Beane Counter

"Sometimes low energy is just being cool," says Billy.

"Yeah," says the scout. "Well, in this case low energy is because when he walks, his thighs stick together."

"I repeat: We're not selling jeans here," says Billy.

"That's good," says the scout, "because if you put him in corduroys, he'd start a fire."

Clutching Jeremy Brown's yellow nameplate, Billy inches toward the Big Board with the TOP 60 names on it. The scouts shift and spit. The leading scouting publication, Baseball America, has just published its special issue devoted to the 2002 draft, and in it is a list of the top 25 amateur catchers in the country. Jeremy Brown's name is not on the list. Baseball America has more or less said that Jeremy Brown will be lucky to get drafted. Billy Beane is walking Jeremy Brown into the first five rounds of the draft.

"Billy, does he really belong in that group?" asks the old scout plaintively. "He went in the 19th round last year and he'll be lucky to go there this year." The Red Sox had drafted Brown the year before, and Brown had turned down the peanuts they'd offered and returned to Alabama for his senior year. It was beginning to look like a wise move.

The older scouts all share their brother's incredulity. One of them, the fat scout, when he returned from the trip Billy made him take to Alabama, called Billy and told him that he couldn't recommend drafting Jeremy Brown. Period. There were 1,500 draft-eligible players in North America alone that he would rather own than this misshapen catcher. Like all the scouts, the fat scout had the overriding impression that Brown was fat and growing fatter. He had the further impression that Brown didn't look all that good when he did anything but hit. "Behind the plate he's not mobile," the fat scout says. "His throws are all slingshot throws." Throws from catchers with a slinging motion tend to tail off toward the first base side of second base.

Billy takes a step toward the Big Board, sticks Brown's name onto the top of the second column, the 17th slot, and says, "All right, push him down, guys." Jeremy Brown is now a high-second-round or even low-first-round draft pick. If baseball scouts were capable of gasping, these men would gasp. Instead, they spit tobacco juice into their cups. That is the moment when the scouts realize just how far Billy Beane is willing to go to push his supposedly rational and objective view of things.

"Come on, Billy," the vocal scout says.

"Finding a catcher who can hit—there's not one of them out there who can hit," says Billy. "This guy can hit."