Beane Counter

Bogie is not merely the oldest of the scouts; he is the scout who has worked for the most other teams. He is a walking map of his own little world. In spite of his age, or maybe because of it, he knows when an old thing has died.

"Oh, definitely," says Bogie, motioning to Paul's computer. "It's a new game. Years ago we didn't have these stats to look up. We had to go with what we saw."

"Years ago it only cost a hundred grand to sign them," says Eric. The other older scouts are unmoved. "Look," says Eric, "Pitter and I are the ones that people are going to ask, 'What the hell were you doing? How the hell could you take Brown in the first round?' "

No one says anything.

"The hardest thing," says Billy, "is there is a certain pride, or lack of pride, required to do this right. You take a guy high that no one else likes and it makes you uncomfortable. But I mean, really, who gives a f—where guys are taken? Remember Zito? Everyone said we were nuts to take Zito with the ninth pick of the draft. And we knew everyone was going to say that. One f——-month later it's clear we kicked everyone's ass. Nobody remembers that now. But understand, when we stop trying to figure out the perception of guys, we've done better."

"Jeremy Brown isn't Zito," says one of the scouts. But he is. A lot of people in the room have forgotten that the scouting department hadn't wanted to take Barry Zito because Zito threw an 88-mph fastball. They preferred a flamethrower named Ben Sheets. "Billy made us take Zito," Bogie later confesses.

"Let me ask you this," says Billy. "If Jeremy Brown looked as good in a uniform as Majewski [a Greek kouros who played outfield for the University of Texas], where on this board would you put him?"

The scouts pretend to consider this. Nobody says anything so Pitter says it for them: "He'd be in that first column." A first-round pick.

"You guys really are trying to sell jeans, aren't you?" says Billy. And on that note of affectionate disgust, he ends the debate. He simply takes Jeremy Brown's nameplate and moves him from the top of the second column on the Big Board to the bottom of the first, from No. 17 to No. 15. Jeremy Brown, whose name had somehow failed to turn up on Baseball America's list of the top 25 amateur catchers, who serious scouts believed should never be a pro baseball player, is now a first-round draft choice of the Oakland A's.

"Since we're talking about Brown anyway," says Paul, which isn't exactly true, since the scouts are now distinctly not talking about Brown, "there's a list of hitters I want to talk about. They are the eight guys we definitely want. And we want all eight."