“The one thing about baseball: no matter where you are in the world, you feel at home as soon as you’re at a ballpark, because everybody there shares the love of the game, and they’re very open to helping and answering questions.” This quote from Fontaine Jr. perhaps best encapsulates his philosophy for the sport, as he’s spent over 50 years at ballparks across the country. Be sure to check out our recap of the discussion, or watch the full video for yourself on our YouTube channel!
Shane:
Let’s move on to our special guest. So we have Bob Fontaine Jr here. I know that most of you receive the emails and introductions of him, but I’m going to put him in the spotlight so y’all can see him and then give a little intro here before we get into the Q & A. Alright, so I know a ton about you because I just read your book and I got all the details. I’ll try to keep this relatively quick. Bob Fontaine, Jr. is a native of San Jose, California, and he is a baseball lifer, to say that least. His father, Bob Sr, is where the baseball story starts. Bob Sr. played with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the minor leagues. He eventually became one of Branch Rickey’s most trusted scouts, before he left for the Pirates with Branch Rickey. That’s where the nepotism began, and Bob Sr. gave Bob Jr. his first job in baseball as a peanut vendor. He turned that peanut vendor job into a lifetime of scouting. He scouted for [almost] 50 years for various franchises. He’s had titles such as Scouting Director, Player Personnel Director, Minor League Director for organizations such as the San Diego Padres, the Montreal Expos, the Seattle Mariners, Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago White Sox and the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau.
Another title he held was “Baseball Gypsy” – the title of his book – because he’s really just traveled the whole world scouting players, and he put them all in this book, which is just amazing [and] which we’re going to talk about today. But along the way, as the baseball gypsy, he accomplished a few things as well. His list of Major League players signed is well over 100 [and] includes a few Hall of Famers. You may have heard of them: Tony Gwynn, Randy Johnson, Ozzie Smith, plus more than a dozen other MLB All-Stars. Some other guys you may have heard of, such as: Jim Abbott, Garrett Anderson, Jim Edmonds, Darin Erstad, Bob Geren, Troy Glaus, Ozzie Guillen, K-Rod [Francisco Rodríguez] Tim Salmon– who somehow, was never an All-Star. That’s crazy, he must be the best player to never make an All-Star team.
Now, of course, Bob has a new title, which is author. “In Search of Millionaires, the Life of a Baseball Gypsy: The Bob Fontaine Jr. Story,” was just released along with co-author Taylor Blake Ward. It’s a memoir that not only humbly documents Bob’s incredible baseball life, but also serves as an ode and written record to traditional scouting, which is a bit of an endangered craft, and the old school scouts, which is a breed that’s unfortunately dying off, and there’s not too many of them left. So it’s an important book, in my opinion, and I’m really glad you wrote it. I’m really glad you’re here to talk to us about it.
Bob:
Thank you, Shane. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy things like this, to speak with people that love the game of baseball. Shane and I go back to Major League Baseball together, we worked there and did international events– I think our last one was South Africa. I do want to say one thing before we get going here, looking at the schedule of events that you’ve got. It’s a tremendous, tremendous list, because I’ll tell you, having been in those places, every one is a little different. It gives you a better understanding of the game of baseball worldwide. The Bahamas, for instance, people don’t talk about [how it’s] a great place to watch players, a lot of enthusiasm and they’ve had big league players come out of there. It’s really an interesting spot. The Dominican Republic, they have their own flair for the game. Obviously Japan and Korea do as well, and in Holland, I think you’re there for a Honkbal Week. You’re gonna see enthusiasm like you can’t believe, but one I think is really interesting is that West Coast tour, because it’s gonna give you insight into players at the Low A level, at the AAA level, and at the major league level, and also, it’s going to get you a look in the Pecos League. I’ve seen Pecos League games, and these are a lot of kids that are trying to keep the dream alive. They go to this league after they graduate from high school, if they’re released early, and they play and they play with an enthusiasm because they want to stay in the game. It really gives you a good insight into four levels of baseball. I think it’s going to be an exciting tour, I really, really do. As well as the others, because everywhere you go, you will see something you’ve never seen before. The one thing about baseball: no matter where you are in the world, you feel at home as soon as you’re at a ballpark, because everybody there shares the love of the game, and they’re very open to helping and answering questions. I think it’s a great experience and a great service that you’re providing here, Shane, for people to see and understand baseball around the world.
Shane:
Thank you. I swear to you all, I did not pay Bob to say that. That’s great stuff. I appreciate it, and I might have to take the transcript and use this for our marketing material.
Bob:
Trust me, if I could get money out of Shane I would, but I can’t. It’s all true, everything I just said.
Shane:
I appreciate that very much, and I look forward to having you along for a few of those games as well. So we’ll talk about you through the avenue of the book, which, for all of you who haven’t read it, highly recommend it. If Bob’s gonna promote our tours like that, I got to promote his book. He wrote it with Taylor Blake Ward, who unfortunately wasn’t able to join us tonight, but Taylor’s a longtime baseball writer, and they just did a great job together. As I was reading the book, I highlighted some areas I just figured would start the conversation or drive the conversation by pointing out parts of the book that caught my eye. For all of you in the audience, pretty much as soon as you have a question, go ahead and use the raise hand feature. I’d like to have you all drive the conversation as much as you’re willing to, and I’d be happy to pass the mic to you to ask Bob a question. As I said in the intro, I want to talk about your beginnings: growing up at the ballpark, learning from your dad… talk about your dad and the impact he had on your life. How [did] you view his career as a kid growing up?
