The scout had the knack for noticing the special player without the polish and he is being honored for his work.
By Kevin Baxter
January 14, 2009
The 15-year-old was as thin as a bat and about as smooth as sandpaper. But the scout saw something special in his hands, in his arms. So he carved an infield into a corner of the cow pasture outside his front door and hit the boy 300 grounders a day through the spring rainstorms and the oppressive summer heat.
Three years later, that teenager, Alfredo Griffin, reached the major leagues, beginning an 18-year career in which he would win three World Series titles, a Gold Glove, the American League’s rookie-of-the-year Award and a spot on an All-Star team.
Yet, he might never have made it out of the Dominican Republic without the keen eye and uncommon dedication of scout Epy Guerrero.
“He had a knack for noticing the special player who maybe didn’t have the polish, the people who maybe were a little crude,” said former Philadelphia Phillies general manager Pat Gillick, Guerrero’s boss with the Houston Astros, New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays. “He also had a tremendous work ethic. He was very competitive. He didn’t want to be beaten on a player.”
And he wasn’t, at least not very often. Which is one reason why Guerrero will be among five honored with a Legends in Scouting Award at Saturday’s sixth annual Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation gala at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza.
Others to be feted will be Hall of Fame players George Brett and Rich Gossage, World Series champion manager Whitey Herzog and brothers Felipe, Jesus and Matty Alou.
Guerrero became a scouting legend by, in more than four decades of work, signing by his own count nearly five dozen players who went on to the major leagues, including Cesar Cedeno, Carlos Delgado, Tony Fernandez and Kelvim Escobar. But his biggest contribution to the game came in the 1970s, when he joined the Dodgers’ Ralph Avila in pushing open the Dominican Republic’s pipeline to the majors.
As a result, the Dominican, which had sent only 18 players to the big leagues by 1967, when Guerrero signed his first player, had about 2,300 players with major league organizations last spring.
Guerrero, 67, was inducted into the Dominican Sports Hall of Fame in October and last month was among four scouts honored during the major league winter meetings, but he continues to feel slighted by the baseball establishment.
He would like to be included in baseball’s Hall of Fame, but it doesn’t induct scouts.
“After 47 years in professional baseball, I think I deserve something,” he said. “Without us, there is no professional baseball. Despite that, we’ve been ignored for so many years.”
Little of what Guerrero has done came easy. He says he once crossed the Panamanian border in the back of a donkey cart in pursuit of a player. Another time, he hiked up the side of a mountain to reach a village that was inaccessible by road.
Then there was the time he risked jail or worse — “They wanted to kill me,” he said — by dressing up as a soldier to smuggle a prospect out of Sandinista Nicaragua.
After he was let go by the Milwaukee Brewers in 2003, Guerrero became an independent scout, or buscon, finding and developing Latin American players on his own, then negotiating their contracts with the big league clubs for which he used to work.
“It’s important that people know who they are,” Foundation President Dennis Gilbert said of international scouts, who signed nearly 30% of the players on big league rosters last season. “If you’re talking about almost a third of baseball, think of their contributions. Without people like Epy, we wouldn’t have a lot of these great players.”
They are in the shadows of baseball, unknown men who spend countless hours in ball parks around the country evaluating personnel.
Most of them played the game professionally, and are consumed by a fierce passion for a sport that remains with them long after they’ve thrown their final pitch or made their final plate appearance.
Most of them didn’t attend college, and couldn’t imagine being involved in any other activity.
For sure, major league baseball scouts are a different species, an integral part of the national pastime’s infrastructure who, by the very nature of their work, remain quietly under the radar.
“We’re the grunts of our sports,” says the long-time New York Mets scout from Long Beach, Harry Minor, referring to a military reference for infantrymen.
Most of them know nothing else but baseball, and aren’t prepared for the financial hardships that might be forthcoming if they’re no longer working in it.
