Scout beating bushes for talent finds a dad
The past year has not been a good year for the country, as we know. It was equally horrific for baseball, which, beginning last April, lost nine all-time greats, including the incomparable Henry Aaron.
Eight of the nine were players. One, Tommy Lasorda, was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a manager.
Lasorda, who hailed from Norristown, right outside of Philadelphia, had a brief, undistinguished big league career. A left-handed pitcher, he appeared in 26 MLB games: his earned run average was a whiff or two above six; he was 0 and 4, not for a season but for his entire career.
Yet, when he showed up in Uniontown in the spring of 1961 he rated a column by Tod Trent of the Evening Standard. Trent, whose name is so perfect it appears made up (it wasn’t), was a hard-working, old-school newspaperman. Six days a week he delivered the goods – a column both breezy and readable
On April 26, 1961, he began: “‘If I could tell whether a boy was a professional baseball prospect after watching him play in just one game my fortune would be made.’
“These words by Los Angeles Dodgers baseball scout Tom Lasorda point out one of the major problems which confront the men who are continually seeking diamond talent to stock the major leagues.”
The future Dodger skipper and Hall of Famer told Trent, “Right now we’re only observing high school boys.”
The player he was in town to see – no brag, just a fact – was my brother Doug, a catcher who was a senior at North Union High School. (North Union merged with South Union school district in 1967, forming Laurel Highlands.)
The game, against Frazier, took place at a field in Coolspring that has since been abandoned and gone to seed. My brother remembers driving in the winning run on a pitch he reached out his bat for, a single on what should have been ball four.
“I got three hits,” Doug told me the other day. Lasorda didn’t speak to him afterward. Doug didn’t know a scout was even coming to the game. An LA scout by the name of Marty Jones spotted my brother playing in a tournament a couple of years earlier, and stayed in touch.
Jones retired. Lasorda took his place. At 33, this would have been the first spring Lasorda was no longer in uniform.
“(Lasorda) didn’t know what he was doing,” Doug messaged me, “saying I was not good enough. Lol.”
Doug said Lasorda spoke during the game with our uncle Dale, himself a former minor league ballplayer.
How and where Tod Trent came into the picture is a mystery. There was no account of the Frazier game in the newspaper, which suggests he didn’t meet Lasorda at Coolspring.
I speculated Lasorda dropped by the newspaper office. As a new scout, maybe he set out to meet people – sports editors, for instance – who might be helpful in pointing out prospects.
But Doug, who became a scout later in life, says that’s not the way things work.
So who knows.
Lasorda was either a nice guy or was so green he didn’t know what was expected of him. The reason I say this is that he sent my dad a nice letter about Doug in July 1961, three months after visiting Uniontown.
Doug was surprised to realize that dad wrote to Lasorda in the first place. He had no real idea until just the other day, 60 years after the fact. (A seventh-grader in 1961, I was pretty much oblivious to all of this.)
Dad loved us kids, he loved baseball, and in that sense it’s not surprising that he would write a letter to the man who seemed to hold Doug’s big league future in his hands.
“Dear Mr. Robbins,” Lasorda began his letter to Bill Robbins of 115 Brown St., Uniontown, “I have just returned home after being on the road for three weeks and found your letter. I hope you will forgive the delay…. You asked what I thought of Doug.”
Lasorda then provided a breakdown of Doug’s strengths and weaknesses as a ballplayer. These included “a real good pair of hands, which means he can catch”; slow foot speed; and a throwing arm that wasn’t the best but showed potential.
“I think if (Doug) can improve on these things … he may come along okay. He should play as often as he can, and I feel sure that if has the determination you say he has something will work out.”
“Something” did work out for Doug. After a brief stint in the Twins’ organization, he became a teacher, a principal, a college football official, and, as I said, a major league scout. He also became a dad, twice.
On the eve of another baseball season, it’s been good to think of Dad, dads and baseball, and an obscure ex-ballplayer scout who became a manager and a Hall of Famer. The letter he posted to Uniontown in the summer of 1961 has Cooperstown written all over it.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. His latest book “JFK Rising,” is available on Amazon. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.