Bob:
Well, it was fun. I want to say one thing, if I can Shane. I wanted to write this book for my kids. When you’re in baseball for as long as I’ve been in, you’re not home a lot, you miss a lot of things in their life, and then as you get older, you start really feeling guilty, because you did miss so much. My kids are great, but I wanted him to know that I just didn’t sit at the ballpark, in a major league stadium, all the time; there was so much more to it. I tried to give them some of the experiences my father had given to me. He played in the Brooklyn organization, he was on the 1946 Montreal Royals team with Jackie Robinson, and he played for a couple more years and he hurt his arm. For whatever reason– but I think I know what it is, Branch Rickey took a liking to him, and I think it’s because my father loved baseball. He always had a smile on his face. So he made him a scout with Brooklyn, and then took him with Pittsburgh, and that’s when I came on the scene. When he was with Pittsburgh, I’d go with him any chance I could. I just loved being at the ballpark. I didn’t know why, I just loved being there… being around the players and everybody. He used to have a team of the minor league players in the area that would work out over the winter, and I was the bat boy. And that was my first introduction to my idol: Willie Stargell. He was on the team, he signed as a high school player out of Alameda, California, and he just took me under his wing. He made sure I sat with him at the bench, made sure – I was five years old – that I was protected, that I never got in a place where I could get hurt. What it meant to me, those few years there, was unbelievable, and every year he would send a Christmas card and ask how I was doing. I remember the last time I saw him before he passed away. I hadn’t seen him for quite a few years, and when I went up to him, it was like I had just seen him the week before. This man wasn’t just a fabulous baseball player, he was a fabulous human being. He was my idol then, and he is my idol now. That was my start, really, to be around the ballpark. I just went with my father everywhere where he went that I could go, and when the time came that I realized that at my size with no speed, no power, that I wasn’t going to the big leagues as a player, I asked him if I could try to learn the trade. He spent a year working with me, and I’m gonna tell you, it’s the toughest year I ever had, because he yelled at me a lot. He made sure that I understood what a major league player is supposed to look like, that I understood what the average Major League tool is, what above is, what below is. He says, “because you can’t evaluate anybody below that, if you don’t know what the top level is.” It was probably the best time I ever spent, and eventually, I started getting it right once in a while. I got started [when] I was 19, Peter Bavasi signed me to my first contract. He was shocked that I was only 19. So basically, I took it upon myself and lied about my age: for three years, I was actually 21 in the eyes of everybody, because I realized they might not take too keen to a guy that young. So that’s kind of how I got to the beginning, and my father was a general manager, a scouting director. I don’t think I ever saw him at a ballgame where he didn’t have a smile on his face. People like Marty Kuehnert that knew him, I think, can attest to that: he loved the game. He always told me when I got started, he said, “Don’t you ever, ever not appreciate where you are and what you’re doing, because you’re lucky. You’re going to a ballpark to make a living, so your bad days aren’t that bad.” I never forgot that, I never forgot how lucky I am. Hey, you’re looking at a guy that barely squeaked through high school, who doesn’t have any ability, and I lasted almost 50 years. It’s because in baseball, if you listen, and you’re not afraid to take a chance once in a while, even somebody with my lack of ability can stay around for a while.
Shane:
One more thing about your dad that I loved in the book, can you tell us about “Roberto “Fontaiño?
Bob:
Yeah, my father, during World War Two, was stationed in Marana Airbase [now known as Pinal Airpark] just north of Tucson. Back during the war, the different bases had good teams, because they had a lot of professional players there that went in the service for the war. So my father, he was still throwing pretty good, he had a good arm, and he was pitching for the Marana Airbase. They would play big games like a Hi Corbett field there in Tucson where they’d fill the place, because hey, they had a lot of betting going on. My dad used to tell me, he says, “Man, every time I won, I got to do whatever I wanted to do on base. If I lost, I had to get up at the six o’clock wake-up bugle.” So on weekends, the servicemen were not allowed to cross the border into Nogales, which I think is about 90 miles away, but they’d play a lot of baseball down there, and there was a lot of money to be made. So my dad used to go down on weekends, and he had a phony mustache, and he changed his name to Roberto Fontaiño. He went across and pitched for the Nogales team even though he wasn’t supposed to be there. I’ll never forget him telling me, there was this one game where there was a lot of money on the line, and there was a close bang-bang play at first base. So he goes and covers it, and the umpire says, “YER OUT!” Of course, the runner thinks that– who knows might have been safe. So the runner is going crazy, he’s yelling at the umpire, the umpire says “¡No comprende!” So the player finally goes off, the field, the manager goes off the field, and the umpire turns to my father and says, “We took care of him, didn’t we?” Yeah, they did a lot of things back then. Those are fun stories. During the war he was a coach, a boxing manager and he was a swimming coach… and he couldn’t swim! And so he had a lot of interesting experiences during his time in Arizona.
Shane:
That’s awesome. Just one more question from the early days. So you started out with the Padres and they were essentially a cash-strapped startup. Today the Padres are playing in a beautiful downtown ballpark, they employ some of the game’s biggest, most highly-paid stars. You had quite a different experience, so can you talk a little bit about that? It sounds like some fun times.
Bob:
Yeah, we had no money, and there were no TV contracts. Today, everybody gets those big TV contracts and it makes you look a lot smarter when you can spend tens of millions of dollars. We were drawing probably 2,500 a game, no TV contract and a very small radio contract. The owner of the team had to sell because he had some off the field issues to deal with. Mr. Kroc, who owns McDonald’s, bought us. He came in and he’s worth a lot of money. I mean, most clubs were put together with groups, three or four people putting in two or Three million each, and the Padres sold for – I think – 11 million. Mr. Kroc just wrote a check for 11 million, and there it is. The only problem in those early years was he’d say, “You guys can spend any money that you make. I’m not looking to make money out of the team. You can spend everything you make.” Well when you’re drawing 2,500 people a night, you’re not making any money. I tell you what, we literally had no money. When I was signed, Peter told me, “You’re the Midwest scouting supervisor.” I said, “Wow, Peter! My first day on the job and I’m a supervisor, who do I supervise?” And he shook his head. He said, “No, you don’t supervise anybody! We give titles here, not money.” I can tell you stories. I remember one night Mr. Kroc got mad, because we blew a game. We gave up a one-run lead late in the game and lost, and so I read in the paper – I’m living in Houston, and back then we read newspapers – so I’m having a cup of coffee reading the paper, and in there was an article that said “Ray Kroc fires all the scouts after close loss the night before.” I said, “What? I’m fired?” So I called the office right away, and he said, “Oh, no, don’t worry, you were rehired two hours later.” We had things like that all the time. He got on the [public address] system and he was apologizing to the fans, he said he was apologizing for us “playing the stupidest baseball that he ever saw.” And then some streaker ran across the field and he’d yell, “Get that S.O.B. off the field!” This is with the PA, the microphone, and it was after that that they made it mandatory that all the PA rooms had to be locked from the inside. But we had a great time. Like Shane said, we didn’t have a lot of money. I remember, there was one year where we had to sell our best pitcher to Cincinnati to get enough money to pay for our first-round pick and make the next payroll. Those things don’t happen today, but they happened then. But you know what, we had a good time, and anytime I run across somebody from that era, all we do is laugh, because we didn’t know any better and we did it because we loved it, and we tried real hard to be good. The Padres were one of the best teams at developing players and getting them to the big leagues, like Dave Winfield, he got there and went there day one. We got a lot of players to the big leagues, ecause what we didn’t have any money, we sold in opportunity. We said, “Yeah, you didn’t get drafted by the Yankees or whatever, you think you should get 10,000, we only have 3,000. But look at the opportunity with us: you get to the big leagues two years before you would have with them, and then you’re going to make a whole lot more money.” That’s how we had to do it in those days, it was just something you lived with you. Scouts back then used to negotiate contracts with the players after the draft, and nowadays they don’t, it’s agents usually, somebody from the front office, and we would get to know the families and negotiate those contracts; that was a lot of fun. We created kind of a bridge between the ballclub and the family, and it was an exciting time.
Shane:
Love it. So you mentioned getting together with guys from that era, so I’ve got to bring up the Bavasi Family, considering that if Bob Bavasi hadn’t started JapanBall in 1999, then we may not be all sitting in this Zoom room together. So was that your first time working with the Bavasi family in San Diego?
