud Bulling, Bill Campbell, Larry Casian, Danny Clay, Jerry Cram, Jim Crowell, Roland DeLaMaza, Rick Dempsey, Mike Dyer, Dave Edwards, Luis Gomez, Dan Graham, Chip Hale, Tom Hall, Bobby Hughes, Jim Hughes, Steve Jones, Mike Misuraca, Marcus Moore, Jim Nettles, Alan Newman, Willie Norwood, Jesse Orosco, Derek Parks, Mark Portugal, Pete Redfern, Rob Ryan, Doug Simons, Gary Ward, Mark Wiley, Rob Wilfong, Gary Wilson, and Al Woods.  He also recommended that the Twins draft Jim Merritt out of the Dodgers system.

Photo credit

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library

Sources

Society for American Baseball Research Scouts committee records:  Who Signed Who database and Scouts Roster database.

http:www.salondelafama.com.mx

The Sporting News: various issues

Orange  Coast Magazine, November 1991

Orange County Weekly, April 5, 2007

Albuquerque Journal, Dallas Morning News, Long Beach Independent Press Telegram, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Tribune, Modesto Bee and News Herald, Nevada State Journal, Oakland Tribune, Ogden Standard Examiner, Orange County Register, Oxnard Press Courier, Reno Evening Gazette, Tucson Daily Citizen, Walla Walla Union Bulletin

Tom Greenwade with Mickey Mantle during the 1952 World Series. (Courtesy of Angeline Greenwade McCroskey.)

The Mick

Each scout is typically associated with his top signee, that marquee player no one else took note of but him. For Tom Greenwade that player was Mickey Mantle. How the two became forever linked has been retold many times, but the most accurate recollection can be found in an October 1952 letter from Greenwade to The Sporting News publisher, J. G. Taylor Spink, reprinted in 1995.

To the best of my knowledge and memory, the first person to talk to me about Mantle was his manager, Barney Barnett, in the Ban Johnson League. All the Midwestern scouts know Barney and drop by to see him. This must have been in the early part of the 1948 season for I went to Alba, Mo., about August 1948 to see Mantle and other players that I had heard of on both clubs. Mantle, who at that time was referred to as “Little Mickey Mantle,” was small and played shortstop. He pitched a couple of innings in this game. I wasn’t overly impressed, but bear in mind he was only 16.

The following spring an umpire in the B.J. League, Kenny Magness, told me about a game the night before in which Mantle played, and he was very high on him. I caught the Baxter club at Parsons to see Mantle again. This was early in May, 1949. Mantle looked better and must have put on 20 pounds since the past August, and I became interested in a hurry for that was when I discovered he could really run, but wasn’t hitting too much. So I inquired from other sources, probably Barney, when Mickey would graduate. It was to be the last Thursday in May, 1949, from the Commerce, Okla. H.S.

On Friday I drove to Commerce, and this is the first time the Mantles ever knew there was such a person as Tom Greenwade. I found out the graduation exercises had been postponed till that night for some reason. Since I had no desire to violate the H.S. tampering rule, I was careful not to mention contract or pro ball either, but had understood Mickey was to play in Coffeyville that night and I wanted to see him play and I didn’t mention that I had seen him play before. Well, they talked things over with the coach and superintendent and decided to pass on the exercises since Mickey already had his diploma and go to Coffeyville instead.

Of course, I was there. Mickey looked better at bat, hitting left handed. I still don’t know he switches since the only pitching I have seen him against is right handed. After the game Mr. Mantle tells me Mickey will play Sunday in Baxter Springs. I told him I would be at his house Sunday morning and go to the game with them. I was there about 11 A.M. I was scared to death for fear some scout had been there Saturday. I asked Mr. Mantle if anyone had been there. He said “no.” I was relieved.

We all went to Baxter Springs, and for the first time I see Mickey hit right-handed. Mickey racked the pitcher for four “clothes lines,” and I started looking all around for scouts, but none were there.

When the last out was made, Mr. Mantle, Mickey and I got in my car behind the grandstand and in 15 minutes the contract was signed. We agreed on $1,500 for the remainder of the season and the contract (Independence of the K.O.M.) was drawn calling for a salary of $140 per month. Mickey reported to Harry Craft at Independence. He was slow to get started and as late as July 10th was hitting only .225, but finished the season over .300. The following year at Joplin he hit .383, I believe. You know the rest.1 

The Greenwade R?sum?

