05/04/2004  3:21 PM ET

Inside the Draft: The Scout, I
A first-person account from an area scout on the go

No one is busier this time of year than those in the scouting profession. Many consider area scouts to be the backbone of baseball, yet they tend to be the most anonymous, faceless and nameless contributors to the national pastime.

In the month leading up to the First-Year Player Draft, one area scout has agreed to provide a first-person account, of course in anonymity, of what he goes through to help his organization prepare for the draft. Today is part one of a three-part series.

This time of year, we pretty much have the hay in the barn, so to speak. Now we're going back over our top guys to have another look. One of the main things this year is to make sure they're healthy. That's the primary thing. We may still chase a name that pops up, but we're mostly dealing with guys we've already seen.

Another thing we're doing now is getting cross-checkers in, getting the right people in to see the players we like. If a player is going to be a high pick, we have to have them cross-checked. It's our job to make sure that happens, so we spend a lot of time on the phone with cross-checkers trying to arrange schedules.

Probably the biggest headache there is getting pitching rotations. A position player is pretty much going to play every game. But not pitchers, and college coaches sometimes don't let you know until the last minute.

The way things shape up, it usually falls into place. Florida and California open up before anybody else. The cross-checkers can get in and knock those states out before we get started in other areas. Then the mid-south opens up but they're not playing in the Northeast or upper Midwest yet. Somme of those teams come down to play in Florida. When we call cross-checkers, we want to try to get our players seen as soon as possible. Now that the upper Midwest and East coast are open now, there's a very short window to see players there. That's when we'd run into problems getting cross-checkers in. But they'll go back in and see those top players a second time.

By the time the cross-checker comes, we're usually already on to the next guy. Sometimes we go with them, sometimes we just give them the directions and we're already somewhere else. It depends on what we've got going on. The biggest thing is we hope the player has a good day and shows the cross-checker what we saw.

Remember, the area scout is always going to have a better look. We have better background information, we've seen a given player over a year or two. A cross-checker can come in, sometimes on a one-look basis, and has to make a decision. A top guy may get three to four crosschecks. There's the regional cross-checker, the national cross-checker, the scouting director and sometimes there are specialists called in.

We want all of them to look at him, because we don't want to make a mistake. We're going to make mistakes in this business. That's what it's about. If we were right even half the time, we'd be dangerous, wouldn't we?

We really have to push a player, we have to convince. We have to be salesmen. We have to sell a player if we want him to be seen. If they like him, then maybe we get him.

Not that we have time to stop and appreciate that. We're pretty much going every day. A day like we had on April 29, there was very little action around the nation. There were very few high school or college games that day. It's a pretty bad day for our side of the game. So we try to catch up on paperwork. The computer occupies every minute of our time.

Just to give you an idea of our travel schedules, the average scout probably goes 1,500-2,000 miles in a week during the prime time of the season. We're jumping around at this stage. We're hear today and there tomorrow. We do a lot of driving. Some scouts do more than others because of the territory and size of it. Guys in the upper Midwest drive a tremendous amount of miles.

It's nothing to drive 500-600 miles a day. That's a common practice. Obviously, we spend a lot of time in the car. Most scouts drive 30,000+ miles a year, easy. And most of that's done during a five-six month period.

Speaking of which, it's time for me to hop back in the car and head to my next destination. I'll be back in a while with another update.