Saved By the Bell: Scouts Honor: Pitchers Shine

The seating capacity at O’Donnell Field is listed as 1,600 in Harvard’s sports media materials, but that figure should be taken with a grain of salt. There are seats behind each team’s benches that are perfectly usable, but the biggest stands—those behind home plate—are obstructed by protective green mesh on the fence. There’s no point in sitting there unless you’re at the very top of the bleachers or possess x-ray vision.

Every once in a while, as they did yesterday afternoon, those in attendance fit the latter category. Armed with JUGS radar guns, they’re much less concerned with the view of a very sluggish doubleheader than they are with the speed of the ball coming off one guy’s hand—in this case, the right hand of Cornell junior Chris Schutt, a genuine prospect with a vicious slider that kept Harvard hitless for the better part of the second game.

With each of Schutt’s windups, an array of a dozen or so scouts wound up as well. Guns up, click, back down. Windup, aim, click, down. Their ritual followed the almost tidal flow of Schutt’s delivery, mechanical but calm, as the men with briefcases with stickers bearing Twins and White Sox and Dodgers logos concentrated coolly and fiercely on their scientific exercise in...

“Guesswork,” one regional scout for an American League team told me. “Complete guesswork.” Scouts responsible for an entire quadrant of the country can’t follow the Chris Schutts of the world around for much of the season, so this might be the only chance they get to see him in game action.

The scouts seem an amiable bunch. They know each other well, having crossed paths at countless other such stops. They joke about the weather—sunny for once—and other kids they’ve seen, and discuss the player of interest. “He’s got great breaking stuff,” one says to about five others. “He’s got that slider and another pitch that’s neither here nor there...When he’s got those going right, he’s something.” There aren’t many trade secrets when it comes to what’s in plain view.

Of course, maybe that’s because what’s in plain view doesn’t matter much. “Look at this guy,” a scout tells me. “Look at a guy that size and tell me if you’ve ever seen somebody in the big leagues his size do much. Maybe a lefty, fine…” Schutt, listed at 6’1 and 200 pounds, lets loose another pitch, called outside. “Most of these guys here, they’re what you’d call ‘body scouts’. And if you come here, look at a guy’s frame, you’ll be right about as much of the time [as anyone else]. It’s all guesswork.”

One of the scouts looks up and asks why the game hasn’t ended after seven innings. Another replies—of course correctly—that Ivy League doubleheaders are seven-inning/nine-inning splits.

“That’s why Crockett would always pitch the second game last year,” a third chimes in.

The invocation of Ben Crockett ’02, who is off to a good start in the minors, is a reminder that good things can come of the guesswork; it wasn’t long ago that Crockett and Yale’s Jon Steitz filled those stands completely. But today’s star arguably isn’t who the scouts came in for. Schutt falters in the later innings while Arthur Hendricks III, Harvard pitcher, tosses eight strong against the Big Red, striking out 11 and—perhaps—forcing the assembled scouts to give him a bit more attention than the cursory clicks in the early innings. After the game, Harvard coach Joe Walsh suggests that seeing the scouts there for Schutt helped spur Hendricks to raise his game a notch. Could’ve been.

But after a game in which the pitchers were on, one scout walked away most impressed by a hitter. While filling out a scouting card that had “Schutt, Chris___Cornell U” scrawled across the top between innings, the scout glanced behind the bleachers to where several kids played. One of them, no older than three, swung a metal bat that may have been taller than he was.

“Best hitter here, no question about it,” the scout said as the toddler flailed about. “Was watchin’ him back there before. Kid can mash.”

—Staff writer Martin S. Bell can be reached at msbell@fas.harvard.edu.