Our scout was born on August 21, 1904, in Willard, Missouri, and lived there his entire life. His first money in baseball came when Jim Austin, a traveling salesman from a cookie company, saw him pitching in Willard and offered him $25 a Sunday to pitch for the town team in Clinton.2  He began his professional baseball career in 1923 as a pitcher with the Portsmouth, Arkansas, club managed by former Detroit Tigers catcher Charley Schmidt. He was sold in 1924 to Denver in the Western League and was optioned to Muskogee under Gabby Street. Greenwade was sold to St. Paul that year and the St. Louis Browns purchased his contract. He was sold to Tulsa in 1925, and he found himself with the Springfield, Missouri, club in 1926.3

Disappointed with his playing time, Greenwade quit Organized Ball and opted to play independent ball in Trinidad, Colorado, for $75 a week, later moving to Casper, Wyoming, and going 22-2 in 1926. The following year, still in independent ball, he pitched his Phoenix, Arizona, club to the Denver tourney championship. He was reinstated in organized baseball in 1928, reporting to the Waco, Texas, club. The 1929 season found him pitching for and managing the Palestine club in the East Texas League, going 19-2 and leading his club to the league title.

While with Atlanta in the Southern Association in 1930, Greenwade had a fine year in the outfield, hitting .315 as well as pitching. Typhoid fever kept him out of baseball for the next two years, and after recovering he hooked up with the western branch of the House of David.4

Tom Greenwade took a break from baseball and worked for the Internal Revenue Service in Kansas City until 1937, when he returned to the game, working as a coach and scout for the following two years. In 1940, while he was managing the Class D Paragould Browns in the Northeast Arkansas League, the Brooklyn Dodgers made him an offer to come scout for them and he jumped at the opportunity. There he became Brooklyn’s, and later Branch Rickey’s, top scout.

Major-league players he is credited with signing include George Kell, Loy Hanning, Rex Barney, Leroy Jarvis, Cal McLish, Tom Warren, Red Barkley, Red Durrett, Monty Basgall, Bill Virdon, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Hank Bauer, Tom Sturdivant, Elston Howard, Ralph Terry, Bobby Murcer, and one you’ll learn more about later on, Jackie Robinson.

Like any fisherman of ballplayers, you don’t land them all. Some get away. For example, the St. Louis Browns refused to sign a player Tom saw playing in a national semipro tournament, for $1,500, but the Red Sox didn’t, and Johnny Pesky later became a fixture at Fenway Park. But this didn’t happen often to Greenwade.

He would occasionally make a recommendation to trade for an established player. Few know that he was the man who suggested the Yankees trade for a young Kansas City Athletics outfielder named Roger Maris after the 1959 season, and it didn’t take long to prove Greenwade’s genius.  The new Yankees right fielder won back-to-back MVP awards, in 1960 and 1961, and broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home-run record in the latter season.

One of Greenwade’s traits was his desire to not just befriend his signees but stay in close contact with them throughout their careers. When a slumping Mickey Mantle was sent down to Kansas City in 1951, he sought out his scout for some consolation before meeting with his father, Mutt Mantle. The Yankees organization recognized this bond as well. In a November 30, 1954, letter to Mantle, George Weiss, the Yankees general manager, passed on suggestions from manager Casey Stengel that Mickey work on his drag-bunting during the offseason, as well as eliminate a lift in his swing and thereby produce more ground balls. Tom Greenwade was copied on the letter. 

Silvio Garcia, not Jackie Robinson, Was Dodgers’ First Choice

Every baseball fan knows that Jackie Robinson was the Brooklyn Dodgers’ choice as the player to break the color barrier. But the man they first set their sights on was Cuban shortstop Silvio Garcia, and Tom Greenwade made an attempt to ink him to a contract two years before Jackie was signed.

It’s been quite a while since Jackie Robinson first set foot on a major-league playing field in 1947. The select few who were privy to the details leading up to this event have all since passed away, and one would assume their story as well. Robert Redford’s plan for a motion picture in 2009 titled The Scouting of Jackie Robinson was scrapped when he discovered baseball experts had no information on the subject.  Not even a morsel. So how is it that the story behind this monumental event that not only changed the game of baseball but life in America as well has been kept quiet, until now?  That’s an easy one – the Dodgers brass knew how to keep a secret. 

Tom Greenwade in 1942. (Courtesy of Angeline Greenwade McCroskey.)

