Amalie Benjamin & Tim Kurkjian on Scouting

Amalie Benjamin of The Boston Globe wrote a nice piece on Blair Henry, the Northern California and Nevada scout for the Boston Red Sox. Blair Henry was the scout who found Lars Anderson. In her article, she describes not only the Henry's discovery of Anderson, but also gives us a glimpse into the life and travels of MLB scouts, seemingly a dying profession in the aftermath of Billy Beane's Moneyball approach to scouting. She describes the Red Sox's approach to homegrown scouting and it's relationship to filling out the roster with trades and free agents.

Tim Kurkjian of ESPN also told some great scout stories in his book, "Is This A Great Game, or What?" I'll leave you with a passage from that book:

Ellis Clary was an old-time scout for several teams. “He had a heart attack and was basically pronounced dead,” said Farmer. “He was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital when he came to. He asked, “Where the hell are we?” The ambulance guy said, ‘On the way to the hospital in an ambulance.’ Ellis asked, ‘Where is the ballpark?! Get the mileage from the ballpark to the hospital! I’m going to need that for my expense account!”

(Hey, I was a bookkeeper! It was funny to me!)