Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in tweets, reviews, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to Baseball’s Endangered Species (Nebraska, April 2023) by Lee Lowenfish.
About the Book:
In Baseball’s Endangered Species Lee Lowenfish explores in-depth how scouting has been affected by the surging use of metrics along with other changes in modern baseball business history: expansion of the Major Leagues in 1961 and 1962, the introduction of the amateur free agent draft in 1965, and the coming of Major League free agency after the 1976 season. With an approach that is part historical, biographical, and oral history, Baseball’s Endangered Species is a comprehensive look at the scouting profession and the tradition of hands-on evaluation. At a time when baseball is drenched with statistics, many of them redundant or of questionable value, Lowenfish explores through the eyes and ears of scouts the vital question of “makeup”: how a player copes with failure, baseball’s essential, painful truth.
A Word from the Author:
Baseball has been a visceral passion of mine virtually from the cradle. My father was a New York Giants fan who never adjusted to the Yankees becoming the top dog in New York. Not a rebellious boy, I picked up Daddy’s pro-and-con rooting allegiances. Sitting in the Yankees Stadium bleachers with my father for a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers one day before my seventh birthday June 27, 1949, the Yankees won the first game and a fan next to me asked, “Why root against the Yankees? They always win.” I began to waver a bit, but Pat Mullin hit three home runs in the nightcap in a rout and I’ve never looked back.
I remember vividly the afternoon of October 3, 1951, a nine-year-old baseball nut pacing in the living room of his family’s eighth-floor, mid-Manhattan apartment listening to a Crosley floor model radio as Bobby Thomson hits the Home Run Heard ‘Round the World off Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers. World Series, here we come. (If that had happened today, of course, Giants radio announcer Russ Hodges would have screamed, “The Giants win the pennant and the Dodgers win the wild card.”)
I immediately called my father’s office to tell him the good news. He was a dermatologist whose patients included National League umpires Bill Stewart and Babe Pinelli. Babe would sometimes bring autographed balls to the house, the Phillies’ Robin Roberts for my sister Carol and the Giants’ Alvin Dark for me. Fast forward a few decades and I’ve started writing books on baseball and getting to love the game on the grassroots level. I’m at a local NYC college game and I meet a scout for the Chicago Cubs named Billy Blitzer. My father had a patient named Ida Blitzer.
“Are you related?” I ask him.
“It’s my grandmother. Are you related to Dr. Lowenfish?” Thus a friendship was born and Billy soon introduced me to one of his mentors, Herb Stein, who played in the minors for the Washington Senators and after they moved to Minnesota signed Rod Carew for the Twins. Herb grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan where one of his neighbors was Buddy Kerr, once a New York Giants/Boston Braves shortstop and now a Mets scout. (Henry Kissinger lived around the corner.) Herb and Brooklyn-born Billy introduced me to Buddy and soon I met more scouts at other games and at the annual January dinner that preludes the next baseball season.
There are two phrases that I have always loved about getting the most out of life: “Each one, teach one” and “It is amazing how much good can be accomplished if you don’t worry about who gets the credit.” In meeting and reading about scouts for Baseball’s Endangered Species, I have found these unheralded professionals exemplify the spirit in those favorite quotations of mine, they are competitors but also colleagues. Let me add that even Yankees fans can enjoy this book because I give full homage to the great work of the scouts who built their dynasty. In fact, the first and greatest Yankees scout Paul Krichell’s last gift to the team was to recommend Casey Stengel as their manager. Regardless of one’s rooting interests, I hope readers will enjoy the stories about the essential people in any successful baseball organization.
Reviews:
“As I read the book, I soon realized I was being introduced to the ‘inner workings’ of the game, a world of which I had very little knowledge. It proved to be a real eye-opener, and I can honestly say it’s one of the best baseball books I’ve ever read.”—Gary Livacari, Baseball History Comes Alive
“If you like baseball, history, and underdog stories, it is a worthwhile read.”—Kerry Eggers
“Part oral history and part elegy, Lowenfish’s in-depth look at the world of scouting puts a human face on what had been the foundation of baseball, at least before Moneyball helped to all but wipe out the profession.”—Chris Foran, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“The reader who picks up Lowenfish’s latest will nevertheless be regaled by a multitude of the scouting and scouting-adjacent stories the author has collected through the decades, as his interest in scouting is both apparent and long-lived. At some point, posterity demanded that he put the best of these scout-driven tales down on paper and in book form to ensure that, as he writes in his introduction, ‘their voices from past and present will not be wholly lost’ (xvi). With the publication of Baseball’s Endangered Species, they won’t be.”—Mitchell Nathanson, NINE
“Before fans can pack the stands for America’s favorite pastime, scouts have to fill the rosters with talent. Today that behind-the-scenes work resembles the statistical and analytical approach of Moneyball fame, but Lowenfish remembers a time when scouts traversed the country handpicking hidden gems. This book pays homage to the unsung heroes of that bygone era of baseball.”—On Wisconsin
“Three cheers for SABR member Lee Lowenfish. Even before opening this book, just by the volume’s cover I knew it would be a comprehensive and enjoyable study of scouts. On the book jacket is an image of Tom Greenwade, known for signing Commerce, Oklahoma, standout Mickey Mantle. But note that Greenwade is in a Dodgers uniform. Lowenfish surprisingly takes us on a detailed whirlwind tour of multiple scouts, their journeys, and their significant and lasting impact on the rosters of various major-league franchises. Branch Rickey would say, ‘Luck is the residue of design.’ After reading Baseball’s Endangered Species, you’ll agree that scouts honor is just as important or even more so in securing talent.”—John Vorperian, Society for American Baseball Research
“There’s no category for scouts in Cooperstown but there should be. Until that changes, this information-packed hardcover will have to suffice. It covers everyone from Branch Rickey, who found Jackie Robinson, to Tom Greenwade, who signed Mickey Mantle and thousands in between. The veteran author wisely includes Mel Didier, Red Murff, Jim Russo, Paul Snyder, and Art Stewart, among other scouting luminaries, in this well-written, well-researched hardcover. It proves beyond any doubt that scouting consists mainly of guessing.”—Dan Schlossberg, Sports Collectors Digest
“The value of Lowenfish’s tribute to scouts is a reminder of how advanced scouts work for the teams during the playoffs to assess potential opponents and how they match up closer in real time versus past performances.”—Tom Hoffarth
UNP blog 