Moneyball - Michael Lewis [14]
During the first few days of the draft meetings the tiny photos of Phil Milo fly like confetti. And the conversations that ended with Milo’s picture plastered beside a prospect’s name told you something: not just what baseball men distrusted in a player’s character, but how little they really knew the people they were about to rain money on.
A high school pitcher:
“Where’s he going to college?” asks Billy, idly.
“He’s not,” says the scout who knows him best. “He’s a Christian kid and he was given a free ride to UC Irvine. Coach set him up with a couple of his players. Took him to a party and all it was was drinking. Kid was offended and he left and said, ‘I’m not going to school.’”
“Oh, then he’ll fit right into pro ball, won’t he?” says Billy.
“Put a Milo on him,” says Erik.
A collegiate right-handed pitcher:
“He’s a cocky guy,” says Matt Keough, who is arguing on the pitcher’s behalf. “He’d shove it up your ass. And taunt you. So you hate the guy. He’s had a couple of ejections.”
“But no drugs?” asks Erik.
“No drugs,” says Matty, then thinks about it. “There are rumors of some hash.”
An old scout laughs. “Corned beef hash?”
“It’s unsubstantiated,” Matty protests.
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” says another old scout.
Erik looks up: “Is he the guy who was selling wacky tobacky in high school?”
“Hell,” says Matty, now genuinely indignant. “That was three years ago!”
Everyone groans. “Put a Milo on him,” says Erik, and spits tobacco juice.
A power-hitting outfielder:
“I’m not sure he wants to sign. He said he’d like to go to law school.”
“Law school?”
“He’s getting pressure from his girlfriend, I think.”
“He’s looking for love, it sounds like.”
“Put a Milo on him.”
Another collegiate left-handed pitcher:
“The guy’s got no grades,” says a scout.
“You mean bad grades?” asks another.
“No, I mean no grades,” says the first.
“How can a guy have no grades at Chico State?” asks the other.
“He really has no desire at all to be in college,” says the first scout, almost admiringly. “This guy was designed to play ball.”
“I’m not really jazzed about a guy who has no desire whatsoever to go to college,” says Billy. “That’s not a badge of honor.”
“Put a Milo on him.”
Billy doesn’t interfere much in the search for bad makeup, and Paul says nothing at all. The meetings, from their point of view, are all about minimizing risk. They can’t afford to have guys not work out. There’s no point in taking risks on players temperamentally, or legally, unsuited to pro ball. At one point Billy looks up and asks, “Who’s that fucking guy we took last year we had to release because he robbed a bank?” The others are too absorbed in weeding out the bad makeup to reply, or to even consider how remarkable the question is.
Most of the first few days were devoted to culling the original pile of 680 players. Other than an excessive affection for one’s girlfriend, or a criminal record, or other signs of bad makeup, there were just two reasons why the Oakland A’s did not waste further time on a player. One was age: with rare exceptions the new scouting directors toss all high school players immediately onto the dumping ground, leaving the younger scouts who spent their days following them wondering why they bothered.