Many do struggle when they retire or are shoved aside, and that’s where Dennis Gilbert, a wealthy Beverly Hills life insurance mogul who resides in Calabasas, has made a huge impact.
“Dennis has been a godsend to our profession,” says Minor. “His organization has helped out so many scouts.”
Gilbert’s organization is called the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation, and it has raised more than $2 million since its inception seven years ago to give assistance to those scouts in need of it.
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Most of that money has been generated from its annual Sports and Entertainment Spectacular that will be staged Saturday night at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel.
Before the main proceedings, there will be a silent auction of an impressive array of baseball and film memorabilia that will be on display in rooms next to the main ballroom.
A lot of celebrities will be present, and there will be a large contingent of baseball owners, executives, Hall of Fame players and, of course, the game’s commissioner, Bud Selig, who will be in attendance.
It’s not surprising that a baseball function would be held in such a landmark place where several U.S. presidents across the decades have stayed.
You must understand that Dennis Gilbert - 1965 Gardena High graduate and one-time minor league outfielder who actually once played for Harry Minor in Visalia - does everything in a first-class manner while still not forgetting his modest roots growing up in a family in which a good deal of his father’s income was derived from weekend swap meets.
Gilbert is the fellow you always see on TV during Dodger games in those dugout seats - he owns four of them - behind home plate at Dodger Stadium.
He always sits in the best seats at events, and when you ask him what ticket agency he uses, he replies blithely, “None.”
And then when you ask him how he would be able to obtain a front row ticket to, say, a Madonna concert, he says, “She’s one of my clients.”
Gilbert has a lot of other high profile clients including Rod Stewart, Kim Basinger, the Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, Robert Duvall, and Quincy Jones.
Sticking a baseball affair into the Century Plaza isn’t a cheap proposition, and Gilbert always jump-starts it with a $100,000 check.
“I like giving back to the sport since I’m able to and since I myself came from a pretty humble background,” says Gilbert, who donated more than $1 million for the construction of a baseball stadium at Southwest College that is called Dennis Gilbert Field.
“Dennis Gilbert is one of the great guys in baseball,” says Tommy Lasorda, who will be a participant in Saturday night’s show.
“He realizes what can happen to these scouts, and has done something about it. We take our hat off to congratulate Dennis and the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation.”
Its genesis can be traced to the baseball winter meetings in 2002 when Gilbert, a special assistant to the Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, was telling fellow White Sox executives Roland Hemond and Dave Yoakum about the plight of a childhood friend, Ellis Williams.
Williams had been a Detroit Tiger scout who had just recently passed away, and his family didn’t have the money for a funeral.
“We got to talking, and Roland and Dave had worse stories than that about the struggles of other major league scouts,” recalls Gilbert, who once also was a powerful player agent who had such as Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Bret Saberhagen, Curt Schilling, Danny Tartabull and Bobby Bonilla in his stable. “Somebody had to step up to the plate, and at the urging of Roland and Dave, that’s what we did.”
Dennis Gilbert easily himself could have become a scout - he retains a keen knowledge of the game and often compiles his own scouting reports - and might have wound up being one if it weren’t for advice from Harry Minor.
“Dennis wanted to keep playing minor league baseball, and I told him to get into something he could make money at,” says Minor.
And so in 1971, without any funds - he says he lived out of his van for almost a year - Gilbert began peddling insurance house to house, then hung around courthouses convincing newlyweds the need for taking out life insurance policies.
His first high profile client was actor Michael Landon, and he made a strong impression with Landon’s handlers when everything was paid out three days after Landon’s death.
A lot of people in the entertainment field came to him after that, and soon he became one of the top life insurance people in the country.
But his affection for baseball never has subsided - his duties with the White Sox include handling the major contract negotiations - and his generosity towards its scouts have made him one of the revered figures in the game.
“Dennis Gilbert’s organization has helped a lot of people in my field,” says Harry Minor, who, along with many other scouts, will be guests Sunday at Gilbert’s estate in Calabasas. “He’s just done so much good for baseball…”