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“Yeah, what happens when he doesn’t know a fastball is coming?” says Billy.

“He’s a tools guy,” says the old scout, defensively. The old scouts aren’t built to argue; they are built to agree. They are part of a tightly woven class of former baseball players. The scout looks left and right for support. It doesn’t arrive.

“But can he hit?” asks Billy.

“He can hit,” says the old scout, unconvincingly.

Paul reads the player’s college batting statistics. They contain a conspicuous lack of extra base hits and walks.

“My only question is,” says Billy, “if he’s that good a hitter why doesn’t he hit better?”

“The swing needs some work. You have to reinvent him. But he can hit.”

“Pro baseball’s not real good at reinventing guys,” says Billy.

Whatever happened when an older man who failed to become a big league star looks at a younger man with a view to imagining whether he might become a big league star, Billy wanted nothing more to do with it. He’d been on the receiving end of the dreams of older men and he knew what they were worth. Over and over the old scouts will say, “The guy has a great body,” or, “This guy may be the best body in the draft.” And every time they do, Billy will say, “We’re not selling jeans here,” and deposit yet another highly touted player, beloved by the scouts, onto his shit list. One after another of the players the scouts rated highly vanish from the white board, until it’s empty. If the Oakland A’s aren’t going to use their seven first-round draft picks to take the players their scouts loved, who on earth are they going to take? That question begins to be answered when Billy Beane, after tossing another name on the slag heap, inserts a new one:

TEAHEN

The older scouts lean back in their chairs, spittoons in hand. Paul leans forward into a laptop and quietly pulls up statistics from college Web sites. Erik Kubota, scouting director, holds a ranked list of all the amateur baseball players in the country. He turns many pages, and passes hundreds and hundreds of names, before he finds Teahen. “Tell us about Teahen,” says Billy.

Mark Teahen, says Erik, is a third baseman from St. Mary’s College just down the road in Moraga, California. “Teahen,” says Erik. “Six three. Two ten. Left right. Good approach to hitting. Not a lot of power right now. Our kind of guy. He takes pitches.”

“Why haven’t we talked about this guy before?” asks the old scout.

“It’s because Teahen doesn’t project,” says Erik. “He’s a corner guy who doesn’t hit a lot of home runs.”

“Power is something that can be acquired,” says Billy quickly. “Good hitters develop power. Power hitters don’t become good hitters.”

“Do you see him at third base or shortstop?” asks another old scout, like a prosecuting attorney leading a witness.

“Let’s forget about positions and just ask: who is the best hitter?” says Billy.

Paul looks up from his computer. “Teahen: .493 on base; .624 slug. Thirty walks and only seventeen strikeouts in one hundred ninety-four at bats.” It’s hard to tell what the scouts make of these numbers. Scouts from other teams would almost surely say: who gives a shit about a guy’s numbers? It’s college ball. You need to look at the guy. Imagine what he might become.

Everyone stares silently at Teahen’s name for about thirty seconds. Erik says, “I hate to say it but if you want to talk about another Jason Giambi, this guy could be it.” Giambi was a natural hitter who developed power only after the Oakland A’s drafted him. In the second round. Over the objections of scouts who said he couldn’t run, throw, field, or hit with power. Jason Giambi: MVP of the American League in 2000.

More silence. Decades of scouting experience are being rendered meaningless. “I hate to piss on the campfire,” one of the scouts finally says, “but I haven’t heard Teahen’s name once all year. I haven’t heard other teams talking about him. I haven’t heard his name around here all year. It wasn’t like this guy was a fifty-five we all liked.” The scouts put numbers on players. The numbers are one