The Sure Thing : The Scouts Said Robin Yount Could Do It All, and in 15 Seasons in the Majors, He Has Fulfilled That Promise

For the better part of a decade, Robin Yount sent scouts, teammates, opponents and sportswriters scrambling to find the right adjectives to describe the way he played baseball, most notably the position of shortstop.

They spoke of his youth, athletic ability, competitive spirit and maturity and usually came to the same conclusion: that the blend of qualities Yount possessed would likely land him in the Hall of Fame.

It has been 15 years since the Milwaukee Brewers made Yount the third pick of baseball’s annual June draft. He was 18, straight out of Taft High, where he had batted .478 and been honored as the City Section Player of the Year.

Ten months later, he would play in the major leagues.

Since then, he has collected 2,332 big-league hits and soon will drive in his 1,000th run. He no longer plays shortstop, but at 32, Yount is batting .311 and shows no signs of slowing. That makes him a good bet to surpass 3,000 hits, a milestone that usually means a place in Cooperstown.

But whether or not he makes it will have little effect on how he is remembered by coaches who knew Yount before his pale eyes, wisp of a mustache, curly blonde hair and “aw, shucks” attitude helped make him an instant celebrity, first as big-league baseball’s youngest player, and then as one of its best.

“I think Robin is still the standard by which most high school players are judged today,” said Ray O’Connor, who coached Yount at Taft. “I don’t know of anyone in the same category. Lots of times there were as many scouts in the stands when we played as there were fans. He had that kind of talent.”

Doug MacKenzie, who was baseball coach at Canoga Park High for 37 years before retiring in 1987, said Yount could attract a crowd.

“When we played Taft, that was the first and only time I ever saw a scout from every major league team at Lanark Park,” MacKenzie said. “There had to be 20 to 25 scouts there. I mean, there were usually a few, sometimes as many as 10, but never that many.”

Most of Yount’s recollections of his high school days revolve around baseball, golf and motorcycle racing. And not necessarily in that order.

Sitting in front of his locker in the visitors’ clubhouse at Anaheim Stadium, Yount hedged a bit when the question was posed as to which activity was his favorite.

“Seriously?” he said with grin that bore the trace of a grimace. “Probably motocross. That is what was probably the most important to me at the time. It was the most fun.”

Yount was introduced to motorcycle racing at the age of 11, and two years later, he was hooked on the sport.

“We used to go out and watch races all the time,” Yount said. “Then one year my brother bought an enduro-type bike. He was playing ball himself and when he took off to spring training, I took that motorcycle all apart and made it into a dirt bike, took it out and started racing it. When I talked to him I said, ‘Oh, you know that motorcycle? I’m riding it a little bit.’ He wasn’t real crazy about it.”

Golf, too, held a special fascination. As a teen-ager, Yount and his buddies would sneak onto the course at the Woodland Hills Country Club and play as many holes as possible before they were chased off.

One day, he says, he made a hole-in-one, which was witnessed by a foursome of women playing ahead. Later, after the women had made their way back to the clubhouse, they spotted Yount and his friends and began calling to them to come celebrate.

“We had snuck on, so we weren’t going anywhere near them,” Yount recalled with a laugh. “We just waved and said, ‘Thanks, but, uh, we’re kind of in a hurry.’ ”

His other passions rarely conflicted with baseball, though there was one notable exception.

The weekend before Taft’s season-opener his senior year, Yount cut his knee open in a motorcycle accident. “It was a last-race-before-the-season type of thing,” Yount said. “One last fling. And it just so happened I got hurt.”

The wound required stitches and concealing it took some ingenuity.

“I can remember we were taking our team picture the following Monday and our first game was Tuesday,” Yount said. “They wanted me to sit in the front row and cross my legs. My knee wouldn’t bend too good, but I did my best to look comfortable because I didn’t want the coach to know.”

That Yount could hide anything his senior season was itself a minor miracle for it seemed as if everyone--in the baseball world at least--was watching. And they were raving about what they saw. O’Connor, who now coaches golf rather than baseball at Taft, was at the forefront of that crowd.

“It was hard not to brag a little about him,” O’Connor said. “We had some good players before Robin, but never one quite like him. He wasn’t very big, but he was deceivingly strong. He learned how to use his hands as well as his wrists to hit the long ball. And he could throw like hell. He could have been a helluva pitcher. And fast? He’d get down to first in 3.9 from the right side.”

O’Connor remembers receiving a call from a friend who was a scout for the Angels. The man, whose son was an All-Southern Section shortstop at an Orange County high school, wanted to know Yount’s time for 60 yards. “I told him he had done 6.8, but could go 6.7,” O’Connor said. “He says to me, ‘No way, Ray. My kid runs a 6.8 and there’s no way he’s that fast.’ I said, ‘Let’s have a race.’ ”

A site was determined and a race was run. Yount won easily.

A lithe 5 foot, 11 inches, and 160 pounds, Yount was not considered a first-round prospect until midway through his senior season. It was then that years of infield instruction by Rick Auerbach, a major leaguer who also had played at Taft, blended with batting experience Yount picked up in his back yard-turned-batting cage, where he went against brother Larry, then a Triple-A pitcher in the Houston Astros’ organization.

“He’d throw it in there for awhile,” Robin said, “but then he’d give me his best stuff, too. I was practicing against good pitching all during high school.”

On two occasions, Yount was able to spend a couple of weeks living with his brother during home stands in Oklahoma City. He took batting practice and fielded grounders with the team each day.