Bob:
Yeah, the Bavasi family has been such an important part of my career. You know, from [legendary Dodgers general manager] Buzzie and of course Peter, I love Peter, and I love Bobby. Bobby and I were with the Padres together, and then, of course, I’ve worked with Billy for a long time. It’s just great. Not just great baseball people, they’re just great people. They love the game too, like I’ve mentioned about others, but I remember one time Bobby and I were with the Padres together, and I reminded him of this not too long ago. With San Diego, we had a AAA team in Hawaii, and back then AAA teams, when you were affiliated with them, they could have like 18 of your players and then sign four or five of their own players. Hawaii did that, they signed four or five guys and paid them pretty good money. They got themselves in a jam. The IRS came and padlocked the door to their offices, and they went broke. So the ballclub, San Diego, like we weren’t having enough trouble taking care of our own team, now has the AAA team. And Bobby and I, we offered to go run it! Two single guys, “Hey, we’ll go run it!” And they said, “Meh, I don’t think so.” It still ticks me off to this day, let me tell you. I think we would have generated some excitement over there. But Hawaii and baseball, in those days, was really good. From the old ballpark down by the college until they went to Aloha [Stadium], and the costback prohibitive. But Hawaii was a good, good place.
Editor’s note: we talked to the Bavasis about such experiences as well! Check out their Chatter Up! linked here.
Shane:
Good stuff. We talked about [how] Tim Salmon was never an All-Star. That’s one atrocity, and Buzzie Bavasi should be in the Hall of Fame, there’s another one.
Bob:
I agree with both of those. Buzzie won that only World Championship in Brooklyn, not to mention all the other ones in Los Angeles and all the Series he got to. He did a lot in the minor leagues. Him not being in the Hall of Fame, it doesn’t seem right to me. Tim Salmon not being an All-Star… the one thing about Timmy, Timmy was a notorious slow starter, and I think he believed it. His months of April were usually brutal, but by the end of the year, he had big time numbers. The one thing you have a lot of in the major leagues is big numbered outfielders, but Tim was a complete player because he could play defense. He had a really good arm. He ran well, and he was a good hitter. He was the ultimate pro. It does seem strange that with 299 home runs, he didn’t make an All-Star team.
Shane:
That’s a good segue. I want to talk a little bit about another organization you spent a long time with, the Angels. That [2002] World Series team is the model for homegrown, championship-quality teams. What was it about the Angels organization, where you’re signing international guys, you were signing domestic guys, and you were just funneling up to the big leagues, and they were producing. What was going right at that time?
Bob:
Patience with the minor leagues. Even though the major league team, over the course of the 13 years that Bill and I were there, would change some years ago [and be] heavy on free agents, sometimes they would revert back and say, “let’s give kids the chance.” They never told us to change direction of what we were doing in the minor leagues, and anybody that thinks you build a minor league system in three, four, five years, that’s not being realistic. You can get better, but to build a system that has a core takes a long time. I think the one thing when Bill and I left there, we left them with a core that had a lot of years still ahead. I remember one of the publications came out the last year we were there, and said we had the worst minor league system in baseball. A couple years later, they won the World Series with all those guys they said couldn’t play. A lot of it was we never touted our own players. I know myself, I always felt you grade our players, because what do you expect me to say? You’re paid for your opinion, and I don’t think that hit home so well, but you’ve got to have patience. When those kids all became good together, the nucleus of that Angel team stayed good for a lot of years. We just never had to change things. We had people, both scouts and instructors, that really believed in what we were doing. They didn’t have egos. We let everybody have a say, even if they disagreed with everything. I think today, you find – more often than ever – that people tend to agree with everything. Hell, that doesn’t get you there. You’ve got to have people look at things differently, to be able to put together the evaluation that’s complete and you better have somebody that looks at things differently than you do to do that, and we did. We had Joe Maddon in the minor leagues, and we had a scouting staff that was tremendous, and they would almost run on autopilot. You didn’t have to tell them what to do, they just went out and did it. I always believed that all of our staff members gave us more in the work they did than what we paid, because they liked being involved, they liked having input, even though they understood they weren’t always going to get it the way they wanted. Every one of you, here, can make an opinion on a baseball player today, [and] we’re not going to know for five years who’s right and who’s wrong. So it was a great experience with the Angels. Mr. [Gene] Autry, who owned the team for most of those years, was the greatest owner that you could be with… him and Jerry Reinsdorf, I had the privilege of working for the two best owners you could ever work for. I mean, they were just tremendous, and they both loved baseball, and they loved the people that worked in it, so you felt comfortable around them. When you’re comfortable around the owner, you want to do a good job for the owner. And we had that in California, and it was a wonderful time.
Shane:
Good stuff. One more question about the Angels before I go to some audience questions: I really want to hear you talk about Jim Abbott.
Bob:
Well, Jimmy Abbott… I think every scout, if they scout for any length of time, is going to have one player that just is special to you. You just know that hey, this is this guy that I want to be a part of. Jimmy Abbott was that. I remember watching him on film the year before he was eligible, he beat the Cubans down in Cuba. I think he beat them 1-0, and then Castro wanted to meet him and everything. He intrigued me, because the first thing I learned was that fielding his position, I don’t think [him having only one hand] was an issue. I went to his first game the next year, and of course, all our scouts are watching him. The one thing you noticed about him, when he went down to the bullpen, you should have seen that cameras go down, the media following him, and they followed everything he did. When he took the field, you could feel the intensity of the team behind him pick up. They just picked up, they played better. Now that night was the first time out in Michigan and it was cold or whatever, and he did okay, but I noticed how they played behind him. As we saw him over the course of the year, we had a lot of scouts see him and the only question that I asked was because we wanted a college pitcher, specifically a left-hander if we could, and Andy Benes went number one that year, we knew we weren’t going to get him and he was a right-hander. But the one question I asked everybody in the room, because we were split camp, half of them said to try to take him second, the other half said take him first. And I said, “Okay, who in this room doesn’t think he can field his position?” Not one hand went up, even those who wouldn’t have taken him first said “no, he can field his position.” So at that point I become the deciding vote, And I told everyone, “you just answered the key question, and I believe Jim Abbott is the right guy for us, and so we’re going to go ahead and take him first if he’s there,” which we thought it would be, because a lot of clubs weren’t going to take him and most people thought he’d go at the end of the first round, maybe the second round. So we took Jimmy, and it took us basically the summer to sign him because he was pitching on the USA team that was going to the Olympics. I remember – and this really bothered me – is that people, I think they were thinking he was Pete Gray or something, they called him the one-armed pitcher and this and that. There were people that were even kind of saying, “Oh, they did it for a publicity stunt.” I remember saying, “Yeah, we took the eighth player in the country for a publicity stunt? Give us some credit!” I remember Mike Port, he was a general manager and he called everybody in the entire organization that was there into the meeting room, he even had the switchboard operators there. He said “Look, I’ve been hearing some things questioning our pick. Our baseball people believe this is the right person for us, so we went with it, we’re excited to get him. I want to show you him pitching.” So we put up a video, and you could have heard a pin drop in the room, because the one thing about Jimmy Abbott is once you see him throw a few pitches, you don’t even pay any attention [to his one-handedness]. He was so quick with the transfer of the glove, and he was a good fielder, and right away there was no more problems. I believe – and I’ve got no proof, zero proof which is usually what I don’t have – but we were in last place the year we selected him, and we had a pretty good ballclub. We didn’t make a lot of changes over the offseason, because sometimes good teams have bad years. So Jim goes to spring training. He’s gonna go to Midland and the Texas League, and he pitched so well [that] he made the team as our fifth starter. I remember when I was driving back from Arizona, and I was listening to our game. We played in Palm Springs against the Padres, and he came in late in the game and he was facing Tony Gwynn, and I said, “Oh, this oughta be interesting.” He got two strikes on Tony, and I said, “This is where Tony gets tough.” He struck him out. Tony didn’t strike out much, especially against left-handed pitchers. He might have a chance. And a couple days later, Mike and Doug Rader, who was the manager, called me and said he’s gonna make the team. I think what was interesting is that he was a fifth starter. I think he won 12 games his first year, shut out Boston in Boston. We ended up winning 93 games that year, and I always thought, with the same team, same amount of injuries, I always thought, what excuse does a player have in the clubhouse, when they look over at Jim and he has no excuses for anything? I mean, if that’s not inspiration, I don’t know what it is. Jim didn’t play baseball for inspiration to others, he played baseball because he loved the game. That’s what was so real about him, and he said, “If I inspire somebody, great, but that’s not why I’m playing; I’m playing because I love to play baseball.” I think he inspired people by the way he handled himself both on and off the field.