1943 – The ‘Colored’ Scouting Begins

The first thing club president Branch Rickey did after moving over from the St. Louis Cardinals organization was gain approval from the Brooklyn Dodgers owners in early 1943 to begin signing “colored” ballplayers. The war had depleted not only the Dodgers’ roster but their farm clubs’ talent as well, and Rickey saw this as a way to rearm the organization as well as “righting a wrong.”

With the owners’ blessing, the Dodgers president rushed to set up a secret meeting with his top scout, Tom Greenwade, at the Biltmore Hotel in Kansas City to relay his plans. This took place more than 2½ years before the signing of Jackie Robinson. Rickey was so intent on keeping their meeting a secret that he signed the hotel registry as “Tom Greenwade,” which threw the real Greenwade for a loop.

Greenwade described their undercover rendezvous in an article in the Springfield (Missouri) Leader in 1953: “All that secrecy had me buffaloed. And I got more curious after he sat and talked to me about things that had happened in his life. He told me one story about the time a hotel refused to allow the catcher of his Ohio Wesleyan team to have a room. The catcher was a Negro, and I began to get the idea.”5 

Rickey directed Greenwade to go to Mexico in May 1943 to look for “colored” talent for the Dodgers’ farm system and in particular to examine Silvio Garcia, a dark-skinned Cuban shortstop who was playing in the Mexican League that year.

The scout only had two issues with this trip. One, he didn’t want to keep it a secret from his wife, Florence; and two, he didn’t speak Spanish. Rickey quickly dispatched both issues by suggesting that he take his wife, and that a translator accompany them. Florence made it to Mexico, but the translator did not. It seems he went on a drinking binge in San Antonio and was left behind.

Their secret session at the Biltmore Hotel was to be their only face-to-face meeting before the scout’s trip south. All correspondence that followed consisted of secret memos signed by Rickey giving detailed information and directions to Greenwade. These memos were provided to the author by Tom Greenwade’s daughter and son, Angeline Greenwade McCroskey and Bunch Greenwade.

The first was sent on April 24, 1943, in the form of an Inter-Club Communication from Rickey’s office in Brooklyn to Greenwade’s home in Willard, Missouri, and was titled, “PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL.”  “Dear Tom:  I am enclosing some very confidential material. In the newspaper you will see averages. I don’t believe you can afford to show these to Tuero. You will have to work them out for yourself.”  Tuero is probably Oscar Tuero, a Cuban pitcher who had played with the St Louis Cardinals from 1918 to 1920.

The second confidential memo, dated April 29, 1943, underscores the secrecy of Greenwade’s mission in Mexico: “I am very sure that his (Tuero’s) services will not be required more than two four weeks and not that long if you find that you can get along very nicely without him. Of course, at no time now or in the future will he know anything about part of the objective of your trip. …”  Rickey later added, “Tuero is not at all above chiseling. He was a chiseler as a ball player, so far as that is concerned, and if he shows very decided tendencies to do the chiseling act with us, I am inclined to have you go on down on your health seeking job without him. … As a matter of fact, I don’t trust him. …”  OK, we get the picture, Branch.   

The scouting trip could have been run under the guise of a new Brooklyn Black Dodgers club that would join the established Negro Leagues, and I’m sure that is what they had hoped Oscar Tuero would conclude. Why was he needed?  Tom Greenwade was adept at evaluating a man’s baseball talent, but did not have the resources in Mexico to evaluate his character. Tuero was someone who could provide that information.

In this memo Rickey wrote that he was “hoping that we will be able to get several of them signed to Durham or Olean contracts, or even Montreal if we can find one good enough.”  Jackie Robinson spent his first year with the Dodgers top minor-league club in Montreal in 1946. Greenwade knew from his Kansas City hotel meeting that “them” meant “colored.”           

A three-page background check provided to Greenwade along with two photos of Silvio Garcia leave no doubt that the Cuban shortstop, playing in the Mexican League and considered to be one of the best ballplayers from his country, was “colored.”  It’s also plain to see that Rickey did not want to “steal” a player from the Negro Leagues which would have potentially caused an uproar with the league’s owners, and opted instead to search in Mexico.

Greenwade beat the bushes for the Dodgers until December 1945, when he signed on with the New York Yankees. He conferred with Rickey before making the move and Rickey chose not to hold him back, knowing the Yankees would make him the highest-paid scout in baseball, which they did. His annual salary leaped from $3,600 to over $11,000 (including an annual bonus).