“The experience really helped him,” O’Connor said. “When he came back he did everything a little better than before. Plus, he knew he wasn’t that far from playing at their level.”

The added confidence also helped Yount concentrate on his play, rather than the hoopla that followed him his senior season.

“Maybe I was too naive to realize how many people were watching me,” he said. “It just didn’t seem like that big of a deal. It wasn’t like I was trying to prove myself. The important thing to me was just to get drafted, to get the chance. And I was pretty sure, having grown up around professional baseball, that I was going to get the chance. Where or when didn’t really matter.”

As it turned out, pitcher David Clyde (Texas) and catcher John Stearns (Philadelphia) were the only players drafted before him, and when the Brewers offered a bonus of $65,000 to sign, Yount did.

“When you’re 17 years old and they offer you that kind of money, it’s tough to turn down,” Yount said. “It doesn’t sound like much today, but on a short-term basis when you’re that age, it seems like megabucks.”

Yount was assigned to Newark of the Class-A New York-Penn League, where he batted .285 in 64 games and distinguished himself as a top defensive player.

The following spring, he was invited to the major league camp, but thought nothing of it. It was tradition in the five-year-old expansion franchise that the first-round pick of the year before spend some time with the big-league club.

Early in the spring, his exhibition appearances were about what he expected. He filled in for starter Tim Johnson during the late innings but when, three weeks later, he was still around, he started to wonder.

Brewer lore has it that Manager Del Crandall decided one day to spend some time hitting ground balls to Yount over an infield that had all the consistency of gravel. The youngster’s flawless performance defied the conditions and the manager tracked down General Manager Jim Wilson to ask him what he thought of starting an 18-year-old shortstop opening day.

Wilson apparently liked the idea because three days before the team broke camp, Yount was told he had made the squad.

He responded by committing three errors in the next game. “I didn’t handle the news too well,” Yount recalled.

He was the major leagues’ youngest player, so the inevitable media blitz followed him around the league.

Almost everyone was complimentary, which was part of the problem. Harvey Kuenn, a Brewer coach, compared Yount to Hall of Fame outfielder Al Kaline, who broke in at 18 and won the American League batting title at 20.

Yount, who had filled out to 6 feet, 180 pounds, batted .250 in 107 games as a rookie and steadily improved through the next three seasons. In 1978, Yount had the first of several big seasons, batting .293 with 71 runs batted in and 16 steals. He slipped to .267 the following season, but has been one of the league’s most consistent offensive performers since.

In 1980, at the age of 24, he collected his 1,000th big-league hit. He finished the season with a .293 batting average, a major league-high 82 extra-base hits and was selected to the all-star team for the first time. His 317 total bases were the third highest ever by a shortstop. Those lean but sinewy limbs indeed packed a wallop.

Yount batted .273 in the strike-shortened 1981 season, which proceeded the biggest season of his career. In 1982, he was voted the most valuable player in the American League after batting .331 with 29 home runs and 114 RBIs. He led the majors with 210 hits, 367 total bases, a .578 slugging percentage and 46 doubles, carrying the Brewers to the seventh game of the World Series. He is the only shortstop to ever lead the league in slugging and total bases in a season.

Said Don Sutton, then a Brewer teammate: “He’s not all-league or even All-American. He’s all-world. I’ve played with a lot of great players, but Robin Yount is the best all-around player I’ve ever seen.”

Suddenly Yount was not only being compared to the best shortstops in the game, but also to the greatest in history. His was mentioned with the names Honus Wagner and Luis Aparicio.

How did he handle all the attention? “Well,” he said, “that’s what one good year will do for you.”

False modesty? Hardly. Yount isn’t into self-promotion. In fact, friends say, he doesn’t like to talk to anyone he doesn’t know. Particularly when the subject is his accomplishments.

Yount once told a reporter, “Publicity doesn’t make that much difference to me. I don’t especially like it, but I understand there is a need for it in baseball.” He was an 18-year old rookie when he said it. His views haven’t changed much over the years.

“Robin does not seek the spotlight,” said Harry Dalton, the Brewers’ general manager. “He is not controversial or vocal. He’s quite unassuming.”

Although he is polite during interviews, Yount’s answers are brief when discussing anything but his glory days of motocross.

“I figure the less I say, the better,” said Yount, who resides in Scottsdale, Ariz., with his wife, Michele, and their three children. “Too many things come out twisted around.”

Frayed tendons in the shoulder of his throwing arm have ended Yount’s career as a shortstop. Since 1985, he has been an outfielder, and although his offensive statistics continue to be outstanding--he batted .312 with 21 home runs, 103 RBIs and 19 steals last season--he hasn’t made the all-star team since 1983. Requests for public appearances and interviews also are on the decline.

But that hasn’t made him any less of an item in Milwaukee.

“He is the consummate team player,” Dalton said. “He’s not only popular in Milwaukee, he’s respected throughout baseball. I think if you took a poll of managers and general managers and asked them to list the top players in the league, Robin would be named a lot.”

But it’s not so easy anymore. Sometimes, Yount admits, it takes a big crowd or an especially important game to get his adrenaline pumping.

Individual accomplishments do not. He frowns when asked about shooting for 3,000 hits.

“I don’t play the game for that,” Yount said. “I play because I enjoy the game, the competition.

“I don’t look that far ahead. Who knows what could happen tomorrow? I figure when it’s over, it’s over.”