For a lifetime baseball man, no greater honor can be bestowed than an acknowledgment from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the crown jewel of the bucolic village of Cooperstown, New York.
It was in June of 1939 that the building at 25 Main Street was dedicated, and from that moment forward, its motto has been, “Preserving history, honoring excellence, connecting generations.”
And, so it has been, as over 300 players, managers, executives, umpires and the sport’s pioneers have been inducted into the holiest of baseball shrines.
Additionally, there are scores of others who have long made the game of baseball their passion that have been honored not with enshrinement but through exhibits that recognize their commitment to a game woven so very deeply into the fabric of American history.
One such local individual who’s been honored in such a way is Jim Martz, whose contributions to the sport began when he played minor league baseball in the Chicago Cubs chain and, after a shoulder injury ended his career, then continued for over thirty years as a full-time professional scout, beginning in 1970. Before calling it a career in 2001, Martz scouted for the Orioles, Angels and Braves as well as serving for many years in the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau as its Midwest scout.
The honor bestowed on Martz and many other scouts who tirelessly trekked the back roads of America and other countries searching for players occurred in 2013 when the exhibit “Diamond Mines” opened to honor the scouting profession in a building so iconic it is simply referred by most in baseball as “The Hall.”
The exhibit featured a rolling exhibit of the actual paperwork filled out by scouts who evaluated the eventual brightest of stars in the sport, including the scouting reports written by Martz on his two all-time favorites, Kirk Gibson and Scott Rolen, who combined to play 35 seasons under baseball’s brightest lights on its most meticulously manicured fields.
Recalls Martz, “I really didn’t know until I got to Cooperstown for the exhibit’s opening night that I was to have such a large role in the opening ceremonies. I did a one-on-one interview with John Odell, the Curator of History and Research for the Hall of Fame and Museum, and he really picked my brain on what all goes into a scout’s job.”
Martz recalls several members of the game’s hierarchy were there, with approximately 200 attending the ribbon cutting. At the reception on opening night, Roland Hemond, the former White Sox and Orioles General Manager and Commissioner’s Office executive and currently, an 86-year-old executive with the Arizona Diamondbacks, singled out Martz and mandated that all should view Martz’s report on Gibson required reading before leaving town.
Martz, who refers to himself in retirement as “The Old Scout,” returned to the same Gomer community that gave him his start in the game in the 1950s following his retirement.
The 1956 Gomer High School graduate earned two National League Championship rings, each from the Braves, and two World Series Championship rings, one from the Orioles and one from the Braves. He’s also been inducted into the Elida High School Athletic Hall of Fame, an honor bestowed in 2011 and one that means a lot for a man who never has forgotten his Gomer roots.
Unfortunately, for Martz and his scouting colleagues, Diamond Mines was created as a temporary two-year exhibit and has drawn to a close. As disappointing as that is to Martz and, no doubt, so many other scouts honored by the exhibit, according to John Odell, The Hall’s top brass has every intention to secure the funding necessary to create a permanent display to tell the scouting story.
Says Odell, “That permanent place will be in a new three-part grassroots exhibit that incorporates youth leagues, Little League through college and the minor leagues, with scouting as the nexus of these elements. That permanent exhibit isn’t presently funded, and its status is still in the planning stages.”
Odell continues, “Diamond Mines was our plan to get the scouts’ story off the ground and build momentum. We were very pleased with the final result and are happy with the bridges to the scouting community we were able to begin building with the exhibit. We are presently determining how we can reinstall a portion of Diamond Mines in the near future to maintain a presence of the important scouting story.
“In addition, we still have the web version on our Hall of fame website, including our scouts’ database, where it will certainly remain.”
Despite Odell’s optimism that a permanent exhibit will soon be in place, Martz’s disappointment is palpable.
“Once again the scouting profession, often referred to as baseball’s foundation and grassroots, has been pushed to the back burner. For every player enshrined, there was a scout who found him and got him signed. From personal experience I know star players who would have pursued opportunities in other sports other than baseball had a scout not been involved.”
Two such players that the Gomer native scouted enthusiastically that had other options in sports were Rolen and Gibson.
Recalls Martz, “Rolen finished third in the voting while at Jasper High School for Mr. Indiana Basketball and was intensely recruited by Kentucky, Georgia, Oklahoma State and Alabama.
“Even more obvious an example involves Gibson, who was an All-American wide receiver at Michigan State and was drafted by the Cardinals of the NFL. Without a doubt, in my mind, he’d have certainly had an NFL career.”
Despite Diamond Minds closing, a cessation John Odell says is temporary yet one which still rankles Martz, the career that The Old Scout crafted isn’t diminished one bit.
It’s not the shrines men build to honor others that make their efforts laudable. Rather, in the case of Jim Martz and countless others who drove the roads, mile after mile, to get to a bleacher seat behind a backstop, peering out intently at an open diamond with stopwatch in hand, ready to time a rawboned 17-year-old player’s speed going from home to first, it’s how they mined those diamonds that matter the most.
