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Thursday, September 15, 2011
Born-again
Keith Law:
But while I was there I worked with many scouts-- like I said, some of whom have gone on to success with other clubs, many of whom are friends of mine now, and I have to say, many of whom tried to open my mind in 2002, 2003, when I was not open-minded, when I was 28, 29, and walked in the door and was told, “You’re here, you’re gonna replace ten scouts with the work you do.” And I believed it, which was a terrible mistake on my part.
I recognize that Chris Buckley, now the scouting director with the Reds, and Tim Wilken, who’s the scouting director with the Cubs-- these guys were trying to help me. Trying to open my mind. Mike Cadahia-- who is a cross-checker who was just let go from Seattle, but who is, I think, a very good scout and a very good person, and I hope to see him land somewhere soon-- he was trying. These guys were trying to help me realize that there are more ways to do this. And the more inputs you have, the more information you have, the better the decisions you’re going to make.
Part of what I came to ESPN with in 2006 was this vision for a different kind of writing that incorporated everything. And so, when Michael Lewis claims that I was nasty about scouts and scouting culture, there’s a kernel of truth inside the caricature which he paints-- which is kind of what he did to several people in the book-- Paul DePodesta, I think; there’s a kernel of truth to the caricature of DePodesta in the book Moneyball. But to say that I’m “casting” myself “as someone who sees the value of the old school?” No, I see the value of the old school, and have for five or six years now. And I have tried-- I won’t sit here and tell you I’m successful-- but I’ve really tried to incorporate both of those things into my writing.
And, I have to say, a lot of the credit for that goes to LaCava, Buckley, Wilken, Cadahia and Billy Moore, and Jeff Taylor, and Mike Mangan-- these are all people that I worked with in Toronto, and I’m apologizing for forgetting ten other people I should be crediting here. But they worked with me, they opened my mind, they showed me the beginnings of how to evaluate, but at a time when I wasn’t receptive to it. They tried to show me the importance of this old school, of scouting players from a traditional perspective. It just all caught up to me-- two, three years after the fact-- that they were trying to help me, and that I had kind of missed out-- maybe set myself back in the process. And leaving for ESPN kind of gave me the opportunity to start over and make this major change to my philosophy of baseball, which is what I think you’ve seen over the last couple of years in my writing.
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