Shane:
Jim Abbott’s a legend. For those of you who don’t know Jim Abbott – I guess maybe I should have introduced it – but he is a pitcher that had one hand. Alright, so let’s go to our first question. A fellow baseball author, you’ll have to write a few books to catch up with him: Dennis Snelling.
Dennis:
I wondered, as a scout, what you really looked for in a player? What was the thing that really convinced you one way or the other? And then, if you give some examples, maybe of some players that surprised you that made it, and maybe some that surprised you that didn’t. What are some of those circumstances that are beyond a scouts’ control, [in] how well a player does?
Bob:
That’s an excellent question. And Steve and John will chuckle when they hear the answer, because we just finished [The Baseball Bureau’s] Scout School [note: Bob is the lead instructor at Scout School]. First thing I look at is their feet, the quickness of their feet, and the second thing is their hands. I’m a firm believer that 99.99% of baseball starts with the feet and ends with the hands. If the feet are quick, and can stay with the speed of the game, because every level you go up, the game gets faster. The reason the guys can play at that level is because they can adjust to the speed of the game… the ones that can’t, that’s usually the end of their career. So I watch their feet, and then I watch their hands, because if their feet work, it allows the body to get in position to use their upper body and their hands, to throw, or to hit, or to whatever. To me, those are the key. I’ve never seen a good big league player who’s got dead feet or just horrible hands. It doesn’t mean they aren’t strong, it doesn’t mean they might not get there. There’s always exceptions. If you don’t have those two things, this is a tough game to play. I’ve seen a lot of good players that became what I thought they would be, and I’ve seen some that didn’t. For example, Darin Erstad had those intangibles, he had the feet and the hands… exceptionally aggressive kid. He not only became as good as we hoped he would be, he became better, because he challenged himself all the time. This kid played center field, left field, right field, and first base in the big leagues. I think he set a record for a leadoff hitter, driving in 100 runs. He didn’t want to lose, he wanted to be so good, and he wanted to win.
There’s others. I’ll tell you one of my… not one of my biggest mistakes, my biggest mistake; I mean, it’s so big, it wouldn’t fit on the screen. He was a kid from Auburn University, a power hitter, and heard he’s going to go number one. [I] still saw him play and I mean, he would miss balls by a foot. He didn’t throw real well. He didn’t play first base real well. He couldn’t run. He had tremendous power, you could see that in batting practice. I said, “Oh, man, that’s a lot of holes.” So we didn’t take him, he went before us anyway, but it was Frank Thomas. I’m going to tell you something, and when I was with the White Sox, I was around Frank a little bit: [he had] one of the greatest approaches to playing the game of baseball. I learned that just because a kid can’t do something, if he can do the things he’s supposed to do good, he can get better. Frank Thomas, what I didn’t judge… I should have just judged the ball in the strike zone that he hit, because he pulverized it. I was letting the swings and misses on pitches down in the strike zone affect me. I learned from that: don’t judge that, that’s why we’ve got hitting coaches and repetition in the minor leagues. Well, Frank Thomas went on to create one of the greatest personal strike zones of all time. If he didn’t swing at it, it was almost never called a strike, and when it was in his zone? Oh man, he just pulverized the ball. And his feet, his first step was just good enough that he could end up playing first base. He became a great hitter. He became obviously a great power hitter, and he’s a Hall of Famer and I missed him. It happens. There were others early in my career, I learned from each one of them. You learn from your mistakes more than you learn from your successes, because your successes, you’re too darn proud that he succeeded. You’re walking around, “yeah, I signed this guy.” But when they don’t make it, you go back and you say, “What did I miss? What did I miss?”
And I remember, Bobby Geren was in high school, he was my first number one pick. [He] just loved to play, he would have played 24 hours a day if he could have stayed awake, and he was our number one pick. But it took him nine years in the minor leagues where he got to the major leagues. But it was his love and perseverance that did it, and he ended up going about six years in the big leagues, managed in the big leagues, still coaching in the big leagues. Every time you see him on TV, he’s got a grin on his face, because he loves to be at the ballpark. So I learned that don’t ever overlook that intangible, because those are the ones that tend to get better, because they, they want it so bad. I’ve got so many mistakes, we don’t have enough time on this call to go over them. But if you’re afraid to make a mistake, you’re hardly ever going to have a success.
Shane:
Well said. Thanks for that question. Dennis, very good question. You mentioned Bob Geren, I was curious about him. I was looking at your signing list. There’s him, Ozzie Guillen and Tim Flannery are three guys who stuck out as people who had perhaps really successful coaching careers. Was there something you saw in them as young players, maybe even before they were professionals, that could have led you to think that they would go on to have the careers they did?
Bob:
Timmy Flannery played the game at Chapman [University], just like he did in San Diego [with the Padres]. He was one of the best at turning a double play, didn’t have great range, didn’t run all that great, but his first step was good, he could always hit, he could hit in his sleep. He played the same way his whole career. When you play that way, you tend to usually be a better coach or manager because you’re into doing everything to make up for maybe one part of the game you’re not as good at, but you’ve got to compensate and you learn how to do it. I really believe that a lot of managers aren’t always the best players, but they worked hard to be good players when they played.