The Dodgers’ interest in Cuban shortstop Silvio Garcia began when Brooklyn manager Leo Durocher witnessed his diamond exploits in Mexico during the previous winter, and was impressed, so much so he told Rickey that Joe DiMaggio couldn’t carry Garcia’s glove. But why all the secrecy?  That’s simple – Americans as a whole were still racists and may not have been agreeable to a “colored” major leaguer.

Norman Macht provided a perspective of Americans’ stance on blacks in a presentation at the Society for American Baseball Research 2007 National Convention titled “Does Baseball Deserve Its Black Eye?”  He noted that Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945 never proposed any civil-rights legislation and did nothing to eliminate the lynching of blacks, yet no one labeled FDR as a racist. At the height of World War II, 10,000 union members shut down the city of Philadelphia for a week when eight Negroes in the transit system were promoted to drivers, until then a “whites only” position. Fans today point the finger at Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis for prolonging baseball segregation, but he never restricted the signing of blacks. Macht’s point was, don’t judge Judge Landis or the baseball owners negatively for barring Negroes unless you, too, lived during that time period.

Scouting in Mexico

By May 10, 1943, Tom Greenwade was receiving transmittals in Mexico City from Rickey in Brooklyn. You can feel his enthusiasm knowing his plan is unfolding as he wrote:

“Dear Tom,

“I am enclosing some information herewith. Write me fully airmail and mark it personal and confidential on the outside of your envelope and give me all the dope on players. We can certainly use some good Mexican boys right now at both Durham and Olean. The Durham Club is terrible. I don’t believe you should try to sign any boys until you get a full report on everybody and know exactly what you want to do with everybody before you start to work on anybody.  I hope you will be able to work quietly without any newspaper publicity whatever.

“If you run into anything especially good I will send help to you or I might even come myself.” 

Judging by this memo, Rickey was attempting to sign not just one “colored” ballplayer, but several, and didn’t want to begin signing them until the Dodgers had made up their minds which ones they were interested in.

Silvio Garcia – The First Failed Attempt at Signing

A 1946 Springfield Leader article gives details on Greenwade’s attempt to sign Cuban shortstop Silvio Garcia when he broached the subject with Mexican League President Jorge Pasquel:  “About two years ago the Dodgers sent Greenwade to Mexico City to scout an infielder and it was there he contacted the Pasquels. Memory of the first interview lingers with Greenwade, because when he interviewed Don Jorge (Pasquel), the latter unholstered a pistol and laid it on the desk between them. Meanwhile, another brother, Alfonso, paraded the room wearing a gun strapped to his belt. Greenwade took no players from the Mexican League.”6  The obvious conclusion from this was that the Pasquel brothers did not want the Dodgers to sign infielder Silvio Garcia because he was a popular player that filled their stadiums and therefore put pesos in their pockets, and conveyed their feelings not with words but with a show of force.”  It would have convinced me as well.

The first published account of Greenwade’s interest in Garcia is found in the 1953 Leader article cited earlier:  “Rickey wanted to send a close-mouthed scout to Mexico to inspect a Negro shortstop named Silvio Garcia. ‘They say DiMaggio can’t carry his glove,’ Rickey told him. All manner of cloak and dagger strategy were used. Rather than have to tell Mrs. Greenwade where he was going and leave word behind, Rickey sent her on the trip. A bank account had been set up for them in Mexico City. An attorney had been retained, and Greenwade set out. As it developed, Garcia never did make it. Greenwade turned him down, but he did recommend a squat 19 year-old Negro who caught for the Monterrey team. His name was Roy Campanella.” 

Both Leader articles give the year these events took place as 1944, but Campanella was playing for the Baltimore Elite Giants of the Negro League at that time. He did play the entire season for Monterrey, Mexico, in 1943 (at age 21). Another indication that 1943 was the correct year is that our batch of secret transmittals from the Greenwade family were all from ‘43, and they include information on a bank account being set up in Mexico for Greenwade.

Greenwade gave another account of his mission to Mexico in an October 3, 1956, article in The Sporting News by Harold Rosenthal.

“The man Greenwade was first sent to scout was Silvio Garcia, a shortstop from Cuba, playing in the winter league in Mexico.

“The war was on at the time, and Branch Rickey, Sr., who had succeeded Larry MacPhail as the Brooklyn boss, made an elaborate cloak and dagger production of it, swearing Greenwade to secrecy, ordering him to communicate by cable in code.

“On Greenwade’s say-so, the Dodgers steered away from Garcia, who never made it anywhere in the majors, but is still playing. ‘He couldn’t pull the ball,’ Greenwade said of Garcia. ‘He was a right-handed hitter – everything went to right field.’” 

