Benjamin Hill travels the nation collecting stories about what makes Minor League Baseball unique. This excerpt from the Baseball Traveler newsletter, presented by Circle K, is a mere taste of the smorgasbord of delights he offers every week. Read the full newsletter here, and subscribe to his newsletter here.
Which Major League team had the greatest Draft class of all time? MLB Pipeline's Jim Callis awards that distinction to the 1968 Los Angeles Dodgers, whose haul that year included Bill Buckner, Doyle Alexander, Tom Paciorek, Geoff Zahn, Bobby Valentine and three quarters of L.A's iconic 1973-81 infield: Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes and Ron Cey.
Author Eric Vickrey would agree with Callis' assessment, as an assertion of L.A.'s '68 supremacy is right there in the subtitle of his new book, "Before They Wore Dodger Blue: Tommy Lasorda and the Greatest Draft Class in Baseball History."
"Any way you measure a successful Draft class, that has to be on the top of the list," said Vickrey, speaking on the April 17 episode of MiLB.com's "The Show Before the Show" podcast.
"That class combined for more than 11,000 hits, more than 1,100 home runs. Those are both Draft records. There were six All-Stars that played in 23 All-Star games and nine guys that played in 10 or more seasons in the Majors. Those are all records. And by WAR, it was 234 wins above replacement and the next closest Draft class was like 40 WAR below that, and that was the Roger Clemens-Ellis Burks Draft class of the Red Sox [in 1983]."
"Before They Wore Dodger Blue" largely eschews statistical analysis, however, focusing instead on the people behind the numbers. Vickrey conducted nearly 70 interviews in the course of writing the book, which starts with the scouts. These "mostly anonymous men," working within a front office headed by Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley and general manager Al Campanis, traveled the nation's highways and byways in search of raw baseball talent.
"There's no one left living from that scouting department at that time, but I was able to contact some of their children," said Vickrey. "Brian Stephenson, who's a third-generation Dodgers scout, was able to provide some information. Even talked to a couple guys, Pat Gillick and Joe McDonald, who were at the first Draft in 1965."
Tommy Lasorda, perhaps inevitably, sits at the center of Vickrey's book. He was the heart and soul of the Dodgers, an extrovert of otherworldly proportions with an appetite of epic proportions who served as a scout (1960-65) and Minor League manager (66-72) before starting his legendary 21-season run as Dodgers manager in 1976.
"Everyone [I interviewed] had a story or anecdote about him," said Vickrey. "He was a huge character, even going back to Rookie League manager. He was the same kind of guy, same big character, big personality that we saw later on. ... Bobby Valentine was really gracious with his time and he was, in many ways, a true protege of Lasorda. They developed a really strong relationship early on and Bobby, I think, later took a lot of what he learned from Lasorda."
Valentine, who transitioned to managing after an injury-marred playing career, was a key figure on the Lasorda-managed 1970 Spokane Indians. The Triple-A Pacific Coast League squad, regarded as one of the best Minor League teams of all time, consisted of a remarkable collection of '68 Draft class talent as well as notable selections from previous seasons such as Charlie Hough and Bill Russell. Vickrey dedicates the middle portion of the book to chronicling the season in full.
"I went back and interviewed a lot of these guys and asked them about certain games or certain things that happened," he said. "It's amazing how guys will remember certain key moments or big games even though it's been decades. For example, Bill Buckner broke his jaw in a collision with Lopes and Valentine that year. I asked Valentine about that and he told me how Buckner had his jaw wired shut, couldn't eat for six weeks but never missed a game."
Stories such as the above are interwoven into a narrative that culminates with Spokane's championship series win over the Hawaii Islanders, a powerhouse squad managed by Chuck Tanner that played in a Honolulu ballpark affectionately dubbed "The Termite Palace." Soon thereafter members of that Spokane team, and the '68 Draft class writ large, were making their mark in the Major Leagues. From Lasorda on down, it's quite a legacy.
"I think that any way you dice it," said Vickrey. "it's the best Draft class in history."