A Grass-Roots Effort for Scouts

If it is a job with little reward and recognition, it also is a job with virtually no security.

The players drive luxury cars and have multiyear contracts.

The scouts who found and signed them often ride country roads in buses and rental cars.

They dine on fast food, develop sciatica sitting in wood or steel bleachers while covering tournaments that last eight hours a day, and they are likely to be paged whenever the clubs they work for change owners and/or general managers.

The beeper doesn’t have to ring twice. The scout, hardened to the reality of a job that has been his love and life, knows he may now have to look for employment elsewhere.

After all, how many bosses are like Bill Bavasi, who resigned as general manager of the Angels after the 1999 season rather than accede to the demands of Chairman Tony Tavares that he fire about a dozen of the club’s older scouts?

Tavares was left to wield the ax while hiring Bill Stoneman as Bavasi’s successor.

Simply put, turnover is the name of the game in scouting, and age and experience often mean nothing.

Said Roland Hemond, now an executive advisor with the Chicago White Sox after a 50-year career as a general manager and farm and scouting director: “The success of any organization is directly attributable to the success of its scouts, and it’s really annoying to many of us in the game to see how they’ve been treated over the years. The job of finding players, of projecting young talent, demands experience and sacrifice, but clubs consistently toss that aside.

“It’s a shame. I mean, without scouts, many of us wouldn’t have had the long careers we’ve had, and yet most scouts don’t have the contract security or the pension and medical benefits that others of us in the game have been fortunate to have.”

The tenuous and transitory nature of the scouts’ job is not a sudden thing, of course.

Many scouts have prepared for the inevitable. Others have found it a more difficult process.

As a financial bridge for scouts and their families, Hemond and White Sox special assistant Dave Yoakum have been influential in the creation of the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation.

Both are quick to credit Dennis Gilbert, the Westside insurance salesman, former player agent and one-time minor league outfielder known as Go-Go.

What’s new?

It was Gilbert’s determination and dollars that led to the building of an inner-city diamond at Southwest Community College, home to baseball’s RBI youth program.

A year ago, Ellis Williams, Gilbert’s former teammate on the Gardena sandlot teams run by the legendary Chet Brewer, died. Williams, for years, had scouted for the Detroit Tigers and coached their Sunday and winter scout teams, but there was no money to pay for his funeral service.

Friends say Gilbert picked up the tab, as well as an increased realization that something needed to be done beyond the holiday brunch he and wife Cindi have annually put on for Los Angeles-area scouts at their Calabasas house.

Subsequent conversations with Hemond and Yoakum -- Gilbert is also a member of the White Sox staff as special assistant to Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf -- generated the concept of a foundation that could provide scouts with financial relief when necessary.

Now turning the concept to reality, Gilbert has organized a benefit banquet -- “In the Spirit of the Game” -- for Saturday at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Tom Lasorda, who has written a $5,000 check to the foundation, will serve as master of ceremonies, with Kenny Loggins, Chuck Negron of Three Dog Night and Joe Piscopo among the entertainers.

A memorabilia auction is scheduled to precede a program during which Eric Gagne will receive a pitcher-of-the-year award, longtime scout George Genovese will receive a lifetime achievement award named for him, and Willie Mays will receive an outstanding achievement award named in his honor, typifying, Gilbert said, “everything a scout looks for in a player.”

The search for another Mays is relentless, often keeping scouts on the road for three months or more a year.

“It’s a way of life for them,” Gilbert said. “If they’re not scouting, what are they trained to do if they lose their job after 15 or 20 years?

“You see pennant rings being sold on EBay and the tendency is to think it’s some old ballplayer who has mishandled his money. In many cases, however, it’s a scout who never had any money to start with and is trying to find a way to live.”

Gilbert hopes the banquet [details: Debbie Marks at (310) 858-1935] can help generate $250,000 in initial funding, which would allow him to hire a full-time administrator.

“I think Dennis is making a sincere and unselfish effort to fill an important niche with this foundation,” said Harry Minor, a long-time New York Met scout and one of the foundation’s directors.

“There are 100 or so scouts out of work [because of the baseball economy and other factors] and we’ve had incidents where guys have passed away after long illnesses that created financial problems for themselves and their families. This isn’t designed to provide a payday, but hopefully we can help in situations like those.”

Said Gilbert, whose attachment with baseball goes back to those Gardena sandlots: “I always promised myself that I’d pay back baseball for what baseball has done for me.”

The foundation is one more payment on the promise.