Ozzie Guillen, that was a trip. I remember going to Venezuela and we were making a tour down there, and Pedro Padrón who had the La Guaira club, he used to have these young kids under contract, and they would live in the barracks under the grandstands. I remember going out to see the young kids because we were looking to pick up a kid or two, and there was this little shortstop out there, 16 years old. That mouth was going nonstop. He was all over the place, but you could see his hands. His hands were so smooth, and his teammates nicknamed him Ozzie after Ozzie Smith, because his name is Osvaldo. He was all over the place, and he had a line drive swing, and he could run pretty decent as a kid, but he loved to play. So I remember when we were negotiating, I told the guy I was with, I said, “You tell him, we want that guy.” I’ll make a long story short, we got him, but we had to sign three other of those guys to get him, and we spent a total of $4,000: three went towards Ozzie, one went towards another one, and the other two, we signed for nothing. When he came to the States, he went to the Gulf Coast League. He was all over the place again, running all over, and of course, when you don’t speak English, usually some of the first words you learn from your teammates are profanity. He had a few of those and stuff, but he was just yelling and screaming all over. I think he hit about .198 that first year, and there were some people [who] wanted to release him and we were in the meeting saying, “You kidding me? Kid’s 16 years old! Look at that glove, the glove alone will play in the big leagues!” The next year, he hit like .300-something in Reno, and off he went until he got traded to the White Sox and became Rookie of the Year. Another case: if you take all three of those guys, the common denominator is the love of the game, the love to play the game, and the love to be around the game. I tell you what, that’s just all over. It’s all over their faces.
Joe:
Hey, Bob. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. So I’ve yet to read your book. Now, after hearing all this, it’s got to be on the top of my list. I don’t know if you’ve covered this question within the book itself, but as sort of the “Baseball Gypsy,” I would love to hear about some of the most unlikely, surprising places that you’ve gone in pursuit of baseball and finding players, corners of the globe that you didn’t expect to be or didn’t expect baseball to be there.
Bob:
Well, first of all, you’ve got a Montreal logo, so I’ve got to answer this question. I think what surprised me was, internationally – for many years – was [just] basically the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela. Other than that, all I really ever did was… I went to Russia early in the 90s, because when the Soviet Union fell, it intrigued Billy Bavasi and I that maybe we can get some athletes out of there, because they’re phenomenal athletes. That was the greatest trip of my life. I grew up in the Cold War era and stuff, and to be there, and to think, “my god, I’m looking at baseball players in Russia?” We ended up signing three, and they came over, and it was a little emotional for me the first day in Arizona, when I’m watching three kids from Russia, playing with American teammates named Angels, you just said, “Wow, baseball did this.” We get countries that hated each other for years, and three months after the fall of the Soviet Union, we got Russians playing baseball; it made you feel good.
After that, it was mostly in the Latin countries, which has changed quite a bit because obviously, in the early days, you couldn’t go anywhere in the Dominican Republic, and there wasn’t a ball game on a vacant lot. But then when I was with the White Sox and in Seattle, I went to Japan and got my first taste of that. I had a background in Japanese baseball in that college teams used to come over here. They’d play USC, they play University of Minnesota at the Metrodome, and you get an idea of the difference of baseball. Other than watching on ABC Wide World of Sports, when they’d have the Japanese World Series, and I’d watched Sadaharu Oh, that was about it. So going over there and seeing that was a whole education for me, I love it. I can get into that a little later, if you want.
And then after that, going to Major League Baseball and working with Shane and others there, I spent a lot of time in China. I never thought I’d be in China looking at baseball players, and here I am, I’m going all over the country. I know two words in Chinese. I know Xīngbākè, which is Starbucks, and I know Tsingtao which is beer. That’s it, I know nothing else. I’m going all over this place saying, “this is crazy.” Then we went to South Africa to watch that, and watching players from all over the African continent, tremendous. Brazil, all these places. That’s why I was mentioning earlier about the beauty of these tours, you’ll see things that are different. Everybody’s got their own little take on baseball, and it’s really fun to watch. I never thought I’d go to all those places. I love Europe, because European kids are strong, and they really like to play and they like to go to school.
So it’s been a great learning experience for me. Baseball is definitely a worldwide sport, and even though you don’t hear about it much in other places, it’s a worldwide sport. I’ve got to mention again, Japan – and I’m sorry if I’m rambling here Shane – but my first trip into Japan, I was there to see a shortstop, and as soon as you get off the plane, because you fly all night, I went right to the Tokyo Dome. Forget about sleep, sleep’s overrated, right? So I get there for batting practice. I’m not tall, and I’m watching guys my size hitting balls off the back wall, so I say, “wait a minute… what’s going on here?” Then I also realize, there’s no dimensions on the wall… wait a minute. So I got through the game, and the next day we were out there, we didn’t have the machines to gauge the distance and all that stuff, so I measured it all by foot down the lines. Now it wasn’t very long, I’ll tell you that; what was most important is, it wasn’t so much the lines, it was how they cut off the alleys, they weren’t as deep as what they would be in a normal field. I think it’s probably changed. I mean, I’m going back 12, 14 years, but I understood that I had to keep that in mind when guys were just hitting it over the fence. Two batting cage batting practice is the most bizarre thing I ever saw. I swear, I don’t know why, but I thought somebody was going to get hit, it just had to happen, and yet nobody ever does. They’ve got the most disciplined way of preparing for a game I’ve ever seen. You go hit off a tee, you get a little soft toss, you go into the cage. My background prior to this was with the “Powerful Pads” [Padres] in the 70s. And the Swallows used to come to Yuma to train a month before we got there, and then when we’d show up, they’d train for a couple more weeks, play a game and then they go home. Well, I started watching their practices… I was beat, I was tired after watching the practice. Nobody stands still. Nobody sits in the outfield, it’s catching balls, there’s a purpose; they might be out there standing with each other, but there’s a purpose of what they’re doing. They would finish these long days at the park, go back to the hotel, and they’d hold chalk talks. I said, “Oh my gosh, tough day at the ballpark and they’re gonna go have chalk talks?” It was tremendous, and I remember talking to some of my friends that played in Japan, and they told me – you would know Shane, you can tell me if it’s still this way or not – but they would tell me it was the best shape they’d ever been in their life. They’d say they would work out a month before they ever threw a baseball, they’d run up and down mountains and do all kinds of work to physically get into shape, it was unbelievable. If you could get through that, then it was fun, but it was tough. One other thing– I got to bring this up too, because it was part of that trip I was on. We were to see a guy and he started… they had the biggest medicine ball I ever saw in my life on the field, and he was back there stretching backwards. I said, “Oh my God, how can anybody stretch like that?” Well, I found out later he had some back issues, but the key tool was then, was if you went – and I think the free agent time at that point was nine years and there was no posting. – if you went on the [Disabled List], you lost service time. So if you went on the DL once in the nine years, it took you ten years to get to your free agency, these guys don’t want to go on the DL. So they would do anything they could to stay on the field. It was quite interesting and fascinating to see, and I admire them because they worked hard to stay fit. After being a farm director here, I can tell you that American kids sometimes can see that and get an extra couple of weeks out of this, couple weeks after that, and it doesn’t make a difference. That was a long answer to a short question.
