It’s Time to Give Eagle-Eyed Scout a Few Merit Badges

He wasn’t there.

When his children spilled joyfully onto a field in Texas on Thursday, Bob Fontaine Jr. was sitting in an office in Chicago.

While the Angels were cutting the ribbon on a long-awaited playoff home, Fontaine was busy building the Chicago White Sox.

He wasn’t there.

But he was there.

He was there on a weed-choked Dominican Republic field with a skinny kid named Ramon Ortiz.

He was there in Riverside with a strong-armed catcher named Troy Percival.

He was there when Darin Erstad was punting footballs in Nebraska, and Jarrod Washburn was throwing snowballs in Wisconsin, and Troy Glaus was playing shortstop in Westwood.

He was there when the Southland’s trendy baseball heroes were only a collection of wings and prayers.

Bob Fontaine Jr. turned them into Angels.

And then, after 13 years as their scouting boss, he was gone.

Three years ago, rather than face a Disney purge of his department, he followed Bill Bavasi out the door like a good soldier, walked away without publicity or complaint.

Took with him one of the best bird-dogging minds of this era.

Left behind a potential champion.

Perhaps today is a good time for somebody to notice.

“Oh, no,” Fontaine said when contacted, after much difficulty, for this story. “I don’t really want to do this. This is not my time. This is the Angels’ time. I am so happy for them. This is their story.”

Oh, yes, but their stories are intertwined, those of the home-grown Angels and the scouting guru who planted them.

This is a story of how Fontaine assembled the core of the current Angels with such scouts as Tim Kelly, Tom Burns, Ted Brzenk, Rick Ingalls, Kris Kline, Tom Osowski, George Ortiz, Jose Gomez, Darrell Miller and Tom Kotchman. Only Kotchman and Burns are still with the organization.

But their work will be held up during this postseason as an example of how an old-fashioned game can still be conquered with old-fashioned work.

Five of the Angels’ eight regular position players were drafted or initially signed by the organization. Another player, second baseman Adam Kennedy, was acquired in a trade for home-grown Jim Edmonds.

Three of the four pitchers in the postseason rotation are Angel products. And, of course, closer Percival has never played anywhere else.

All 10 of them--every last arm and bat--were acquired and approved by Bob Fontaine Jr.

A guy who doesn’t use a radar gun or stopwatch. A guy who doesn’t take notes. A guy who spends entire at-bats focusing only on a hitter’s feet.

A guy who slept on park benches, stood in swamps, and once scouted 12 games in one day in search of the players who will face the Yankees next week.

A guy who will enjoy the fruits of none of it.

Fontaine, 49, is now the minor league boss of the White Sox. Instead of watching the Angels in New York next week, he will be watching kids in Arizona.

“I will say this: His record was amazing,” said Bavasi, who runs the Dodgers’ farm system and was also reluctant to talk for fear of stealing attention from the Angels. “I defy you to find another scouting director who has produced the kind of players Bobby has produced.”

And I defy you to find anyone outside the game who will notice.

That’s how it works with scouts. They spend their lives under a sunscreen coat and a Panama hat.

They speak in numbers, they communicate in glances, they live in small type at the bottom of a player’s biography that nobody reads.

Like so many dirty-smocked chefs, scouts sweat over the cooking, then hand over their masterpiece for the enjoyment of someone else.

Sometimes somebody will come back into the kitchen to thank them.

Mostly, they won’t.

To look at the Angels is to realize that somebody needs thanking.

“Yeah, you need to thank Bill Stoneman and Mike Scioscia for turning them into a winner,” Fontaine said.

But before 2002, there was 1995.

The Angels had the first overall pick, which, in the uncertain world of baseball, often means disappointment.

In the first round, Fontaine picked Erstad. In the second round, Washburn.

That same summer, with virtually no Latin American budget, Fontaine waded into makeshift field in the Dominican Republic and approved the signing of Ortiz.

“A pretty fortunate year,” he said. “Erstad was easy. Jarrod had that good, loose arm. Ramon, I loved his wrists.”

Before that, there was 1990.

They knew of a Granada Hills kid who was a great basketball player. They put him through a workout. They asked him to change his throwing style.

“He did just what we asked, and he improved on the spot, and we thought, this kid is really smart,” Fontaine said. “What he had, you couldn’t teach.”

And so, in the fourth round, they took Garret Anderson.

They also saw a catcher with the makeup of a pitcher.

“We thought, if he couldn’t hit, we would just put him on the mound,” Fontaine said.

So in the sixth round, they took Percival.

“It’s not one person; it never is,” Fontaine said. “I was lucky to work with a group of scouts who took no shortcuts and were not afraid to take a chance.”

In 1989, the Angels saw a potentially great hitter who would slide in the draft because of his funky stance.

In the third round, Fontaine stole Tim Salmon.

John Lackey, a former first baseman, had been pitching only a year when the Angels grabbed him in the second round.

Orlando Palmeiro was a tiny outfielder who had been ignored by nearly everybody when the Angels grabbed him in the 33rd round.

Everyone says that much of scouting is luck.

One man overseeing the building of virtually an entire playoff team--the first Angel playoff team in 16 years--is not luck.

“And I wish the Angels nothing but luck,” Fontaine said, excusing himself, returning to the shadow, his work now done.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.