I’m convinced that Tom was not in favor of signing Silvio, but Rickey was, based on Leo Durocher’s evaluation. In addition, he didn’t want to tarnish Jackie Robinson’s accomplishments by mentioning in this interview that the Dodgers had tried to sign Garcia first.

The Second Attempt at Signing Silvio Garcia

In a Los Angeles Times interview with Walter O’Malley, written by Braven Dyer, we find the second attempt by the Dodgers to sign Garcia. “O’Malley (and not Rickey) almost became the man to sign the first (sic) Negro for major league baseball. Early in his affiliation with the Dodgers O’Malley went to Havana, Cuba, to sign a Negro shortstop named Silvio Garcia. On arrival he discovered Garcia with 49 other Cuban Army conscripts in a pup tent encampment.

“As a big sports hero, Garcia was the first man tapped by the military. Not hankering to tangle with the whole Cuban army, O’Malley staged a strategic retreat and Garcia never appeared in a major league line-up.”7

According to Murray Polner’s 1982 biography of Branch Rickey, “Walter O’Malley…went to Cuba in 1944 with a letter of credit for $25,000 with instructions from Rickey to sign Silvio Garcia, a black player, only to learn that Garcia had been drafted into the Cuban army.”8 I spoke to Polner by phone from his home in New York and he recounted the O’Malley interview. The author could find no other living source in the early 1980s who could corroborate O’Malley’s story, yet portions are backed up by the background check on Garcia provided by the Greenwade family, which mentions that he might be redrafted soon back into the Cuban army.

I quizzed the only living Dodgers employee from that era, Buzzie Bavasi, and he had no recollection of this event. He thought that O’Malley was simply on one of his numerous vacation trips to Cuba and nothing else. But I believe Walter O’Malley, because his story makes sense. Greenwade tried to sign Garcia in Mexico, but Jorge Pasquel would have nothing of the sort, so Branch Rickey sent the Dodgers’ legal counsel, Walter O’Malley, to Cuba after the conclusion of the Mexican season to handle the signing. O’Malley was familiar with Cuba from his frequent vacations there, was one of the few who was already in on the secret, and was not a known baseball personality. Therefore, he could travel about the country without standing out. Lastly, his story again matches what is in Garcia’s background check, that he was about to be redrafted into the Cuban army.

It’s interesting that O’Malley and Greenwade both at times mention 1944 as the year they were linked to Silvio Garcia. Were they in error, or trying to cover up the true date of 1943?  I’m convinced they both simply forgot what year it was when telling their story. The clincher is below, the first published interview with O’Malley concerning our secret signing, and he got the year correct – 1943.

I’ve saved the best for last.

Writer Milt Gross wrote about his conversations with O’Malley, who described his trip to Havana in the fall of 1943 to sign Silvio Garcia. On the plane from Miami to Havana he caught sight of former New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, who was rumored to be trying to buy a piece of the New York Giants. He called the Dodgers office and was told, “Duck him if you can, but get to Garcia before him. We understand he’s trying to sign Garcia for the Giants.”

O’Malley got to Garcia’s house and was told that the Cuban conscription had just begun and 20 people were called up; Silvio was number three. Gross wrote, “When Walter told me the story recently there was still some doubt in his mind. I was never certain if Stoneham also was after him.”9

New York Giants Also Tried to Sign Silvio Garcia

“The next day I questioned Horace Stoneham, the Giants owner. He admitted trying to sign a Negro three years before Rickey signed Robinson. Why, I asked, hadn’t you mentioned this before?  ‘I wanted a baseball player,’ Horace said simply, ‘not a sideshow. Would I have mentioned it if he were white?  Did it make me a bigger man because he was a Negro?  I was trying to help my team, not myself.’ ”10

I had hoped to uncover more proof on the Garcia signing from Roberto Echevarria’s book The Pride of Havana, but it wasn’t to be. The author states that Garcia was generally considered to be the greatest shortstop in Cuban baseball history, and mentions the Dodgers’ attempt at signing him. “Legend has it that Silvio Garcia was seriously considered by Branch Rickey to be the man to break the color barrier in the United States, but that when asked what he would do if a rival hurled racial slurs at him, the Cuban answered: ‘I would kill him.’  This ended his chances.”   

