Baseball Scouting Quotes

Scouts always think they're right. They're not right all the time. They don't even know how hard it is. Most of those scouts never played baseball.

When there were just eight teams in each of the big leagues, I was always told, 'It's hard to come up, but it's just hard to stay in the big leagues.' That's because there's always somebody. The Cardinals had so many minor league clubs and had so many good ballplayers.

Just about every Latin American country has sent players to the big leagues, from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica.

We just kind of relied on written scouting reports through the eighties and even the early nineties. I've really been amazed by some of the data that's out there, especially with regards to tendencies of hitters, and certainly tendencies of pitchers as well. I would have loved to have gotten that data when I played.

I don't believe there's a baseball job that I couldn't take care of.

When I was growing up, I always had the dream of being an analyst for a minor league baseball team or something like that.

I figured that pitchers had a better chance of getting drafted than fielders, so I decided I should be a pitcher. But I never expected to be picked in the first round. I wasn't even sure I'd get picked at all.

I was a professional baseball player from the time I was drafted out of high school in 1981 until the time I retired in 2003.

I played good ball in the minor leagues, and that's why they called me up to the major leagues.

It was in the open market that we found Joe DiMaggio with the San Francisco Seals. A bad knee had scared everybody else off DiMaggio. But we risked $25,000 in cash and five players, and landed a star whom I would not sell for $250,000.

I love baseball - 'Moneyball' was my favorite book when I was 13.

The only thing Earl (Weaver) knows about big-league pitching is that he couldn't hit it.

The reason I didn't take the baseball route is because they don't have rankings for baseball players.

After one year in the Texas League, the American League bought the rights to my contract. They optioned me back to the Texas League for the 1970 season.

Ever since I got drafted by the Yankees, I've been working on my swing.

At my growing years of 18 to 21 years old in the Minor Leagues, I dreamed of being a Philadelphia Phillie.

I wanted to be a professional baseball player.

I grew up a Dodger and got drafted by the Dodgers.

Any time you're in the coaching business or managing in the minor leagues, when you see a player who has made it to the major leagues, you get a thrill out of that.

I was trying to land an 18-year-old strapping first baseman from Blanco, Texas, population 200. His name was Willie Upshaw. It turned out there were only three scouts who knew about Willie - Dave Yocum and I working for the Yankees, and Al LaMacchia from the Atlanta Braves.

I heard that in the United States the level of baseball was the highest in the world. So it was only natural that I would want to go there, as a baseball player.

I went through baseball as 'a player to be named later.'

We had a work session [in "Moneyball"] where about 30 scouts came in and we're all riffing. And after it, [director] Bennett Miller said: Look at these faces and this is what we have to got to do. We got to get these guys in the scene.

I know I never saw Casey Stengel when I was being scouted. And how could you be in a ballpark and not know if Casey Stengel was there?

After the first time I got traded - I was in the bullpen warming up for a game in Double A, and I got called back in and got traded - that was probably the, like, most crazy it could be. And once I got traded, the next time it got a little easier, and I got traded the next time - it's just part of it.