SAN FRANCISCO — And now for something you don’t see every day: Juan Uribe and the word skinny in the same sentence.
Yes, back in the day, when Rockies scouts operated on a shoestring budget in the Dominican Republic, Uribe was a 160-pound 16-year-old who couldn’t run or hit. But when he put a glove on during a tryout camp in 1997, the Rockies noticed.
“We had already signed Neifi Perez, and he was watching,” said Paul Egins, the Rockies’ director of player development at the time and now the team’s director of major-league operations. “When Uribe started fielding some ground balls, Neifi comes running out of the stands saying, ‘Eegs, Eegs, we’ve got to sign this guy!’ I said, ‘Neifi, keep it down. You’re going to alert the other scouts.’ “
Uribe, who weighs in at 230 pounds these days, signed with the Rockies for the grand sum of $5,000. And no, we’re not being facetious.
“Back then, that was a lot of money,” Egins said. “We had a limited budget. We were signing kids for $1,000, $2,500, whatever we could get them for. He almost blew my budget.”
Uribe played one full season and parts of two others with the Rockies from 2001-03. He has hit 151 home runs in the big leagues, including 24 this season for the Giants. It was his ninth-inning sacrifice fly that won Game 4 of the National League Championship Series on Wednesday night.
“I owe them a lot,” said Uribe, when asked about signing with the Rockies. “They gave me a chance to get here.”
Footnote on the Uribe story: Egins and Rockies scout Jorge de Posada, father of the Yankees catcher, spotted another good-looking prospect the next day but weren’t able to sign him. His name? Jose Guillen.
“We couldn’t sign the kid because the money ran out,” Egins said. “Every time I see him, he tells me, ‘Man, I wanted to sign with the Rockies.’ “
More on the ‘dor.
The Giants are playing in the NLCS, so naturally The Post had to do some snooping around to get the latest dirt on the Coors Field humidor.
Giants GM Brian Sabean, you’ll recall, contacted the commissioner’s office in late September to question the Rockies’ use of balls from the humidor. And before that, Giants broadcaster Jon Miller chimed in on the subject during a radio interview in San Francisco.
Miller’s take on the situation?
“I had nothing to do with anything,” Miller said. “Coaches and players on the Giants told me they thought something was going on. And I had a couple of conversations with the Cardinals, and they told me the same thing. So I just went on the radio and said there’s an idea that something was going on with this humidor thing.”
Miller said he doesn’t “have a clue” if anything deep, dark and sinister has been going on under the Coors Field grandstand. But he has come to laugh about it, just as the Rockies have.
“If somebody is doing that, then there’s somebody out there who one day is going to tell people he was doing it,” said Miller. “Who’s the one doing it? A bat boy? He may write his senior thesis about it.”
Footnotes.
Five members of the Giants’ 1958 team, the first to call San Francisco home, threw out ceremonial first pitches. Among them: Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda and former Giants manager Felipe Alou. . . . Designer genes: Phillies right fielder Jayson Werth is the grandson of former major-league infielder Dick “Ducky” Schofield. . . . Denver’s own Brad Lidge, on the Giants: “Somebody was asking me the other day how these guys are scoring more runs off you than the Reds did. The Reds had such a better offense during the regular season . . . but the reality is the Giants are having way better at-bats right now. And when it comes down to it right now, the Giants are hot and the Reds weren’t when we played them.”
