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Cliché? Not necessarily.
Marc Shoenfelt, the founder of B2B Baseball & Softball Academy in Manheim, recently attended the prestigious scout school sponsored by the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau.
Guess who instructed him?
"Once you get in, you're basically exposed to grizzled vets of 25 years," Shoenfelt said. "These are the guys who signed Joe Mauer or sat across from Tim Lincecum. These guys have seen everything and they know everybody."
Even in this age of sabremetrics and statistics-based analysis, there's still room for the subjective art of evaluating players with your eyes. It's a skill that takes intense training and dedication.
Shoenfelt learned the hard way. His two-week trip to Phoenix, Ariz. certainly wasn't a vacation. It was more like baseball boot camp.
The clinic included 12-hour work days spent in relentless desert heat. Students were required to attend games in the instructional league and were asked to grade some of the best prospects around.
Each day Shoenfelt was assigned two players to study. When the games were over, he graded the players based on scouting guidelines and wrote a detailed report that was reviewed by one of those grizzled vets.
"They're very critical," Shoenfelt said. "You need to be concise, brief and on the spot.
"The first two or three days, your head is spinning. There are all these red marks on your report. You get hammered. But by about the end of the first week, everybody catches on to what they're doing. These guys will tell you after 20 years, they're always learning."
This annual two-week clinic has been held in Phoenix since 1989. It was created by Don Pries, the former director of the MLB Scouting Bureau. Pries wanted to give scouts formal training so everyone was using the same guidelines for evaluation.
It's extremely difficult to earn entry into this school. A prospective student must receive an endorsement or sponsorship from a big-league club or from the bureau itself.
Shoenfelt, a former college player at Northeast Louisiana and Mansfield, used his connections with the San Francisco Giants to gain sponsorship. He then spent $1,500 for the opportunity to learn from some highly-respected baseball men.
"People who were there had been trying for three or four years and couldn't get in," Shoenfelt said." A lot of scouts can't even get in."
This was a thrill for Shoenfelt, who obviously has a passion for baseball and follows the minor leagues closely. He got a chance to watch some of the prospects he knows about as a fan.
Getting to see those guys up close brought an ironic revelation.
"It's funny," he said. "When you grade them out, they don't always grade out that great."
Such is the conundrum of scouting. Projecting a player's development is an extremely difficult task and even the best scouts swing and miss more often than they connect.
Although roughly 70 percent of employed scouts have graduated from this program, Shoenfelt didn't go through this experience to begin a career in that profession. He used this clinic as a learning tool to assist him when he provides lessons to youngsters at the B2B Academy.
Since his return on Oct. 10, Shoenfelt has put some of his new education to use. He picked up a few tips on the mechanics of pitching and will use this information to supplement what he already knew. He wants to help the kids who attend B2B learn a better approach so they avoid injury and improve their performance.
Shoenfelt, who actually received a straw hat as a complimentary gift for attending scout school, said his two weeks in the Arizona heat have already paid dividends.
"I'm always looking to better myself and learn," he said. "Books and DVDs only do so much anymore. This has taken my eyes to a new level. When I give clinics and lessons, I see things so much more crisper and clearer because I've learned from the best out there."
