Scouts Deserve Place in Hall

So, the Hall of Fame has rebuilt the veterans committee, reorganized its voting system. The goal is to remove the old-boy bias that at times influenced the previous committee and possibly make the Hall more accessible, providing a first chance to some who had never received one and a second to some who did.

The 84-person committee includes the 58 living members of the Hall, and it remains to be seen whether they will be more open or restrictive regarding their peers.

Eligible voters in the Baseball Writers Assn. of America have long maintained a discerning and conscientious philosophy, refusing to let the Cooperstown Hall become the Canton Hall, the Ohio shrine where entire NFL teams seem to be inducted each summer.

Will the new and expanded veterans committee change that?

Certainly, many players whose eligibility on the BBWAA ballot had expired will get another review, and many former executives, managers and umpires will get a more realistic opportunity for admission, a chance they might never have received before.

Still, a vital segment of the baseball industry remains isolated from the election and induction process.

Still, no official place on the Cooperstown stage each summer for a member of the grass-roots segment so responsible for the game’s foundation.

I refer, of course, to the scouts, that often overlooked, under-paid, travel-wearied and fast food-fed segment whose scope extends from sandlots to stadiums and who are expected to be Nobel scientists in an inexact discipline, analyzing and predicting with certainty while banking on only a stopwatch, speed gun and instincts.

The scouts have always been the lost soldiers at Cooperstown, and Hall officials are making an effort, at least, to correct that oversight.

A $10-million renovation of the celebrated museum will include a new exhibit honoring the work of scouts and paying tribute each year to the winner of the Major League Scouting Bureau’s scout of the year award.

As for an award, however, that would put a deserving scout on the induction stage and put his name and face on a museum wall such as the Ford C. Frick award honoring broadcasters and the J. G. Taylor Spink award honoring writers ... well, not yet.

“The game wouldn’t be what it is without these ivory hunters,” a Hall official said, “but there are so many different layers of scouting now and the money has become so enormous that it’s hard to quantify which scout is responsible for scouting and signing which player.

“Now, you have cross-checkers, scouting directors and the general manager himself flying in to verify the opinion of the area scout. We just feel that an exhibit honoring scouts as a group is more meaningful than trying to single out just one.”

There are definitely new scouting layers, definitely economic changes, but isn’t it conceivable that the scouts themselves could decide who among them is deserving of being inducted?

The way it is, the legends that are the late Howie Haak, who pioneered exploration of the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean hotbeds; or Tom Greenwade, who signed Mickey Mantle, or Hugh Alexander and George Genovese and so many others will be reduced to faded memories.

Dennis Gilbert, the former player agent who is now an advisor to Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and who has done so much for the Southern California baseball community, will fete many of the California-based scouts at his and wife Cindy’s Calabasas house today.

The Gilberts have turned this into an annual affair, a deserving brunch for a group that deserves bronze.

The ‘C’ Word

Since management’s collusion of the mid-’80s and the union’s $280-million grievance victory, wary agents and union officials have maintained a sharp antenna on the market, always alert for a possible repeat by the owners, even though they would be exposed to treble damages.

The antennae have been vibrating during this winter’s slow market. Of the 157 players who filed for free agency following the World Series, 62 have agreed to new contracts. Of those, only 18 have received a total of $5 million or more, and only six have received $20 million or more. Among the clubs, only the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees and Mets have been major players in an economic context, although the Boston Red Sox have tried and failed.

The result is that the union, as always, is tracking the process carefully and advising agents -- many of whom feel it is more than coincidence that their players have received similar offers from several teams -- to continue keeping thorough notes regarding conversations with the clubs. The union has not sent out a directive on it because it is a process that started during the collusion years, but make no mistake:

The union, according to people familiar with the thinking, is convinced the market smells of a sophisticated collusion, with clubs flooding the supply side through free agency, the non-tendering of contracts and the release of players (more than 200 were available at one point) while restricting demand through zero-tolerant payrolls and other factors.

Veteran agent Adam Katz chose his words carefully and said: “There are a number of incontrovertible, external market forces which have served to put a drag on salaries, including revenue sharing, luxury tax, the debt/asset rule and a sluggish economy. As for price fixing, without being accusatory, and in the context of past dealings, one can’t blame anyone for being somewhat suspicious.”

Name Calling

Let’s see: We have Red Sox President Larry Lucchino, reacting to the Yankees’ signing of Japanese outfielder Hideki Matsui and Cuban pitcher Jose Contreras by referring to the Yankees as the Evil Empire (even though the Red Sox are thought to have offered Contreras $10 million a year compared to the Yankees’ winning bid of four years at an average of $8 million) and we have George Steinbrenner responding by saying Lucchino is baseball’s leading chameleon in the sense that he was a big-market advocate while with the Baltimore Orioles, a small-market advocate while with the San Diego Padres and a big-market advocate again now that he’s with the Red Sox.

Boys will be boys, of course, but Steinbrenner probably had it right, and now the chameleon could be changing colors again. Rumors have it that Lucchino is trying to affiliate with one of the two Washington-area groups interested in buying the Montreal Expos and moving the team to the capital area.

Meantime, amid business as usual for the Yankees, who followed up the Matsui and Contreras signings by re-signing Roger Clemens for one year at a substantially deferred $10.1 million, club President Randy Levine lashed out at critics, saying the “whining ... needs to stop.

“The days of trying to hide your own problems by blaming the Yankees are over,” Levine said in a conference call with reporters. “We’re playing by the rules. We pay tens of millions of dollars in revenue sharing. If those teams choose not to spend it on players but use it for whatever means they decide to, that’s their problem.”

In this cold baseball winter, there’s no evidence that the recipient clubs have been spending it on players -- as designed.