Top 100 Baseball Blog

Sunday, May 14, 2017

Ed Scott, Pioneering Scout for the Boston Red Sox

Major League Baseball was segregated until 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. Despite that important first step, the trail blazing athlete was not a cure-all and the game only gradually and begrudgingly trudged towards inclusion. The Boston Red Sox were the last big league franchise to integrate, with backup infielder Pumpsie Green’s appearance on their 1959 roster making them the final team to field a black player. The franchise long battled a wretched reputation when it came to race (which persists to this day), and it might have been even worse if it weren’t for the work of Ed Scott.

An African American, Scott was born in 1917 and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. Like many young boys, he became fascinated with baseball, though at the time his only chance to play professionally would have come through the Negro Leagues. He was good enough to play as an outfielder for semi-pro and barnstorming teams before a lengthy stint with the Indianapolis Clowns (1940-1952). One of his proudest moments was winning a 32 piece dish set and barbecue basket by getting the first hit against Satchel Paige in a 1940 game. To make ends meet because baseball didn’t always pay the bills, he also had a 20-year career working for a paper company.

 Once he was no longer able to hold an on-field position he took up scouting, which would become his defining career. In a strange twist of irony, although baseball was slow to come around on integration, once black players began to be signed some teams began what amounted to an arms war to make sure they were not missing out on the new available talent pool. With segregation polluting the country, in the earlier days black scouts had better access and knowledge of black amateur players than their white scouting counterparts.

Scott scouted for Negro League and major league teams. His most famous find came early on, as he was able to secure the services of a young outfielder named Henry “Hank” Aaron for the Indianapolis Clowns. Not long after that the youngster was signed by the Boston Braves and went on to have a Hall-of-Fame career as baseball’s “Home Run King.”

Scott’s son, Ed Jr., later explained that Aaron came to be signed when he was spotted playing in a Mobile softball game. “If that boy can hit a softball that far, how far he can hit a baseball,” mused Scott Sr.

Scott later explained that once he had secured Aaron for the Clowns, he sent a report to the team, indicating “Aaron was the greatest wrist hitter I had ever seen.”

Beginning in the early 1960s, Scott began working for the Red Sox in a scouting capacity after being recommended by former player Milt Bolling. Through the years he signed a number of players who went on to have outstanding professional careers, including George Scott, Oil Can Boyd, Andre Dawson and Amos Otis. Bolling went so far as to later say that if Boston had hired Scott earlier "we might have had Hank Aaron and Ted Williams on the same team."

So respected was the work of Scott that he remained on the Red Sox’s employee roll until the early 2000s, compiling a 34-year stint with the team. When he passed away in 2010 at the age of 92, he left behind a wife of 69 years, seven children, 27 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren and an indelible mark on the game of baseball.

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