You love baseball. Tim Kurkjian loves baseball. So while we await its return, every day we'll provide you with a story or two tied to this date in baseball history.
ON THIS DAY ... TODAY, it is draft day.
The scouting of players for the annual June draft is filled with stories, especially from the old days when it was hands-on, in homes and deeply personal. The best part of this draft is, unlike other sports, the uncertainty of it. It's a process replete with mistakes, surprises and laughs. (Round 1 of the MLB Draft airs tonight at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN).
The full "On this date ..." archive
In 1982, the Texas Rangers drafted Kenny Rogers, a 17-year-old, 135-pound, left-handed-throwing outfielder-shortstop out of Plant City, Florida. They made him a pitcher, and in his first spring training, pitching coach Sid Hudson asked Rogers to throw from the stretch.
"I don't know how to do that,'' he said.
Rogers went on to win 219 games, he threw a perfect game and, once he learned how to go from the stretch, he developed one of the best pickoff moves in baseball.
Braves scout Paul Snyder found catcher Javy Lopez in Puerto Rico in 1987, but so not to alert other scouts to his interest, he escaped the ballpark by crawling under a set of bleachers.
"I tore up a brand-new shirt. My wife was really angry,'' Snyder said. "But I got the player.''
Former Mets general manager Joe McIlvaine was a cross-checker for the Mets in the late 1970s. He got only one look at Ty Gainey, a high school outfielder/first baseman with power.
"The day I saw him,'' McIlvaine said, "he was intentionally walked four times, so I never saw him swing the bat. His pitcher threw a perfect game with 20 strikeouts. So I went to see a player, and I never saw him swing the bat, throw a ball or field or catch a ball.''
The scouting of players back then included open-tryout camps. First baseman/outfielder Jack Daugherty, who played for several big league teams from 1987 to '93, said, "It was awful. I took ground balls next to a guy who was wearing cutoff Haggar pants and black dress shoes.''
A scout once asked a potential draftee what his church preference was. The kid said "red brick.'' Another player was asked how big his high school was. The kid said "three stories.''
Jack Cust played for six major league teams and hit 105 homers from 2001 to '11. He readied himself for the draft by hitting, hitting and hitting.
"I hit every day from age 8 to 18,'' he said. "And I mean every day.''
His dad, Jack Sr., was always looking for an indoor place for his son to hit -- an abandoned barn, etc. Once, a nail salon in a strip mall closed, so Jack Sr. threw up some nets, and his son hit in that nail salon until another store opened up there.
Scout Mike Toomey searched for players in seven countries, and in towns so small, the only way to get there is by Lionel train. He once went to see a pitcher in rural Honaker, Virginia. The father of the pitcher told him, "My son is the best boy in these parts and yours. He throws a ball that goes like this" -- and the father made a zigzag motion, like a fast-flying insect. "I don't know what you city folks call that ... but down here, we call that the 'Monkey Ball.'''
Forty years ago. Rangers scout Joe Marchese was looking for players when he picked up a hitchhiker who said he was a pitcher.
"So Joe pulled off the side of the road by an orange grove,'' said then-Rangers general manager Joe Klein. "He climbed a tree, picked 30 oranges and told the kid, 'Throw these at that tree, and we'll see what kind of arm you have.'''
The kid wasn't worth signing. Still, scouts will do anything to find a player, even climb a tree.
Other baseball notes for June 10
In 1959, Rocky Colavito hit four home runs in one game, the third player ever to do so and the first since Lou Gehrig in 1932. Colavito remains the only player to have a four-homer game and get a pitching victory in a career.
In 2011, Tony LaRussa managed his 5,000th game. Whenever I covered any of his games and I asked him pregame how he was doing, he always said the same thing: "I'll tell you in 3 ½ hours.''
In 1947, outfielder Ken Singleton was born. A tremendously underrated player. And he is not the father of ESPN's Chris Singleton. "But I get asked that all the time,'' Chris said.
In 1973, Pokey Reese was born. He was a terrific defensive middle infielder. He was so poor as a teenager in South Carolina in the late 1980s, he didn't have indoor plumbing. They had an outhouse in the backyard and a well for drinking water in his grandfather's yard next door. "We had Christmas,'' he told me, "but we didn't have no Nikes.'' He said he lived on biscuits and said he got in trouble with his grandmother when he took her flour and used it to line the baseball field in the lot near his house.