June 26, 2023

By Bob Elliott

Canadian Baseball Network

It was a simple enough question.

“How you doing anyway?” I asked the veteran scout.

“Just great,” said the scout, 64, “ever since this lawsuit dropped being an older scout is the best kind of scout to be ... teams are afraid to fire us now.”

Former veteran scouts were let go in a “pretext systemic discrimination based on age,” 17 scouts allege in a lawsuit, according to Bill Shaikin and Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times, who broke the story.

Filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, the suit names big-league baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, the league office and all 30 clubs as defendants.

* * *

Chris Bourjos was scouting for the St. Louis Cardinals during the 2020 season, which was marred by COVID-19. He scouted off video all summer that the club sent him. In late September, he received a call. Cuts had to be made: two people in each department.

“I was told that they would not renew the contracts of (scout) Bob Gebhardt and myself,” said Bourjos, “We were the two oldest scouts ... that bothered me.

“Teams didn’t save much money letting scouts go.”

He is one of the 17.

Bourjos was 66 when the call came. He began scouting in 1984 with the Toronto Blue Jays, moving on to work for the Milwaukee Brewers, the Baltimore Orioles, the San Diego Padres and the Cards. It was the end of a 36-year career in scouting.

He drafted and signed future Heisman Trophy winner Chris Weinke, a second-round pick of the Blue Jays in the draft from Cretin-Derham Hall in St. Paul, Minn. The Jays were in Minneapolis and Bourjos and I sat together as Weinke hit a first-inning home run about 400 feet to right.

It was the state championship and the high schoolers were screaming. As the noise died down, a voice in the row behind said, “Did you hear that? That was the cash register .... brrr-ing, brrr-ing.” It was GM Gillick one row behind us.

Weinke played six years in the Jays’ minor-league system peaking at triple-A Syracuse. He returned to football with the Florida State Seminoles and won the Heisman in 2000.

And when the Jays hand out credit for drafting for Cy Young award winner Roy Halladay, Bourjos is always mentioned along with Bus Campbell, Moose Johnson, Bob Engle and Don Welke. Bourjos also signed major leaguers Brent Bowers, Tom Quinlan and Andy Thompson.

“I’m not bitter and I’d go back to work tomorrow if anyone would have me, but letting experienced scouts go makes no sense,” Bourjos said. “We can travel. We can write reports. We can scout. You want to argue analytics? I can deal in analytics

“Do you think for a second when Pat Gillick made a trade when we were in Toronto, we didn’t know whether a guy could handle a lefty, or what a pitcher’s ball-strike ratio was? I can’t accept letting all the older scouts go.”

We told Bourjos how another scout had wished aloud that North America was more like the culture in Japan, where the eldest receive the most respect. Bourjos told of a friend working for a club in Japan and said his friend told him that was indeed the case: the older he got, the more respect he was given from others in the organization.

Years ago, Bourjos told me how he thought teams spent too much time scouting the majors and should concentrate more on the minors. He still goes to games if a scouting friend is in town or to see a player he knows.

“There are lots of kids scouting 20-to-25 years of age in Arizona,” Bourjos said. “It makes no sense to me when you have veteran guys sitting at home.”

Since the news broke, Bourjos has had phone calls.

“Seven different scouts -- who are working -- phoned me and thanked me,” he said. “I don’t know what is going to happen, but I hope maybe we have saved some jobs.”

* * *

Ted Lekas was scouting for the Atlanta Braves at the end of the 2022 season when the call came.

“Dana Brown of the Braves phoned me on Oct. 17 and told me that the Braves were going to have a big payroll in 2023 ... so they needed to save as much money as possible,” Lekas said. His reaction. “It was totally preposterous.”

That reminds me of 1977 when the New York Yankees signed high-priced free-agent Reggie Jackson to a five-year $2.69 million contract ... we were told some minor-league trainers had their salaries cut $500 a year.

Lekas is one of the 17.

As early as the 1970s, scouts would talk about forming a union. And within days the idea would dissipate. The only people with fewer home games than scouts are the umpires.

Why now? Well, for one thing these scouts are no longer employed. Although the past few years have not been as bad as in 2004, the year after the book Moneyball was released. So, why now?

“One reason this is being done is because the older, veteran scouts have been marginalized ... baseball doesn’t want veteran scouts with opinions around,” said Lekas. “The game has not been good to veteran scouts.”

After starting with the Blue Jays in 1988 and drafting Chris Carpenter, only the second first rounder from New Hampshire (the other was Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk), he worked for the Baltimore Orioles, then back with the Jays for four seasons and the Braves. He also signed Jim Mann and Ken Robinson.

Lekas was 67 years of age when he was let go after 34 years of scouting. He said that the game has to have a uniform plan in place as to “how teams let scouts go.”

“I was only evaluated three times in 34 years (all in Toronto) that I recall,” he said. “I don’t think teams should be able to let scouts go arbitrarily.”

Scouts who are let go after age 65 are not as bad as those in their late 50s. And there’s the NUP -- the non-uniformed personnel pension. What has baseball done as far as pension plans and providing Medicare plans for office workers, minor league people on the development side or scouts.

Lekas said most teams have eliminated the pension plan for employees.

When I started covering the game the press room and seats behind home plate were filled with the wisest men in the building: Huey Alexander, Whitey Lockman, Howie Haak, George Genovese, Dave Yoakum, (Broadway) Charlie Wagner, Tony Lucadello, Mel Didier, Elmer Gray and Paul Owens.

“We had older guys who were great mentors when I started in Toronto, veteran scouts like Bobby Mattick, Joe Ford, Moose Johnson, Jim Hughes, Bob Engle, Ellis Dungan and Ellis Clary, remember we were the greatest organization at the time,” Lekas said. The Jays rolled off 11-consecutive winning seasons capped by back-to-back World Series in 1992-93.

“The game has changed,” Lekas says, “since 2015 about 100 older scouts have been let go ... just a guess.”

* * *

Dennis Sheehan received the call from the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2020. He owned the best moustache in the game and was a striking figure scouting for the Florida Marlins, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds.

With the Marlins, he drafted and signed Jeff Fulchino in the eighth round. A reliever he pitched in 147 games with the Houston Astros, Royals, San Diego Padres and the Marlins.

Many of those years were spent scouring Canadian diamonds looking for talent.

Sheegan is one of the 17, along with Jim Benedict, Rich Ingalls, Randall Johnson, Steve Jongewaard, Bill Latham, Tim McIntosh, Steven Pope, Rick Ragazzo, Paul Runge, Jeffery Scholzen, Chris Smith, Scott Trcka, Greg Whitworth and Rob Wilfong.

“It was important for me to get to 25 years full-time and retire with a gold pass,” said Sheehan. “Maybe I would have taken my grandson to a game, maybe I wouldn’t.”

Instead he is three seasons short.

Now the 17 sit and wait for the lawyers to do their work.

For the judge to hear the case.

Will the Denver judge invite more into the lawsuit pool?

Elliott: Ex-Jays Bourjos, Lekas among 17 scouts fighting back after layoffs with lawsuit