Russ Bove didn’t think he needed scouting.

He was an assistant coach at St. John’s University in the early 1980s when baseball legend Ralph DiLullo began trying to coax him over to the evaluation side of the game. Bove remembers telling him, “scouting’s an old man’s job,” and believing that he would make an impact in development.

DiLullo had an answer for that: “He told me he was going to be brutally honest with me. He said, ‘If you think you’re going to coach or manage in professional baseball, I have to tell you, you’re a no-name. They’re going to hire guys who played in the big leagues.’”

It wasn’t long after that Bove was up for a job at Fordham University. Another friend had warned him he wasn’t going to get the gig, for reasons similar to those DiLullo presented, but the New York native was hopeful, and after six interviews for the job, he was confident.

“At the last minute they gave the job to Paul Blair,” Bove said. “He had played center field for the Baltimore Orioles; he was a really good big league player. That’s when I thought maybe I should get into scouting. So I called Ralph DiLullo and said, ‘Ralph, I’m ready to scout.’ That was 1982.”

Now, Bove has 38 years of scouting under his belt and can barely fathom anything else. DiLullo got him started as a part-timer with the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau in New York, and after four years of staying close to home, he took a full-time opportunity with the bureau in Florida, which was a very different landscape in many ways.

“The first game I saw, Gary Sheffield was playing short, Flash Gordon was pitching, and Derek Bell was playing center field,” Bove said. “I remember calling home and saying, ‘wow. I’ve never seen guys like this.’”

In ’92, Bove began working for the Brewers, and then had stints with the Expos and Mets before joining the Blue Jays, reuniting with an old friend-turned-general manager.

“Alex Anthopoulos used to do the charting in Montreal,” Bove said. “He’d sit behind home plate with his chart and his gun and he’d ask the scouts four thousand questions a minute. A lot of guys brushed him off, and in all sincerity, he was a pain, but he just wanted to learn. So I used to say to the guys, ‘come on, you guys were all in that position at one time. What’s the worst thing? Tell him you’ll answer his question between innings.’ So I was nice to him, [and] when he got hired with the Blue Jays it was a natural fit.”

Now, Bove is a special assignment scout with Toronto. In a typical season the Florida resident will see amateur players right up until the Draft, and then if the Blue Jays are sellers, he’ll focus on players within the organization who have been sought out by other teams for trades, and if they’re buyers, he’ll do big league evaluations. Beyond the Trade Deadline, he hones in on impending free agents.

Over almost four decades, there are four players who still stand out above the rest -- Sheffield, Chipper Jones, Alex Rodriguez and Josh Hamilton.

“When I saw those guys I thought, ‘oh my God, I have never seen players like this is my life,’” Bove said. “I remember I had just moved to Florida and I see this guy playing shortstop, taking infield batting practice, and I said to the coach, ‘man, that shortstop is a great-looking player. He should be a first-round pick next year.’ And he said, ‘Next year? He’s only 14 years old.’

“It was Chipper Jones. That’s how good he was and how much he stood out. … And the best power I’ve seen was without a doubt Josh Hamilton. I saw him hit balls where it was just like, 'you’ve got to be kidding.' Sheffield in high school, I was afraid he was going to hurt somebody, he hit the ball so hard. A lot of people don’t know he threw 93 off the mound on the old Jugs gun. And he was a 6.6-second 60-yard guy. He could have played anywhere on the field.”

The best player Bove had the privilege of drafting was Ian Desmond, who made an early impression on the scout before the Expos selected him in the third round in 2004, and solidified that impression not long after.

“Ian was my favorite guy,” he said. “We drafted him and I remember I got to the house and we didn’t talk about money or anything. There was a suitcase on the front porch, so there was no doubt he was going to sign. He was ready to go. He wanted to play. You get guys who love it more than anything and want to compete, and Ian was one of those guys. He had a few trials and tribulations along the way, [but] I remember when he got called up to the big leagues I was covering Washington. His first big league game, he homered and doubled, it was unbelievable. And I happened to be there. It was really special.”

Almost four decades later, Bove could make a case to revert back to his notion that “scouting’s an old man’s job,” but he has 38 years’ worth of experience and stories to share that prove that it’s not just for anyone.

“I’m a history book,” he said.