I spent extra time on every task, talking to everyone around me, getting extra help. At first, I felt the anxiety return and threaten to undo me, but then it became easier. Perhaps a few others viewed this as their big chance in an unfamiliar landscape that needed navigating.
I would talk to my classmates during the day, at meals, on the bus, at the ballpark, in the hotel, and after our classroom tasks were done about all of the ideas they had to try to get a grasp of what was going on. Many of them were patient with me, with former big leaguers and long-time players allowing me to ask questions and answering with kindness.
Eventually I quieted the anxiety. I felt like I belonged. Maybe this was a place for me after all. No mistake had been made. I would learn that Emilee Fragapane—the only other woman in my class—was sent to scout school by the Los Angeles Dodgers.
She declined to be interviewed for this story, citing team policy. At that point, she had worked for L. She was from Northern California, was five years younger than me, and had pursued quantitative economics in her undergraduate and graduate studies—a far cry from my studies in criminology and sports journalism.
She quickly and easily became one of my best friends in the game. After so often being the only woman in the room, it was such a relief to suddenly have another one with me throughout the scout school experience. It often felt like we had nothing in common and everything in common simultaneously. From the moment we met to the end of our time together at scout school, sharing a room in Arizona, through plenty of conversations and meals and bus rides with our classmates, Emilee and I had two different experiences.
Looking back, both were equally important to my understanding of not only what was going on in the classroom, but also how women are and can be treated throughout the industry. I saw the other options there are outside my own experiences. Emilee spoke of an experience as a woman in a male-dominated industry as free of overt problems and difficult men. Her co-workers had embraced her and supported her throughout her time with the Dodgers, and she was in a department with another successful woman, all things she felt fortunate for.
She listened, a resource I had never had in a setting like this before. I have often felt unsupported, and even hopeless, never quite finding my footing, always in search of a clear place to land.
In the end, it might have been the biggest takeaway for me among the many things I learned. You should always have a sense of awareness of what is going on around you.
You notice what stands out. With the same principle in mind, I considered our group of scout school students. When we got off of our bus and headed into the ballpark each day for evaluation, who stood out?
There was no way I could avoid it. I stand out in every baseball crowd I am in, unless I am sitting with a group of wives and girlfriends, where most people assume I belong.
I was even recognized months later as someone professional scouts knew went to scout school, because they had noticed me among the crowd. To find my way in the game is to become comfortable with that, at least for now. Heading into scout school, I thought if I was successful it would help me move forward, onward, upward, into bigger and better things, fulfilling baseball dreams I had developed along the way.
That promise brought with it its own pressure, though. That perhaps the worst things I had heard about why my life was at times so challenging were true. I had spent so long trying to piece together work around the part-time job I had with the Blue Jays, always feeling there was little hope of real promotions or opportunities within the organization, often doing low-paying or unpaid freelance work in between just to stay around the game.
Of all the memories that surround my time in scout school, I keep coming back to one thing. Nobody thought I was at a baseball game because I was watching my boyfriend play. Nobody thought I had come to a tournament because I wanted my pick of the guys.
No one asked who I was there with. Everyone understood that as I got off the bus, I was there for my own reason and my own purpose—for me. It made sense; we were all sponsored by a team to be there. The same sites tell us how often hitters swing at both balls and strikes, how they hit against curveballs, and whether they keep the ball on the ground or hit a lot of line drives. Has a defender lost a step, and if so, might he have to switch positions? When stats are scarce or deceptive, how do you decide which players are projectable?
How do you know which tools are tied to success, and whether a player has the mental makeup to translate his tools to production? Think back to the longest seminar you ever sat through in college. For eight hours, 66 acolytes sat in orderly rows, listening and taking notes as a conga line of instructors stepped up to the podium to brief us on their scouting specialties.
In the morning, we tore through throwing, fielding, and catching. There is no way to cover all the ins and outs of each area in an hour or two, but the basics are simple. The key to throwing is the action of the arm — is it loose, easy, and effortless, or does it look a little funky?
Those with suspect arm action go by a number of evocative names, each of which describes a certain sort of malfunction — hooking, wrapping, stabbing, slinging, or short-arming — that may be tough to pick up. Arm strength is a little easier to assess. When grading out arm strength, we were told, ask yourself how far the ball carries and what its trajectory looks like. Next we heard that the secret to effective fielding is a live lower body.
Scouts want to see flexibility, agility, and mobility below the hips. After a break for some coleslaw, we shifted our focus to hitting and pitching. For hitters, scouting starts with the approach — not the mental approach which is also important , but the stance and the stride.
From there, the scout moves on to the swing — does he chop down, swing level, or uppercut? Projecting whether a player will hit is notoriously tough, and the instructors acknowledged that even they still struggle with it. Scouting pitchers is simpler, though there are still several factors in play. December 6 Conference Start Date.
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