Scouts Scour Land for Diamonds in the Rough

The speed guns are positioned behind home plate. They click in unison before the fastball hits the catcher’s mitt.

“Eighty-five,” the white-haired man with the clear blue eyes says.

Dick Teed doesn’t have a speed gun.

The 15 men, each holding a speed gun, check their digital readings and write down either 84, 85 or 86 mph in their notebooks.

“I don’t believe in using the gun for every pitch,” Teed says. “Often a pitcher will see all these guns and overthrow. I want to see his normal motion. At night, because of the lights and the different perception, I’ll use the gun more. I won’t that much during the day. Nine times out of 10, I’ll be within 3 mph. If I’m off by more than that, I’ll use the gun.”

Teed, the Dodgers’ Northeast scouting supervisor, rarely has a speed gun. But he is always prepared for duty, driving 35,000 miles from February to October along highways and byways in Florida, New England, west to Ohio and south to West Virginia to watch about 600 games and examine prospective professional players.

This sunny May day, Teed has a third baseman and a pitcher to “cross-check,” which in baseball parlance means to scout for the second time.

He arrives two hours before game time to watch warmups. It is here he can see the power and accuracy of the fielders’ throws, and their range. “Sometimes a player will have a bad day, won’t get a play in the field or never swing the bat,” he says. “In warmups, you can learn a great deal.”

During the game, Teed sits on the first-base side to see a right-handed hitter swing. He moves behind the plate to scout pitchers.

Teed places a stop watch, hanging on a black necklace, in his right hand and times the third baseman running to first. He clutches the watch, glancing only to note the time. He releases his grip and returns his hand to his side. He checks the batter’s swing. Is it inside out? Can he handle the fastball? He watches the pitcher’s motion, arm speed and movement of his fastball. He jots down words and numbers in his Dodger-blue notebook.

Teed does not discuss his findings or judgments. He guards what he says to fellow scouts. When one asks where he’s going tomorrow, he says, “I’m going to be either here or see a guy in Syracuse or Boston.”

Successful scouting demands such attempts at secrecy--though Teed admits most scouts know of the same prospects. The preparation for the June 5-7 free-agent draft is a yearlong culmination of analyses and projections of players: Can this one be a major leaguer? Is he a first, second or third-round pick? Finding talent to replenish and sustain a club’s entire system is essential. No club can afford to leak out any of its decisions before the draft.

“The first four or five rounds are the most important,” Teed says. “But when should a club draft a player and will he sign? When you see a 17-year-old, you have to project what kind of player he’ll be in three years. What is his personal makeup? These are the questions a scout has to answer.”

Cincinnati Reds reliever John Franco is the most notable of Teed’s 10 major league signings. Franco was a fifth-round pick of the Dodgers in 1981. Teed says he has signed 65 to 70 players who became minor leaguers. His says his biggest disappointment might have been Tom DeMerit, an outfielder with Dartmouth who didn’t stick with professional baseball.

“He was our fourth pick in the ’87 draft,” Teed says. “And an important element in judging players is their inner drive and hunger to play. I thought he had this. He was the son of a former major league player (John, an outfielder with the Milwaukee Braves and the Mets). He played a year at Vero Beach and was in a slump (hitting .194). Then he just gave it up. He had awesome tools, but he didn’t give it enough time.”

Teed, 63, a major league scout since 1968, says the true measure of success for a scout is not the number of major league players signed.

“It’s that you work and know your area, so that you know every player and you don’t miss anyone,” he says.

Teed’s season starts in the winter when letters, requesting schedules, are sent to high schools and colleges in his area. Prospects, impressive high school underclassmen, and games he wants to see are noted. He fills in a calendar of games for virtually every day. But it’s not one game a day. Most days, it’s two, three or four.

“Sometimes you’ll only stay a few innings and then go to another game,” he says. “You have to have backup games, if one gets rained out or if the player you want to see is not playing.”

Teed goes to Florida in late February with the Dodgers’ entourage to scout high school, college and pro games.

“I’ve missed a lot of birthdays,” he says. “But I have a wife, Ginny,--we’ll be married 40 years in September--and four daughters who have been great support. There are no shortcuts to do this job right. You’ve got to be honest with yourself and on your grading of players.”

Teed leans back in the bleachers and says, “After two days of rain, we need this. This morning I was either going to Syracuse or here. Here’s the sun, and here I am.”

His face is bronzed and his forehead furrowed. He looks as if he just walked off the deck of a Cape Cod fishing boat. With his hair combed back, he resembles actor Lloyd Bridges.

Teed is on an unending hunt for major league players.

“It’s almost impossible to find some gem out there that no one knows about,” he says. “But every day I go out, I never know what I’m going to see. That’s what’s great about it.”

This is Teed’s 42nd year in pro baseball. He was a catcher with the Brooklyn-Los Angeles Dodgers farm system from 1947-1960. He struck out in his only major league at-bat in 1953. He completed his minor league career with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1960 and was a Phillies minor league coach and manager until 1967.

The Phillies asked Teed to be a scout the next year, but he was uncertain if the profession was right for him. “They said I would be good at this,” he says. “I figured I’d give it three years and see.”

He remained with the Phillies until 1978 and has been with the Dodgers since, collecting memories:

--”I had seen Frank Viola at St. John’s and was real high on him. The great thing was that not many other scouts thought as highly of him because he hadn’t really progressed through his career. Then came his game against Yale’s Ron Darling. Viola was outstanding. And scouts were saying, ‘Wow, he’s something.’ I called Steve Lembo, one of our scouts in New York, and said, ‘We just lost Viola.’ ”

--”You can’t believe clocks all the time. When I scouted Willie Wilson, he had a 4.5 time to first. That’s not great. But from first to third, you didn’t need a clock. He just flew.”

After watching about 200 games, Teed has no more players to see, pitchers to time or hitters to judge before the draft. Last week he submitted a list of 45 players to the Dodgers for draft consideration. Teed and seven other team scouts and administrators gathered in Los Angeles Monday to begin the process of pouring over reports of 300 prospects. Each player will be given a numerical rating for the draft.

“Your work is done and all you can do is wait,” Teed says. “With 25 other clubs, you may be ready to draft one of your guys, then, boom, he’s picked by another team. It’s frustrating, but that’s the way the game goes sometimes.”

After the draft, Teed will have a few days off. Then work begins anew to the Eastern, International and Cape Cod leagues and to Red Sox, Mets and Yankees games to judge players for possible trades.

“I listen to the forecast every morning on the radio,” Teed says. “If they say ‘rain,’ I don’t necessarily believe them. Because, for a scout, every day is a sunny one.”