Garcia died in 1978, so there is no way we can substantiate this story. When Roberto Echevarria mentioned to me that Garcia has a son living in Miami but did not know what his first name was, I was tempted to try to locate him. But after realizing the magnitude of the task (how many Garcias are there in Miami?) and the fact that neither Tom Greenwade nor Walter O’Malley ever actually approached his father (therefore the family would have no knowledge of his attempted signing), I gave up. The ballplayer thought to be the best shortstop in Cuban baseball history won two Mexican League batting titles and was considered a superb fielder, so he had the talent to possibly play in the major leagues. He spent four years in Organized Baseball, three with Sherbrooke in the Class C Provincial League (1949-1951), and one with the Havana Cubans, the Class B affiliate of the Senators in 1952. He also spent time in the US playing in the Negro Leagues.

It’s amazing how fate works in everyday life – the Pasquel brothers and the Cuban army kept Silvio Garcia from a shot at breaking MLB’s color barrier. And if you pay attention during the 1950 movie The Jackie Robinson Story you’ll hear the actor playing Branch Rickey telling Jackie during their first meeting that the Dodgers looked all over the United States, Mexico, and Cuba for the right player.

On a side note, Hall of Famer Monte Irvin told the author he played against Garcia in the Cuban Winter League (1948-49) and would have won the Triple Crown that season had it not been for Garcia beating him out for the RBI title by two RBIs. He added that the Cuban star was a fine ballplayer and a gentleman, and was well liked by everyone.

The Scouting of Jackie Robinson

Branch Rickey obviously had second thoughts about proceeding with his plan to sign a black ballplayer by his actions to delay any further progress until the American public was overcome with euphoria after the Japanese surrender to end World War II on August 15, 1945. Two weeks later, on August 28, he met privately with Jackie Robinson to discuss the breaking of the color barrier. Before this date, very little was known about the actual scouting of Robinson, until now.

John Thorn and Jules Tygiel penned an excellent piece titled “Jackie Robinson’s Signing: The Real, Untold Story,” yet the earliest evidence pertaining to the Dodgers scouting of Robinson that they could uncover was dated April 1945.  The document, a hand-written memo found in the Rickey Papers, gives instructions to Dodgers scouts to “cover Negro teams for possible major league talent.” The memo was signed “Chas. D. Clark.” No one knows who this man was. It could have been a fictitious name. That’s as far back in time as baseball historians were able to go.11 

Jackie’s Scout – Tom Greenwade (and no one else)

In the 1956 Sporting News article, Harold Rosenthal wrote, “In Brooklyn, Greenwade played a vital role in one of the game’s greatest dramas, the cracking of the color line. He was the only scout used on the Jackie Robinson job; he was also the man entrusted with the Mexican mission when the Dodgers sought to crack ancient prejudices with an earlier Negro of possibly major league proportions.”12  This statement was also repeated to me by Greenwade’s son and daughter – that their father was the only Dodgers scout looking for black ballplayers.

Greenwade had this to say about Jackie’s arm: “When I scouted Robinson I told Mr. Rickey that he didn’t have a shortstop’s arm. It wasn’t strong and he needed to dance a step and a half before cutting loose. Maybe he’d make a first baseman or second baseman, but never a shortstop, I told Mr. Rickey.”  Jackie had played shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs, but played first base one season before switching to second base for the Dodgers, just as Greenwade had predicted.

“I saw Jackie play about 20 times … but I never spoke to him once. When I finally did speak to him he had already made the Dodgers and I was scouting for the Yankees. John Griffin, the Brooklyn clubhouse man, introduced us in St Louis.”13 Greenwade must not have mentioned to Robinson during this meeting that he was the scout who recommended him because in a 2007 interview, Robinson’s wife, Rachel, told me she had never heard her husband bring up Greenwade’s name. She did appreciate knowing who the scout was that recommended her husband.

Greenwade added in the Rosenthal article, “ ‘The war was still on, there wasn’t much transportation available, and the Monarchs (Kansas City’s Negro League team) got around by bus. Most of the time I chased them.’ … ‘I want to make it very clear that I was the only scout used on Robinson. The only time Clyde Sukeforth went to see him it rained and they didn’t play.’  In various published stories and motion picture scenarios on Robinson’s life, Sukeforth has been depicted as the scout who followed Robinson.” 

My impressions of Tom Greenwade are that he was a very modest man, and did not go around bragging about his exploits, but wanted to keep the facts straight.  Keep in mind that if his recommendation of Robinson had resulted in a bust, Greenwade’s reputation would have been scarred. He had quite a bit riding on this and therefore should receive due credit.

