These Bird Dogs Are Still in Hunt

They are the gray-haired sentinels of the seasons, the sunshine boys of scouting.

As April fades, May unfolds and summer approaches, they have been back on the road, although the road is now mostly freeways from their Long Beach homes to Angel and Dodger stadiums.

There were decades when they spent most of every summer on the road, scouring the country for young talent, but Bob Harrison is 85 now and Harry Minor is 78, and although they still play influential roles for the Seattle Mariners and New York Mets, respectively, they have reduced travel as a concession to age.

After all, Minor says, they spent so much time looking for unfamiliar ballparks, driving rental cars and asking strangers for directions in unfamiliar neighborhoods of unfamiliar cities and towns, “it is a wonder we weren’t killed.”

Now, sitting behind home plate in the mostly safer environment of the two local stadiums, filling out reports on what they see and putting that information in the context of what they have seen over time, it is not a stretch to see these two friends, neighbors and competitors, as survivors in more ways than one.

They have survived the incursion of computers in their profession and the influence of those computers on the thinking of new-age general managers. They have survived the transitory nature of their profession and the tendency of clubs to give lip service to the vital importance of scouting, only to look first at the scouting staff when budget stress forces dismissals and/or salary cuts. It is as if experience can be found in the latest software.

“The next executive who tells me scouting is the backbone of their organization, I’m going to knock on his rear,” Minor said.

“It isn’t true. I mean, it is true, but they don’t really recognize it or believe it.”

*

Harry Minor isn’t going to deck anyone. Neither is he or Harrison bitter in reflection.

They are simply members of a fraternity sensitive to the number of jobs burned by the hard drive in recent years or discarded because of age and/or economics.

If, too, the fraternity believes that scouts have not received appropriate respect and appreciation -- from Cooperstown to Chula Vista -- the careers of Harrison and Minor, on the other hand, speak to valued, successful and steady employment.

Minor has been with the Mets since 1967, outlasting a series of scouting directors and general managers.

Harrison, in two stints each with the Mariners and Angels and another with the St. Louis Cardinals, has not missed a paycheck since drawing his first as a scout in 1961.

Both are now assigned to filing reports on the players and pitchers in the two West divisions before the July 31 trade deadline, then reevaluating that group with an eye to free agency over the second half.

And, the phone still rings.

The Mariners, for example, have asked Harrison to check out some of the area’s top prospects before the amateur draft in June, and the Mets still run trade options by Minor, who was consulted by General Manager Omar Minaya before the January trade that sent Jae Seo to the Dodgers for Duaner Sanchez.

“We may move a little slower,” Minor said, “but some of these computer people are mistaken for thinking we’ve lost some judgment just because we’re older. I don’t care what the computer says, baseball scouting is a lot to do with the past, the ability to make comparisons, the experience. That experience can’t be replaced.”

Seattle General Manager Bill Bavasi doesn’t have to be convinced. He resigned as the Angels’ general manager in 1999, rather than implement an edict by then-president Tony Tavares to fire several of the club’s older scouts, including Harrison.

Perhaps, Bavasi said, the remarkable and consistent turnover at the top levels of many clubs -- owners, presidents, general managers -- has played a role in some of the scouting hits of recent years

“People come into the game knowing that scouting is important,” he said, “but it’s difficult to measure.

“A new owner can go to a minor league park and see the developmental process. He can touch it, experience it. Scouting is more of an art, not as easily understood.”

Or replaced.

“Sure,” Bavasi said, “at the major league level, with established players, you can make quantitative judgments based on statistics.

“But I don’t care what club it is, what players are involved, the subjective analysis of a scout had to come into play in some form at some point, certainly at the amateur level when that very first analysis had to be made.

“I mean, with all the talk of turnover, you seldom see it with scouts of the Harrison and Minor caliber. I don’t care how old they are, they’ll always have jobs.”

*

Harrison and Minor are seeing baseball through the comparative prism of a thousand or more games, a million or more miles, often bumping into each other at the same ballpark at the same time while having traveled different routes on different assignments.

By now, of course, they could tell each other’s story.

An infielder at Long Beach Jordan High who married at 20 after graduating in 1938, Harrison played Sunday ball for the construction company he worked for. He spent two years in the Navy during World War II, became a welding supervisor at Bethlehem Shipyard when medically discharged, formed and coached in many of the Long Beach youth leagues that are still operating and was hired to be a part-time area scout in 1961 by Tuffie Hashem, the Angels’ initial West Coast supervisor.

Ultimately, Hashem went to work for the Cardinals in 1966 and made Harrison a full-time scout about a year later. The roster of players he directly scouted and signed or whose scouting and signing he contributed to during the ensuing 40 years with the Cardinals, Mariners and Angels includes Garry Templeton, Mark Langston, Alvin Davis, Ken Griffey Jr., Ed Vande Berg, Matt Young, Dave Henderson and Bud Black, now the Angel pitching coach.

Black was signed as a senior out of San Diego State. He received about $2,000 and pitched for 15 years in the big leagues, an unheralded signing and success of the type, Harrison said, that “probably gives Harry and I the most pride.”

Twice, while filling just about every role on the scouting ladder, Harrison rejected offers by then-Seattle owner George Argyros to become general manager.

“If I had been younger,” Harrison said, “my ego would have demanded that I take the job, but I was doing what I wanted to do and love doing, and that’s scouting.”

Minor, a pitcher at Long Beach Wilson, signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates a year after his 1946 graduation and was soon turned into a catcher and outfielder.

“Jack of all trades and master of none,” he said.

He spent two years in the Army, most of it on a flight shuttle between Japan and Korea, ultimately gave up his minor league playing career -- “I ended up playing in every league except the American and National,” he joked -- to become a manager in the depths of the Milwaukee Braves’ system before accepting a scouting job with the Braves in 1960 at $6,000 a year, not including some off-season construction income.

Minor moved to the Mets in 1967, and few scouts have played a more influential role.

During 12 years as national cross-checker in particular, Minor put a historic mark on his organization, arguing for and endorsing the drafting of Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Lenny Dykstra, Kevin Mitchell, Mookie Wilson, Wally Backman and Gregg Jefferies, among others.

Of course, not always does management listen or read.

Then-general manager Steve Phillips traded Kevin Appier to the Angels for Mo Vaughn in 2002, ignoring Minor’s blistering report on Vaughn in which he ripped the first baseman’s defense, questioned his conditioning and urged the Mets not to take “this player under any circumstances.”

Vaughn broke down a year later, was soon out of baseball and, in a subsequent organization meeting, Minor’s ominous and accurate report was enlarged on a screen and cited as a need for better communication between front office and scouts.

“With all of the players I’ve signed and recommended,” said Minor, laughing while surrounded by Met memorabilia and framed memories in his family room, “it was Mo Vaughn who made a hero out of me -- the one player I argued most strongly against.”

*

Harry and Liz Minor have been married for 54 years. They have four children, nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Son Bob has scouted for the Mets for 25 years.

Bob and Mary Harrison had been married for 59 years when she died in 2000. He is comforted by three sons, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Son R.J. is scouting director of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Honored by their peers with the scout-of-the-year award -- Harrison in 2003 and Minor in 1996 -- theirs may be a road less traveled now, but they remain on the job, their visibility as much a part of the baseball landscape as the opening pitch.

And while the business of scouting may never receive the recognition it deserves as the foundation of the industry, they have no regrets.

“Maybe there would have been more money and more security in other jobs,” Harrison said. “But how often do you see a scout quit? We’re doing what we want to do in a game we love. How could Harry and I have any complaints?”