But What Do I Know? . . . Larry Walker, Roberto Clemente, Stu Scheurwater, Chris Reitsma

Roy Harstfield and Tommy Lasorda

OK, while I’m into yesteryear, allow me to throw out a couple of John Upham and Chris Reitsma stories.

Uppy, who taught me at Assumption High School in Windsor, and coached me as well, had an unparalleled career as a coach following his playing career, notching Canadian Championships with the Windsor Chiefs, and coaching Canada’s National Team. He was with our team in Seoul, South Korea getting prepped for the 1988 Summer Olympics, and went down while hitting a pre-game infield grabbing his chest. Canadian Baseball Hall-of-Famer Jim Ridley accompanied him in the ambulance and en route to the hospital, Uppy, in a semi-conscious state, was muttering “my ass hurts, ouch, my ass.” Ridley tried to ask the attendants if this was a common symptom of an aneurysm, but the first-responders only spoke Korean, so both Uppy’s complaints and Ridley’s questions went unanswered. BTW, it was a mild setback and Uppy returned to the field 100% recovered; Otherwise, I wouldn’t be poking fun at this incident! Anyway, Uppy continued to say his ass was in pain as they attended to him at the hospital, and it was only a while later that someone realized that John still had three baseballs jammed into his rear pocket from hitting the infield!

Another funny Uppy story involved another Canadian Baseball Hall-of-Famer, in Rusty Staub. La Grande Orange hit the only homerun ever given up by Uppy in the big leagues. At a Windsor-Essex County Hall of Fame event honouring Uppy, when baseball aficionado Steve Vorkapich was setting up John to fall for this prank, he described Staub’s bomb as being colossal, the furthest ever hit at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Uppy, ever the teacher, then shouted out, “I pitched for the Cubs, we played at Wrigley Field!,” to which Vork retorted, “I know, the ball was hit out of Wrigley … but it landed in Comiskey!”

I’ll close out with Reitsma in my third and final comment of the day … three strikes and ‘yer out, right?

Kevin, I guess you’ve inspired me into a writing mood today, and in mentioning Roberto Clemente, John Upham, and Chris Reitsma in your musings today, spurred me to put on my journalistic cap!

As you mentioned, Reitsma is an O’s scout. Going well back into time (early ’90s), I had the honour and pleasure of scouting Reitsma, an RHP and a gifted multi-sport athlete who was a fairly easy guy to project, as he had a monster body, a smooth delivery that was near-flawless, and five-star ethics that he came by honestly from his amazing parents. I met numerous fine people and made many life-long friends through scouting (ironically, including Baltimore’s Scouting Director, Gary Rajsich), but there were a handful that I literally wrote the words “Apple Pie” on the record in their formal MLB report, including Michelle Laplante, Jeff Zimmerman, Jason Dickson, and Reitsma. Chris is honestly one of the nicest persons I have ever met in my life.

As a 16-year-old, when faced with an unspeakable, unimaginable tragedy when his teammate Matt Krol was struck and killed by lightning instantly at the 1993 Canadian Big League Championship in Ancaster, Ontario, with no fanfare, no cameras rolling, nothing but his gut doing the talking, it was Reitsma who insisted that his team NOT pack-up and get on the plane home, because he knew his friend Matt would have been pissed if they did. Reitsma pitched his heart out as Alberta went on to capture the Silver Medal. When, as a pro, he later faced a pair of arm surgeries that should have been career-enders, this bulldog had a rare perspective on baseball and life, as he had learned the hard way what was really tough, and what were just bumps in the road. Our national teams are blessed to have him as a pitching coach, as he has always had his priorities in good order.

Sticking with the Reitsma and scouting vein, back in those days, we didn’t have camera phones and youtube, etc. The MLB Scouting Bureau actually employed three full-time camera men, who were on planes around North America and beyond each and every day, each of them carrying a ten thousand-dollar camera that had a radar gun built into it. They were huge, like guitar cases, and they utilized VCR tapes, if you can remember those cartridges about 8″ x 4″ x 1″. They would film any and all prospects who were given an OFP (Overall Future Potential) number of 50 or greater by a Bureau scouting supervior, the equivalent of projecting the player into an every day Major Leaguer. They would then FedEx the tape to the Bureau’s HQ in California, and the staff there would manually create 30 VCR copies of the tape, and FedEx them out to all of the MLB clubs simultaneously. As antiquated as this sounds, it was a huge benefit for Scouting Directors and GMs who just couldn’t get to see many of the top prospects in person, especially in cases like Reitsma when it meant travelling north of the 49th.

It was either Grady Mack or Kirk Shrider who came up to film Reitsma in a private Bureau workout in Calgary just a few weeks before the draft. The month of May wasn’t very cooperative that year (1996), and so we waited as long as possible to do this outdoors. However, that day, it rained, and we had no choice but to move Chris’s pitching session indoors to his high school, Calgary Christian. Cell phones in those days were the size of bricks, and they weren’t all that common, but we did everything we could to notify all of the scouting directors, cross-checkers, and GMs who we believed were coming to see Reitsma, a possible first-round pick, in person. The inherent problem with that was clubs not usually making a habit of notifying us who was coming, as they didn’t want to tip their hand to other clubs (e.g., if Gillick was there, the Blue Jays were serious). Our Bureau camera-man wasn’t an after thought, but he was one of many who we were trying to notify of this venue change. But to further complicate matters, his plane was late and he had unanticipated trouble getting through customs.

We delayed the start time of the much-ballyhooed workout by an hour, but we couldn’t wait any longer than that because there were important people there, “Cannons, not pistols” as Bill Byckowski used to say, and they had flights to catch to their next destination. I too was on the run and left immediately after Reitsma threw his final pitch. I was about to board my plane when our camera man called me from the field where the workout was to originally scheduled to take place, and when I told him that it had to move and that it was over, he went ballistic. “Tom, you know Reitsma is going to go early in the draft, and I can’t get back up here again between now and the draft – the Bureau is going to have egg on its face!” I understood him fully, but what could I do at that point?

So I called Reitsma’s dad at home and told him the situation, and the value if Chris could possibly go back to the gym and throw another 25 pitches for our camera man. “But Tom,” Mr. Reitsma challenged, Chris just threw 75 pitches and it is only May!?” I tried to find a compromise, and asked if Chris could throw a dozen pitches at three-quarters speed, just so teams could at least see how his impressive body worked in sync and check out his arm path. I told him that the camera man would shut off the radar gun component and that the MLB clubs could get get Chris’s pitch velocities off of my report instead, as I didn’t want him to get cheated. They agreed to meet our camera man, he got the film, and it reached all 30 of the clubs before the draft.

The rest-of-the-story, as Paul Harvey used to say, was draft day a few weeks later, when Boston selected Reitsma as a “sandwich pick”, between the first and second rounds (34th overall). Red Sox GM Dan Duquette had the class to call me and thank me for my efforts regarding Reitsma, as he never got to see him in person, and thus he relied heavily on the Bureau’s materials. “The film is what got me over the hump Tom, Dan said. “Reitsma throws as effortlessly as I’ve ever seen!” I gulped on my end of the phone line, not having the heart to tell Duquette that Reitsma was purposely only throwing at three-quarters speed on that day! Thank goodness Chris never disappointed anyone!