Steven:
I think we could go all night actually. I’m gonna steal two questions and they might seem disconnected. One, I’d like you to talk about scouts doing home visits. What are you looking for? How do you find character in a player? The other question has more to do with Japan but it’s connected to the US, and that is I’d like you to comment your reaction and your colleagues’ reaction to the signing of Carter Stewart, who went to the SoftBank Hawks?
Bob:
I don’t have a lot to add about my colleagues’ feelings on that, and you know what? It’s part of the opportunity. I’m always big on opportunity, and a player should have opportunity, and sometimes it works for you. Sometimes it works against you as a team. It’s like when [Kyler] Murray signed with Oakland, and he ends up playing with [the] Arizona [Cardinals]. That’s what I tell kids all the time: “play two sports, get opportunity!” Choices are important, and you know what, somebody is not going to be happy with the choice that you make. I’m sure the clubs would prefer he didn’t go there, but from the kid’s standpoint, he had choices, he’s got opportunity, and you’ve got to respect that.
As far as the home visits, we were talking about this the other day at Scout School, they’ve changed tremendously. Now they give a lot of written tests and a lot of different things. My feeling was the best reactions we ever got, was going in and meeting the family and getting to know them and the kid. Again, my biggest way of getting to know a kid – or even if I was hiring a scout is to shake their hands – look them in the eye, and talk about something other than baseball that they might be rehearsed on. Seeing the character of the kid… is this a kid that’s going to fit in with what we’re trying to do? Or is this a scout that fits what we’re trying to do? Now, we would give some tests and stuff, they weren’t very long; someone told me now [they] can last up to six hours. But I always said you better get to know the person, and the best way to get to know the person is to be comfortable in a setting, and that always worked for me. I know in all the years I was with California, not every kid we had was a great kid, but we never had any bad kids. Our scouts went with their gut feel: “Hey, I just like this guy. He looks me in the eye, he talks firmly, and he believes in himself; he’s not bragging, but he believes in himself.” I know they don’t do that much anymore, but I’m going to tell you something, that worked for us. It worked for us in San Diego. I think when you know the person, it makes it easier to decide if they’re the right person for what you’re looking for. I hope that makes sense.
Shane:
That reminds me of a question I have, and perhaps this is a little bit of wishful thinking, but I have a theory that maybe some teams are already employing. So with the scouts that have all lost their jobs and teams cutting on scouting departments, and like you said, they’re doing written evaluations and kind of taking physical metrics, as opposed to the traditional methods. For example, the whole Moneyball approach is about exploiting an undervalued commodity, could it be possible that traditional scouting is becoming an undervalued commodity that certain teams can view as an opportunity to give them an advantage over other teams? These scouts are out of work, let me hire them all. Let me input all these subjective opinions into my database and get an advantage over other teams.
Bob:
That’s an interesting question, Shane, and if I was younger, and I had the opportunity to do it again, I would do exactly that. It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t use some of the statistical analysis or whatever, because some of it can give you a head start into identifying [what] needs to be seen. But what the traditional scout gives you is personal reference, like I mentioned about things I learned on players that I missed on; analytics didn’t do that. I’m a firm believer that the best video camera is your eyes, the best model is your brain, and the best way to make a tough decision is with your heart. If you can apply that with what the statistical analysis can give you, I think you can beat a lot of people, and there are clubs that do it. There’s not many, but I have yet to find a number that cares if you win or cares if you lose; never have. A human cares if you win or lose and cares to be successful, he doesn’t want to be unsuccessful. I think you’re absolutely right, Shane, and I hope teams [do it] at some point before all the veterans are gone, because you’ve got to have the veterans to train the next group so they can bring along, and what’s going to happen is if they don’t start using some of these veteran guys to teach younger people, you’re going to get to a point where the veteran scout in baseball is going to be somebody that holds an iPad. Now that’s nothing against them, they’re doing what they’ve been told to do and what their club wants, but if you want to get traditional input into it, I would hope they would hire some of these people for that. I know one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in baseball is train young scouts. I’ve done it with a couple of clubs and with Major League Baseball, and I love it, because you want to share what people gave you. This shouldn’t be a dying art. It should be another art with a newer art.
Shane:
For those of you on the call, he does still teach aspiring young scouts. Even if you’re not an aspiring young scout – you just want to learn a new angle to the game – there’s an in-person and online scout school, run by The Baseball Bureau, that Bob is the lead instructor for, so highly recommend that course. I went through the course, it’s the same course that Major League Baseball used to put on for decades that I went to about 15 years ago. It’s been privatized now, but it’s great stuff and I highly recommend it.
Bob:
Thank you, Shane. Steve Porter, who’s on the call, he’s our director, and he runs the show for us. The one thing we tell every one of our students – and I am 100% sure of this – that after that time in the class, you’ll never look at a baseball game the same way.
Shane:
You’re definitely right. I took that course probably 10 years ago, and I’ve never watched the baseball game the same way again, in a good way. I’d be remiss to not talk about the three Hall of Famers: Randy Johnson, Tony Gwynn, Ozzie Smith. You’ve mentioned a couple of them a little bit now, but can you talk about them as young players, drafting them, and just what it was like watching their careers?
Bob:
Well, Randy Johnson was tall from the day he was born, I think, because when I saw him in high school, he may have grown an inch when he went to college, but he was big. He was really… I’m not gonna say crude, but when you’re tall like that, tall players and tall pitchers take longer to develop, because they have so much to coordinate. Shorter players or pitchers have less to control, so they tend to get to their maximum earlier. Randy in high school probably threw in the mid to high 80s, but you knew there was a lot more to come down the line, and he went to USC. One of the beauties when you’re scouting is when you have a reference over a period of years, you can see if the player is improving, and every year Randy improved. One year, his delivery got cleaner, his arm got quicker; next year, his velocity went up a notch; and then the next year, his breaking ball became much sharper. However, even in college, though, because of his size, and still gaining strength, he would throw his best for two innings and then his stuff would diminish, because he didn’t have the strength. Great competitor, always was a great competitor, and when we signed him, he went back and he went to the rookie league, and he threw about 77 miles an hour. Of course everybody’s looking at us like “what did you guys do?” So they had him checked out, and the doctor said, “Look, he’s not strong enough yet to get into a five day rotation. Give him that extra day.” Well, as soon as he heard that, and everybody got on track, Randy’s throwing in the low 90s and striking out a lot of people, and then every year he just got better. Now the command was always an issue up until the time he got to the big leagues. In college, he walked as many as he struck out, and he walked a lot professionally. I don’t know what turned him around. I’ve read the stories about the role Nolan Ryan [played,] I’ve never asked Randy, supposedly he may have said something, but all of a sudden the light clicked. For me, the light had to click when everything was working together, because now he can repeat the proper things he needed to do to be the pitcher he is. His velocity shot up close to 100, he had that breaking ball, that slider, that was [just] forget it, and he was mean on the mound. He wanted to beat you. And off the field, he’s really a nice guy, but the good ones want to beat you. They don’t want to just be good, they want to beat you, and Randy was that way.
