Claire Has Faith in the Scout Team

As Dodger players and coaches testified before Paul Beeston in Houston in their appeal of the suspensions for the incident with fans at Wrigley Field, former general manager Fred Claire returned to the interview stand in Los Angeles, talking about the latest charge of signing of an underage foreign player. Current management puts that on the former regime.

The commissioner’s office, having ruled against the Dodgers in two previous signing investigations involving Cuban minor leaguers and third baseman Adrian Beltre, is now investigating the 1996 signing of Venezuelan pitcher Felix Arellan. The allegation is that the Dodgers falsified documents in signing Arellan, now 19 and pitching for their rookie league team, before he turned 16.

The former regime, of course, has yet to be found guilty in this case, but former owner Peter O’Malley refused comment when asked if this series of investigations had tarnished his administration.

Claire was more forthcoming.

“Concerned?” he said, referring to the possibility of a damaged reputation. “No. I know the effort I applied in that area over the years and everybody who knows me knows that no one put a higher priority on following the rules to the letter. I laid down the mandate in that regard in every meeting I ever held, and I never bought the excuse that because other clubs were doing it, we could do it.”

During the Beltre investigation, Claire had said he felt betrayed by now-retired Ralph Avila, who long headed Dodger operations in the Dominican Republic.

The Venezuelan operation was under direction of the club’s scouting department, Claire said, adding:

“I would be totally shocked if there was any impropriety, considering the caliber of the people involved--Camilo Pascual in Venezuela and Terry Reynolds as scouting director.

“As a general manager, you accept responsibility, but you also put trust in the people you appoint.

“If the Cleveland Indians sign a player in the Dominican, does [General Manager] John Hart really know his age? If he’s been signed illegally by a person John appointed, it’s a betrayal of the organization.

“The people who worked for me knew I would take extreme action.”

The Dominican and Venezuela are hotbeds of inexpensive talent, foraging scouts and agents, and loose certification.

Hart, in an article in The Times last winter, compared the atmosphere to that of “the Wild West,” and Claire agreed, saying, “It’s easy to get caught up in it, but you still can’t rationalize breaking rules. That was my message. Follow the rules. Anything less was inexcusable.”

Separated by several thousand miles, the right hand cannot always know what the left is doing, but all documents eventually flow through the front office. It’s difficult to believe that an owner and general manager would not be aware of improper recruiting, as was documented in the case of the two Cuban players, or the falsifying of dates and certificates, as supported in the Beltre case. Wouldn’t the front office keep a particularly sharp eye on these and similar signings, given the potential for problems?

Likewise, it is difficult to believe that young players in these countries, even with the language barrier, are as innocent as their agents insist. The signing age is known throughout the Caribbean. There have been enough headlines that it strains plausibility for any agent to say his player was unaware of the rule or victim of an aggressive scout and club. The rules are a two-way street, even in the madcap traffic of that area.