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stuff! We’re gettin’ the hell out of here!” Doc was coaching third base at the time and sort of pretending not to notice what was going on, so there wouldn’t be a scene. But it wasn’t over. My dad believed that was the reason I lost out on the Andre Thornton Award at the end of the season. Andre Thornton was a power hitter for the Cleveland Indians who had played at Phoenixville High, and the Thornton Award was the big prize given annually to one of Doc’s Legion players. Joe Weber won it that year, and my dad was hot . There were many occasions when he kept his feelings to himself, but this time he clashed with Doc. (“Come on,” my mom said as we reminisced about it nearly a quarter of a century later, after a spaghetti dinner, “he clashed with everybody.”) I just let Dad be Dad, and rolled with it. I didn’t feel slighted. Weber was our best pitcher, and he earned it.
    I was, however, selected to participate in the scouts games that were staged every year all over Pennsylvania. First came the regional events where, in addition to the games, the scouts put the players through tryouts. I think I ran a 7.2 in the sixty-yard dash, which probably got me scratched off a few scorecards right there. The scouts seemed to like my arm strength, though, which was something they hadn’t seen when they watched me play first base. From the tryouts, they selected teams for the second round, and from there, guys were picked to play in the statewide east-west game in Boyertown. After my junior year, I had been invited to the first game and tryout but didn’t make it any further. My senior year, I was chosen for the next round along with my teammate, Brett Smiley, the cousin of former major-leaguepitcher John Smiley. We drove together to the game—and couldn’t find the damn thing. Got totally lost. I don’t know if I’d have made the big east-west game that year, but the odds are that I would have.
I saw Mike at the Legion all-star game in Copley, Pennsylvania, right outside of Allentown. Before that, I’d seen him at the Phoenixville High School field and distinctly recall that he hit a line drive that took two seconds to hit the school building. You could see that he had the power and was not done physically maturing yet. You could see him getting bigger. He was a slow runner, but he had what we call a quick bat. He got to the ball quickly with his hands and wrists.
I typed up a report and turned in the “follow.” A follow means he’s a player and I or any scout would have interest in following him. I put down his worth at between four and five thousand dollars, and said that he’d be signable for that amount. Then I faxed it to our office in New York. My job was to make one report on a player and send it out, and then it’s up to the teams to follow my report or not.
He was out there for anybody who wanted him. And nobody did. It surprised me, because he had power and you could see he was going to be a bigger kid. I have a copy of that report in my den, framed. The original’s in Cooperstown.
—Brad Kohler, scout, Major League Scouting Bureau
    I attended a couple of other tryouts. One was at East Stroudsburg University. Another was put on by the Dodgers at some small college where I stayed in a motel with my dad. The reception was lukewarm. Teams recognized that I had some power, and also that I didn’t have a true position. Most first basemen were left-handed. I was a right-handed first baseman who couldn’t run and wasn’t all that slick around the bag. Looking back, I might have been a better prospect as a slugging left fielder, the svelte version of Greg Luzinski.
    Then the draft came, and I sat by the phone, and the draft was over.
    All of a sudden, blowing off high school didn’t seem like such a swell idea. I hadn’t expected to go in the first round, or any such thing, but even to the end, in spite of all the signs, I’d been unable—or maybe unwilling—to actually believe that not a single