Clyde Sukeforth: Robinson Recommendation

Clyde Sukeforth has at times been given credit as the scout who recommended Jackie Robinson, yet we now know he was used as a checker by the Dodgers to confirm Tom Greenwade’s recommendation. In a November 28, 1993, phone conversation, Sukeforth described his involvement in this process.

“I didn’t see him play before we signed him. (Rickey) knew a lot about Robinson. He just sent me down there to check out his arm. (Robinson) naturally couldn’t understand (why Sukeforth was there), was very interested in why Rickey was interested in his arm, and it developed that he had fallen on his shoulder the night before and was out of the lineup for a couple of days, maybe more.

“So I asked him to meet me down at my hotel, and he did. He kept asking me (why), and I just told him, ‘I just work here. I can’t tell you anything but I do know there is a lot of interest in you.’  There was a colored (baseball) club in Brooklyn not affiliated with the Dodgers but you had a right to assume that it was. So I told him, ‘Mr. Rickey can answer your questions, why don’t you come on back to Brooklyn with me?’ ”  Rickey and Robinson met soon after, on August 28, 1945, and the rest is history.

Tom Greenwade’s Final Chapter

Greenwade went on to sign a number of ballplayers for the Yankees, his most notable being Mickey Mantle, but the player he was most proud of recommending was Jackie Robinson. His uncanny ability to evaluate a ballplayer led him to believe early on that he could not have chosen a better person or player to have broken the color barrier. And he was dead-on right. Jackie won the Rookie of the Year award in 1947, the National League MVP award in 1949, retired in 1956, and was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. He died in 1972 at the age of 53.

In 1964 Tom Greenwade left the Yankees and his scouting career to live out the rest of his life in his home town of Willard, Missouri. He died in 1986 at the age of 81. If Tom Greenwade isn’t the best baseball scout who ever lived, you could probably fit those deemed better in the front seat of his Cadillac next to him.

Notes

1 The Sporting News, August 21, 1995

Epy Guerrero was the successor to such legendary scouts in Latin America as Joe Cambria and Howie Haak. Building on their accomplishments, he plowed new ground in the Caribbean, including developing an academy to train in baseball skills and teach young prospects life skills before signing them to contracts to play in the United States. For 40 years, Epy was the pre-eminent scout in Spanish-speaking countries, signing 52 major-league players, many more who were on 40-man rosters, and countless others who appeared on minor-league rosters.

Epifanio Obdulio “Epy” Guerrero was born on January 3, 1942, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, son and grandson of men named Epifanio. His mother was Patria Abud. His father ran a grocery business and cattle farm and the family included five sons. One of Epy’s brothers, Mario, reached the major leagues, enjoying a 13-season professional career with eight seasons in the majors.

Epy was signed to a contract by John Mullen of the Milwaukee Braves late in 1960. He played two seasons in the minor leagues, 1961 with the Wellsville (New York) club and 1962 with Cedar Rapids (Iowa). After being released he returned home to work with his father.

Tony Pacheco of the Houston Astros hired Guerrero in 1963 to work as a part-time scout in the Dominican Republic. In 1967, after he helped with the signing of Cesar Cedeno, the Astros’ Pat Gillick hired him as a full-time scout, beginning a long working relationship. Guerrero remained with the Astros until 1973. Both he and Gillick moved to the Yankees through 1976 and then both moved on to build two World Series champions with the Toronto Blue Jays. Epy stayed with the Blue Jays through 1995. He then spent 1996 to 2003 with the Milwaukee Brewers. For three years he worked an independent scout in the Dominican Republic before retiring.

In 1977 Guerrero borrowed money and established an academy in Villa Mella, about nine miles from Santo Domingo. Its purpose was to bring in young players, house them, feed them, and teach them baseball skills. English instruction was part of the package to better prepare these players if they signed a contract to come to the United States.

In 1981 the Blue Jays began to use the complex. This was a pioneering idea that many other organizations soon adopted. Most major-league clubs today have an affiliation with such a complex. That same year, Guerrero was a coach for the Blue Jays major-league club. In 1983 he was named the manager of the Blue Jays’ Gulf Coast League rookie team. He then helped organize the Dominican Summer League, which major-league teams used to give very young players experience before moving them to play in the U.S.

Besides the actual signings of players, Guerrero’s scouting abilities were utilized in other ways. While with Houston he recommended that they acquire outfielder Cesar Geronimo from the Yankees in the Rule 5 draft. Geronimo eventually became the center fielder of Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine” back-to-back World Champions in 1975-76. Guerrero also recommended that the Blue Jays acquire George Bell, Manny Lee, and Kelly Gruber through the Rule 5 draft.

