THE ROAD to the World Series begins with a scout’s eyes. You have to find and develop talent to get there. Bill Livesey is just such a scout.
Quietly, the Yankees brought Livesey back to the organization last week as a pro scout. Livesey was a key component when the Yankees developed their run of star players who became World Champions. Livesey was the team’s scouting director in 1992. He remembers going to Kalamazoo, Mich., to see a kid named Derek Jeter play.
“You could tell he had all the tangibles and intangibles,” Livesey said from his home in St. Petersburg. “Our scout Dick Groch did a great job.”
On the morning of the 1992 draft, the Yankees were sitting with the sixth pick. They never thought Jeter would be there. Then a funny thing happened: Phil Nevin went to the Astros; a couple of pitchers, Paul Shuey and B.J. Wallace, were taken by the Indians and Expos. The Orioles were up next, and took outfielder Jeffrey Hammonds. Only the Reds stood between the Yankees and future success. Cincinnati grabbed Chad Mottola. Jeter fell into their laps.
“We were happy to catch him,” Livesey said with a laugh.
Now Livesey has fallen back into the Yankees’ laps, hired by director of pro scouting Billy Eppler and GM Brian Cashman.
“A Yankee has come home,” Cashman says. “If we could have waved a magic wand we would have loved to have hired him last year.”
Livesey, 68, comes home nearly 13 years to the day he was fired along with two other executives, Mitch Lukevics and Kevin Elfering. Livesey was VP of scouting and player development at the time. When the three were let go, the rap against them was that the Yankees’ minor league teams were in terrible shape.
Not true. Livesey & Co. played a major role in putting not only Jeter in pinstripes, but signing and developing some of the biggest stars to come through the Yankees Universe in Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada.
“We had a lot of good people in scouting and development,” Livesey explains. Posada was an infielder but was switched to catcher. “If he could catch, we knew we would have a very interesting player.”
The Yankees had a system in place, where good young talent could be traded for bigger pieces of the puzzle. A good scout not only knows what players to sign and develop but which ones to trade. One of those good young players was Roberto Kelly, who was dealt to the Reds for Paul O’Neill.
Livesey never puts himself out front and is quick to credit the organization for developing those Yankee champions. He is an organization man, having done nearly every job possible from managing in the minors to beating the bushes for talent. When all that talent blossomed, Livesey was out of the organization.
Livesey also was a longtime coach in the Cape Cod League and says that was a baseball blessing because he got to see so much talent come through the Cape that it helped him learn at an early age what to look for in a major league player.
His role is different now. He is not in charge of scouting or player development. He is a pro scout that can be used in many ways; another set of valuable eyes the Yankees need. “The more experience you have, the more comparisons you can draw from,” he said of the value of having spent a lifetime in the game.
“I’m so excited, I can’t wait to get started,” adds Livesey, who officially starts on the payroll today.
After his first 18 years with the Yankees, Livesey spent six years in Tampa to get that organization off the ground. He also worked two years in Toronto and then found his way to the Mets when Jim Duquette was GM and spent a couple of years with Omar Minaya. Not all deals work. Livesey was there when the Mets, prodded by Al Goldis, made the mistake of trading Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano, whose elbow was in much worse shape than the Mets’ realized.
From there Livesey became a consultant with Mike Pagliarulo’s scouting group. About a month ago, he was scouting in Japan and ran into his old GM and current Yankee scout Gene Michael.
Now the two are together again; two sets of scouts’ eyes that can help put the Yankees back on the road to the World Series.
kevin.kernan@
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