Bibliographic record
Abstract
P. J. Dragseth, ed. Eye for Talent: Interviews with Veteran Baseball Scouts. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. 243 pp. Paper $39.95. There is canned phrase overused and abused by all teams in baseball: 'Scouting is backbone of an organization, veteran Pittsburgh Pirates scout Lenny Yochim observes wryly in introduction to Eye for Talent. As scouts are well aware, they are not actually treated as backbone, but maybe little lower (2). Reading these seventeen interviews, you will undoubtedly ask why there has not been better appreciation within baseball industry for vital craft of scouting. short answer is that most scouts would perform their lonely necessary job out of their love of game and an endless desire to find next diamond in rough. These scouts are great company, and in Dragseth's pages their humanity and optimism as well as their hardheaded realism shine through. genesis of book arose from friendship of late scout Dick Wilson (1920-2009) with author P. J. (Phyllis) Dragseth, identified on book jacket as graduate sociologist and professional writer living in Northern California. Wilson provided Dragseth with long, hand-written manuscript that has been pared down to longest chapter in book. Though hard-hitting catcher and third baseman never made major leagues, Wilson lived an adventurous and respected baseball life. He was renowned amateur player in Southern California during 19305 and 1940s, arguably most fertile period for grassroots baseball playing in American history. played all time, both softball and baseball, he told Dragseth. There was no slow pitch at that time (75). He came close to playing for Branch Rickey's woeful Pittsburgh Pirates teams of early 1950s, and his minor-league career lasted until 1960, four-year stint in late 1940s with Mexicali Eagles of Class C Sunset League--where Wilson was such popular player that fans gave him night one season. got all kinds of presents, he remembered, including an English pointer dog covered with ticks (81). A less happy Mexican memory for Wilson was when one local owner refused to release his popular drawing card so he could accept more lucrative offer in States. Wilson, you are going to play here for me or you aren't going to play for anybody, declared Mexican owner using classic baronial prerogative of management in years before perpetual reserve system was shattered in 1970s. After his retirement, Wilson's scouting career started under tutelage of San Francisco Giants scout Lloyd Christopher, and it later burgeoned under Jack Schwarz. He credited Schwarz for being the best scouting director I ever worked for. He didn't try to be scout like so many of them do now (90). Wilson interview may be longest in book, but it is not most memorable. That distinction is shared by several others. Dragseth aptly compares story-telling abilities of Ellis Clary (1916-2000), renowned Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins scout, to a runaway train (62). Clary, who once told me that his hometown of Valdosta, Georgia, was so football-mad that they wouldn't know baseball player from crate of pineapples, reflected profoundly to Dragseth, The only trouble with baseball is that somebody's got to get beat every time (63). Along those same lines, Al LaMacchia said, If you think little bit negative, it's tough to become productive scout. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".