He recommended that the Blue Jays trade for Fred McGriff, Roberto Alomar, Juan Berenguer, Candy Maldonado, Alfredo Griffin, Domingo Ramos, Damaso Garcia, Victor Cruz, and Juan Guzman. Guerrero also helped convert Pat Borders from third baseman to a catcher in the Dominican winter league.

With his wife, Rosario, Epy raised a baseball family. They had five sons, all of whom got jobs in professional baseball. In 2011 Epifanio, nicknamed Sandy, was the hitting coach for the Triple-A Nashville Sounds in the Milwaukee Brewers organization. In 2011 Mike was the manager of Huntsville in the Southern League, the Brewers’ Doiuble-A affiliate. Patrick was a scout for the Seattle Mariners. Joel was the hitting coach for Seattle’s Dominican Summer League tram. Fred was a scout in the Dominican Republic for the Minnesota Twins.

Sandy Guerrero in an interview with Mark McCarter of the Huntsville Times said of his father: “He’s a great guy. Smart. Very determined. Loves baseball. That’s his whole life.” Mike Guerrero said that Epy is able to project a player’s ability into the future. He said Epy primarily looked for arm strength, speed, and athletic ability.

Epy often found and signed players others might have overlooked. He signed Damaso Garcia after watching him play soccer and being impressed with his athletic ability. Tony Fernandez as a young boy showed athletic talent but walked with a limp due to a knee problem. Guerrero paid for an operation to remove bone chips and then signed Fernandez. Mike Guerrero told of how Epy signed Jose Mesa. Mesa was riding a bicycle past a tryout camp Epy was running when a ball got loose. Mesa got off the bike and fired the ball back to the field. Epy saw this and signed him based on the strength of his arm.

The Dominican Republic made Guerrero a lifetime consul of the Dominican Republic, basically granting him diplomatic status. He was also honored by the Dominican Summer League as one of its pioneers.

The National newspaper once ranked Guerrero the 16th most influential person in the game, ahead of such luminaries as Pat Gillick (at the time his boss), Peter Gammons, Frank Robinson, and Jerry Reinsdorf. In 2008 he was inducted into the Santo Domingo Hall of Fame (Dominican Republic Altar de la Immortalidad de La Provincia de Santo Domingo). 

Guerrero’s signings include Carlos Almanzar, Luis Aquino, Geronimo Berroa, Yuniesky Betancourt, Tilson Brito, Enrique Burgos, Francisco Cabrera, Sil Campusano, Giovanni Carrara, Tony Castillo, Cesar Cedeno, Domingo Cedeno, Pasqual Coco, Francisco de la Rosa, Jesus de la Rosa, Carlos Delgado, Alcides Escobar, Jose Escobar, Kelvim Escobar, Juan Espino, Junior Felix, Tony Fernandez, Jesus Figueroa, Damaso Garcia, Freddy Garcia, Beiker Graterol, Tobias Hernandez, Jose Herrera, Edwin Hurtado, Alexis Infante, Hernan Iribarren, Al Javier, Luis Leal, Nelson Liriano, Domingo Martinez, Luis Martinez, Sandy Martinez, Jose Mesa, Julio Mosquera, Pedro Munoz, Abraham Nunez, Oswaldo Peraza, Robert Perez, Luis Pujols, Domingo Ramos, Luis Sanchez, Rafael Santana, Luis Sojo, Jose Sosa, William Suero, Alex Taveras, Dilson Torres.

This biography was originally published in “Can He Play? A Look At Baseball Scouts And Their Profession” (SABR, 2011), edited by Jim Sandoval and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

Interview with Epy Guerrero on August 28, 2006

Interview with Mike Guerrero on June 1, 2010

El Nacional. (El Deporte) newspaper, Dominican Republic, December 30, 2007, April 19, 2008, and June 1, 2008

Mark McCarter interview with Sandy Guerrero, Huntsville Times (online), July 22, 2006 

The Sporting News.: various issues

www.baseball-reference.com

SABR Scouts committee databases: who signed who and scouts roster.

Washington Post., February 4, 1986, and April 2, 1989

New York Times., June 1, 1984, October 10, 1985, and December 6, 1992

The National. newspaper undated issue

Program of induction ceremony: Altar de la Immortalidad de la Provincia de Santo Domingo