Tony Gwynn, on the other hand, was a basketball player at San Diego State as a point guard. In fact, he was drafted by the San Diego Clippers in the 10th round. He came out for baseball after the basketball season, and he hadn’t played a lot of baseball except in high school. The one thing you could see about him was his balance – feet – and his hands, because he would be balanced at the plate. Tremendous balance. Head would be still, and his hands were so quick that he could wait until the last minute, and he’d hit that ball between short and third base all night long. But he also had the ability to turn on a ball and he had some power. He ran good when he was a kid. We saw him a lot because we were with San Diego, and we figured this guy, we can get him in the third round. We really felt we had him pegged, and we got him in the third round, and when he went out, he started hitting from day one in the rookie league, and finished up in AA at the end of his first year. He worked very hard to become a good defensive outfielder. And he stole bases early in his career! He was a complete player. Another guy, if you ever see pictures of him, he’s always smiling.
The same thing with Ozzie Smith, he was a defensive player from day one. He was at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, he went up there with the idea to play basketball, and ended up going out for baseball. I think that the shortstop on the team got hurt early in the season and he got the job, and he never gave it up. He didn’t make hard contact, [was a] switch hitter, he was an average runner but he could still bases because he had the quickest first step I’ve ever seen in my life. He stole over 50 bases one year because he was so quick. It was the way he was in the infield, he had arm strength, it was fringe average at best, but he threw out the fastest guy in the league because he had the quickest arm action and release of the ball you ever saw. He was drafted his junior year by Detroit, didn’t sign, and then we drafted him his senior year, fourth round, and it was the hardest one-day negotiation I’d ever been through in my life. Opening offer was $3,000, and he almost fainted because he was offered $10,000 a year for the 10th round. I went into my spiel, “Well Ozzie, we don’t have money and we got you a great opportunity in this.” We go back and forth, three times in one day, and finally he agreed to $4,000. I never forget, because he knew why he was drafted in the fourth round, because people had questions on his bat. We all did, you’d be a liar if you said you didn’t, because if you thought he could hit, not sure of that, but in the way he played defense, he’s number one. I’ll never forget, he told me “Bob, I’ll show you I can hit,” and I said “I believe you,” because he believed it. So he went and played in the rookie league one year, and the next winter, they called me and said, “Bring Ozzie down for a few days to San Diego, we want the people down here to see him before we go to spring training, we’re thinking about taking them to big league camp.” He went down there and they took one look at him catching ground balls and went “oh my gosh.” So he goes to spring training, and he impresses everybody with the glove, and he’s making enough contact that if he puts the ball in play, he’s got a chance to do something. We had Billy Almon, who I’m sure most of you don’t remember, but he was our number one pick a couple years before great talent, great talent. He was our shortstop the year before, and they moved him to second base so Ozzie could play shortstop, and he never, never looked back; another guy, great kid, great family. Look at him. He’s always got a smile on his face, and he’s doing flips. The good ones like that. They know they’re good, and then they love being there. Derek Jeter, I mean, he always has a smile on his face. These guys, the good ones, like to be there. Those three kids liked to be there.
Marty:
I’m sure you know John Schuerholz very well, like many of us in baseball do. For those of you who don’t know, John Schuerholz [is] one of the greatest GMs ever who built that dynasty and Atlanta. His book, it seems to me, that his approach to scouting is probably very similar to yours. I haven’t read your book yet and I have to, but I did read his book “Scouts’ Honor.” I’m sure you probably read it, maybe you could tell people, aren’t your approaches similar? He talked about how all this stuff, the Moneyball stats, the SABR stuff is coming in, but you can’t do away with the scouts, like what you’re just talking about now. I’m sure you’ve read it.
Bob:
You know Marty, I haven’t, but I know John and I know the way they did things, especially in Kansas City, when he was a farm director there and then the general manager, because Kansas City was always a player development, scouting organization, and Atlanta was too, when they had Bobby Cox there, Paul Snyder was there, they had a great group. I can probably almost anticipate what’s in there because I know how they did things. Kansas City, for me, had a lot of success without a lot of money, and the way you do that is by having a lot of conviction in what you’re doing and having people with opinions and stuff. When you’re around a veteran scout, they make you think, because they’re always bringing up things that makes you better and makes everybody in the room better. That’s what helped my education. When I started, the scouts took a liking to me because I asked questions and kept my mouth shut when I shouldn’t be talking. When we’d stay in a motel – and back then we didn’t stay in hotels, we stayed in motels, I’m talking about places that didn’t have telephones and a wake up call was some guy coming and knocking on your door at 7 a.m. saying get up – but in the evenings, one of the scouts would have the room where everybody would meet, and they’d put this bottle of scotch out there – they called it a cannon – lightweights like me drank beer, and they would talk for hours and hours and hours [about the players they saw that day.] They wouldn’t talk about you, but they were talking about the guys they’ve seen through the years like you. They would say, “You remember this guy and that guy? He did the same thing, and those guys had success.” I’m thinking, “I’m getting an education without putting in the time on those players.” Veteran guys bring that to you, the number systems don’t. If a guy comes up as a 43.9, they don’t say “similar to so-and-so.” They don’t do that. But John Schuerholz, obviously, outstanding baseball man. I haven’t seen him in probably about six years. Him and my father were good friends. They shared the love of the game, and they shared the love of the people in the game.
Marty:
I think the thing that’s best described in that book is the fact that John says that when he wrote the book, the SABR stuff was really coming on strong and everybody was crunching the numbers and said, “We don’t need scouts anymore.” John said in that book, let’s say you have a player that’s had some trouble off the field, and there’s some questions about his character. He said, “There’s no way you can determine that from numbers. You need to go sit in his living room and say, ‘Have you grown up? Are you ready to take this game seriously now?’” He wants to see the parents sitting next to him and read their faces and, like you’re saying, read their hearts. There’s no way to do that with numbers.
Bob:
That’s a great point. That’s why video can never replace an in-person look, because you hit something very important. You don’t know, he might have had a fight with his girlfriend the night before, he might have some tests he’s worried about to pass a class, it could be fighting with his parents, you don’t know. When you’re in person, you can pick up a lot of things. When Moneyball came up, every team I worked with, the owners would ask me, “Should we go to Moneyball?” I love Billy Beane, Billy Beane is a good friend, he’s a good baseball man, but you know what? They made adjustments to that type of scouting over time, because in the beginning they were going for college players and then they settled on high school players. There’s some good things in that, don’t get me wrong, there’s some good things. I used to tell the ownership, I said “Look, I’m going to tell you how we approach things, and you can tell me if that’s not the way you want it. We want not just our share of players, we want a share with everybody else’s players. If we only do it one certain way and we’re not open to everything around it, we’re not going to get it. We’re going to be giving players we should be getting to the other clubs to get, and the players in that smaller pool are going to be lesser and lesser. We’ve got to stay open everybody, we can’t concede. I want to beat everybody and I want more than our share.”
