Major league baseball scouts at the western playoff of the 1948 NCAA Tournament in Denver. (Denver Post file)
I know it seems like a lifetime ago, but in 1948 they didn’t have Sabermetrics or WHIP or VORP. They didn’t have FanGraphs or their heat maps. And I’m pretty sure they didn’t even have radar guns. Crazy, right?
Back then, major league scouts had their eyes and experience. And on Jan. 17, many of them congregated in Denver to analyze prospects in the the Western Playoff of the NCAA Tournament, in which Colorado State (now the University of Northern Colorado) was one of the eight contenders in the double-elimination playoff. Colorado State lost to Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) and Baylor in the west, while Southern California defeated Baylor in the west final and ended up defeating Yale in the best-of-three College World Series
The scouts, all former big-leaguers, pictured from left to right: Cobe Jones, a Denver Parochial league coach who had accepted a contract to scout for the Chicago Cubs during the summer; Jimmy Payton, also of the Cubs; Burleigh Grimes, of the New York Yankees; Ben Tincup, of the Boston Braves; and Mickey Shader, of the New York Giants.
Tags: Chicago Cubs, Major League Baseball, New York Yankees
