For the love of the game

Written by Andy Hamilton

Photos by Matthew Holst and John Richard

Bob Oldis has been going to the ballpark for almost six full decades, yet on a day late last summer the 79-year-old scout for the Florida Marlins couldn’t seem to wait another second to get in his car and get to Veterans Memorial Stadium in Cedar Rapids to watch batting practice.

“I think it keeps me young,” Oldis says. “I really enjoy the game. I think it’s fun to watch the young kids develop, and it’s fun to scout and watch a kid in your area get drafted, progress and get to the big leagues. I think it keeps your mind young. Besides, what else could I do?”

Really, though, there’s nothing Oldis would rather do. Professional baseball has been part of his life since he graduated from City High, left home for a five-week camp in Florida and wound up signing with the Washington Senators in 1949.

Oldis played against Mantle and Mays. He stood in the batter’s box against Drysdale and Koufax. He teamed up with Mazeroski and Clemente on the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates team that won the World Series and proudly wears the World Series ring to prove it.

He also wears the ring he received in 2002 when his peers voted him the scout of the year in the Midwest, and he’d wear the World Series ring he picked up with the Marlins in 2003, too, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s roughly the size of a golf ball.

Oldis has played, coached, managed and scouted in professional baseball for 59 years. His sights are set on coming back next year for 60 and perhaps continuing on through 2010 to be able to say he was involved in the game for eight different decades.

‘We had a lot of fun’

He arrives at the park a couple hours before first pitch between the Cedar Rapids Kernels and the Beloit Snappers, an affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, and those who don’t know Bob by name seem to recognize his face.

He hollers down to the field at Twins minor league field coordinator Joel Lepel, who’s hitting ground balls to infielders. Twenty-seven years ago, Bob signed Lepel as an 18th-round draft choice of the Montreal Expos.

He chats with Scott Melvin, a Cardinals scout whose hitting skills took him to Double A in the St. Louis system before he later got a job with the organization evaluating talent.

He catches up with Steve Fuller, a southern California-based scout for the Chicago Cubs, perhaps best known in the profession for signing first-round choices Mark Prior and Jon Garland for the organization.

In 1971, Fuller was beginning his career as a pitcher in the Montreal Expos system. He arrived in Watertown, S.D., to play for a rookie league team that needed a manager. Before the start of the season, the manager arrived in Watertown, took a look at the field and quit.

The Expos summoned their nearest scout to run the team, and that’s how Steve Fuller first met Bob Oldis.

“He was a good baseball man, fun to be around, taught us a lot, but he didn’t take it too seriously,” Fuller says. “We had a lot of fun with him, played a lot of pranks, and it was probably the first time a lot of us as kids experienced some of the shenanigans that could come from a big leaguer’s mind. Maybe he spent too much time sitting in the bullpen or on the bench — too much time to think to pull some of that stuff.”

Cedar Rapids is a regular stop for Oldis. He spends much of the year mining for high school and college talent in Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Nebraska. Once the annual Major League first-year player draft comes and goes each June, Oldis shifts his attention to professional scouting in the Midwest League.

More specifically, Oldis tracks the four teams located in Iowa and the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, looking for players who could become potential trade targets for the Marlins or supplement their minor league system.

‘Fifty-three more outs and we can go home’

The singing of the National Anthem is about to begin and Bob, who is sitting with the other scouts behind home plate, reaches for his stopwatch. Scouts measure everything — arm strength, speed, power, and in Bob’s case, even the National Anthem.

He turns to Fuller with the clocking: 1 minute, 36 seconds. Fuller wonders how that rates.

“It’s a little slow,” Bob says.

David Herndon, a fifth-round pick in 2006, is warming up for the Kernels. He’s a right-handed pitcher with a sinking fastball clocked in the low 90s. Fuller watches Herndon’s warm-up pitches and predicts a lot of ground balls.

Sure enough, the first hitter chops a two-hopper to second for the first out.

“Fifty-three more outs and we can go home,” Bob deadpans as Melvin cracks up.

“This guy is a legend in the profession because he’s such a nice person,” Melvin says, referring to Bob. “And the fact that he was an ex-big leaguer gives him instant credibility with us young guys. He’s got a heart that is pure gold, and he’s full of (it) in a nice way.”

Oldis carved out a seven-year career as a back-up catcher with three teams in the big leagues. He broke in with the Washington Senators in 1953. He spent three years in the minor leagues with the Yankees before returning to the majors with Pittsburgh in 1960, the year the Pirates beat the Yankees in the World Series on Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off home run in Game 7.

Oldis once managed to get three hits in one game against Sandy Koufax without hitting the ball out of the infield. But hitting wasn’t his forte. When Maury Wills set a Major League record by stealing 104 bases in 1962, Oldis was the only catcher who threw him out twice.

‘About 15 or 16 innings would be beautiful’

The Kernels rally with two runs in the bottom of the seventh to tie the game. Extra innings look like a distinct possibility when neither team scores in the eighth. Bob has another quip for the situation.

“Extra innings make you a better scout; gives you more practice,” he says. “About 15 or 16 innings would be beautiful.”

The game never gets close to 16. The Kernels score a run in the bottom of the 10th to win 5-4, bringing another night at the ballpark to an end for Oldis. It’s a night like thousands of others for a guy whose main regret is that he didn’t chronicle every single day.

“He’s an old-school guy who makes people around him have a good time,” Melvin says later. “You hear the term used loosely in this game that someone is ‘a good guy.’ But you know what? Bob is a good guy. He’s a baseball guy who loves people and he’s got a humorous personality that puts you in a good mood when you’re around him.

“He’s done everything. ... He’s been doing something he truly loves for almost 60 years. He never seems to take himself too seriously, but he’s pretty good at what he does.”