Marty:
Did you think that Kevin Youkilis, the [Greek] God of Walks, had quick feet?
Bob:
Yeah! Hey, there’s nothing wrong with walks, because I’ll tell you what, for a power hitter, a walk is their best friend, because the more walks they get, the better the pitches they’re swinging at; the better the pitches they’re swinging at, the more likely they are to make contact and home runs; but they’re always going to strike out, power hitters do. Friend of mine told me one time, you want to see the all-time home run list? Go to the all-time strikeout list. But walks are very important. I always said, if a power hitter has half as many walks as strikeouts, he’s got a chance to be pretty good.”
Marty:
I was just kind of joking, because when Kevin got here, he wasn’t walking or hitting the ball out of the ballpark. He wasn’t really wanting to play anymore, and he looked at his last stop here, for the Rakuten Eagles, as another payday, and unfortunately, he didn’t do any of them. But in his early days, he obviously had some good years.
Shane:
Last call for questions here, because we’re getting close to 90 minutes where I’m going to cut it off. I wanted to ask: I’m wearing this shirt for Koshien Stadium– available at JapanBall.com. Bob, you went to Koshien, I haven’t been yet. I’ve been to the stadium, [but] I haven’t been to the high school tournament; we’re going this year on our tour. I’m really excited to attend that for the first time. Can you tell us about it please?
Bob:
Two things I want to mention, and one of them will be that. One of my biggest thrills in baseball was meeting Sadaharu Oh, when he was managing. I mean geez, it was like meeting Babe Ruth. The one thing that really hit me about Oh, he’s a lot like Aaron. They’re not gigantic physical guys, but the strength of their wrists and their forearms are… Holy Toledo. I loved watching him hit, he had the greatest balance of a power hitter I ever saw, because he hit like Mel Ott. I’m gonna tell you what, he made it look easy, and it’s not easy. But the high school tournament with Darvish, I went over there when I was with Seattle, because Bill and the group was trying to see if we could sign Yu Darvish out of high school, because if there’s an agreement, we could do it. So I went over there, and was there for a week before he pitched. I got to Tokyo and then headed down to Osaka, and they worked out every day for seven days. Every single day, he threw off the mound; I said, “you’ve got to be kidding me.” In the middle of the practice, they stopped and looked at the manager and bowed and whatever, but they had to hide me, because they didn’t want Americans looking in there. So I’d hide behind trees and light towers, which I love because they did that over here. I remember we were at this one park, and it was like two days before the game. Somebody hit a ball past the outfield, he butchered it, so it rolled to where I was standing, in the trees by the fence, and when the kid got there, I said “Meat, you’ve got to make that play.” The two young scouts I was with went berserk: “You can’t do that! You can’t do that! They’ll see we’re here. We’ll be in trouble.” I said, “Whatever. Kid’s got to make the play. I’m sorry.” So now he’s done pitching every day on the side, and we get into the tournament and it rained the night before and it rained all day, and they’ve got diamond dust everywhere because you’ve got a dirt infield. It’s televised all over the country. Normally it’s a full house this particular night, they only had 35,000 for a high school game. He goes out there, and the thing that was intriguing about Darvish, I had seen young pitchers with as good a fastball or a good at breaking ball or whatever; he had top of the line stuff, he had a great delivery. But what he could do is throw from like four different angles. He’d throw here, here, here, here, and he’d throw them all for strikes. I’m thinking, “My God, he’s got four pitches, times that by four, he’s got 16 weapons!” Because a hitter seeing the same pitch from a different angle’s a different pitch. So he goes out there and the game is close, his team finally made some errors, and they got behind – I think – 2-1 and they took him out in the eighth inning. He must have thrown 140 pitches, and I thought “oh my gosh, what a talent.” Guys like this get by when they don’t have their best stuff, because they got all these angles and you could change speeds and stuff. I said, “If he’s in the States, he’s a top of the first round pick.” Bob Engels, our international supervisor – he’s had great success internationally – it just didn’t happen. I gotta tell you, the thing that I’ll never forget: I don’t know if there’s anybody on here old enough to remember Popeye the Sailor Man cartoons. They had a jingle. I’m sitting down the third baseline, and right next to me is the high school group of students there: the cheering section, the horns and the drums and the flags. Their theme song is Popeye the Sailor Man. The first few times you hear this, it’s okay. They played it continuously for nine innings. I left there. I tell you, if I ever see Popeye on TV, I’ve got to turn it off. Nine innings! They wave the flags and bang the drums and blew on the horn! Popeye the Sailor Man! But I’m going to tell you, that tournament is so exciting because the whole country gets into it, and on national TV, it’s just a wonderful event.
Marty:
And the nice thing about those games is that they’re all finished in less than two hours.
Bob:
You’re right, they don’t mess around. They’re there to play ball. There’s no walk up songs and all that kind of stuff.
Marty:
They run to their positions, and oftentimes, the starting pitcher goes deep into the game. Our baseball’s biggest problem is these long, long games, and the average Japanese game now is three hours and 20 minutes. When they started the Pacific and Central league in 1950, the average time of a game was one hour and 51 minutes.
Bob:
Along those lines, Marty, when I was a kid, I grew up in the Bay Area. The Giants used to start weeknight games at eight o’clock, but they were done by 10:20. Now, they have to start games at 6:40 to be done by 10:20, but you’re right about that. They don’t mess around. There’s no hot dog. I just want to say again, for those of you that have a chance to go on any of these tours, when you look at it, you’ll pick up little things and you’ll appreciate the game, [and] how it’s played around the world. It’s really neat.
Shane:
For sure. I want to wrap things up with something else in the book. This is the beginning of the book. It’s the foreword by Tim Meade, and I thought this is a perfect way to encapsulate you, your career, and, in a way, to thank you for joining us. “Bob Fontaine, Jr. is one of those special people. His genuine love and passion for our national pastime, and his craft, remains legendary within the scouting community and beyond. Combined with an unmatched humility and selfless approach in all aspects of his being, Bob’s impact on so many people is immeasurable.”
Bob:
That’s kind of you, Shane, to say that. When I read it, I said, “Who’s Tim talking about?” And then I realized, “Oh yeah, I owe him 50 bucks.”
Shane:
Well Tim wrote it, and I quoted him because I couldn’t have said it better myself, and that’s the truth. Thanks so much for joining us, and thanks for giving so much to the game and sharing your love of the game and continuing to do so. This was really fun.
Bob:
Well again, thank you, Shane. Thank all of you. I tell you, I can be on calls like this with people that love the game all night. It’s fun to see your faces and know that you share the love of the game, as they say, because there’s not a bad day at the ballpark, no matter how much it might not work out the way you want it, there’s never a bad day at the ballpark.
Shane:
Agreed 100%. Thank you, Bob. Good seeing everyone, and I’ll see you at the ballpark.
By
Coop Daley