Lowenfish: Baseball Hall of Fame opens arms to honor scouting
From SABR member Lee Lowenfish at BookTrib on May 6, 2013:
It was a long time coming but on the first weekend in May the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown N.Y. opened its arms to the profession of baseball scouting. At an emotional opening Friday night before the exhibit “Diamond Mines” officially opened on Saturday, tears were freely flowing from many of the speakers.
Retired general manager and Hall of Famer Pat Gillick, who built World Series winners in Toronto and Philadelphia, sensed that he might break down when he thought of the hundreds of thousands of miles scouts have traveled without recognition. “I can’t wait to see the smiles on the scouts’ faces, their chests pumped out and the pride they’ll feel,” he told Bob Nightengale of USA Today.
Gillick has taken the high road and not responded publicly to the cheap shots Michael Lewis took at him in Moneyball, the overrated paean to statistical baseball thinking that as both book and movie cost over 150 scouts their jobs. But it has gnawed at Gillick and Roland Hemond, now in his seventh decade as a baseball executive, that baseball has not given more consideration to the men responsible for bringing in talent to the industry. As Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson told Nightengale, “Imagine a CEO going to a high school and finding a guy he wants to hire five years from now.”
Read the full article here: http://leelowenfish.booktrib.com/2013/05/06/tears-of-joy-flow-freely-as-cooperstown-opens-exhibit-honoring-scout/
Related link: To view the scouting reports available online at Diamond Mines, visit scouts.baseballhall.org
Originally published: May 7, 2013. Last Updated: May 7, 2013.