Character Is Not a Statistic: the Legacy and Wisdom of Baseball's Godfather Scout Bill Lajoie

By Bill Lajoie and Anup Sinha

Bill Lajoie just had it. When it came to drafting ballplayers and building a World Series club, few in baseball history can match his extraordinary success. The lessons of Lajoies illustrious career and the brilliance of his philosophy are put to print in Character is Not a Statistic. After a playing career that fell achingly short of the major leagues, Lajoie returned to Detroit to become a teacher in the mid-1960s. But his unyielding passion for baseball and desire to atone for a broken dream pulled him back to the game as a scout. From there, hed go on to build World Series Championships from scratch by finding players who possessed the very character he lacked as a young athlete. Starting as an area scout for the Cincinnati Reds in 1965, Lajoie later moved up the ladder with the Detroit Tigers and was the architect and general manager of their 1984 World Series crowning. Lajoie would then be instrumental as an assistant GM for two more franchises who dominated their decades with championships and titles; the 1990s Atlanta Braves and the 2000s Boston Red Sox. Perhaps no one alive has scouted more baseball over the last 50 years or has better stories to tell about finding the greats. Though the modern era has seen the depersonalization of scouting via statistics and radar gun readings, Lajoie was immensely successful through five decades by emphasizing what a player had inside him. His belief in a players humanity and character persists to this day. This book is not only a biography, but a collection of great baseball stories and a manual for the next generation of fans and scouts alike. Lajoie tackles such controversial issues as the Moneyball movement, the importance of a strong manager, scouting for makeup, making trades, preventing pitching injuries, running a farm system, and ranking both the best general managers and scouting directors of the modern era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781462825486

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CHARACTER

IS NOT A STATISTIC

The Legacy and Wisdom of Baseball’s Godfather Scout Bill Lajoie

Anup Sinha and Bill Lajoie

Copyright © 2010 by Anup Sinha and Bill Lajoie.

Main cover photo of Bill Lajoie sitting on bleachers:

COPYRIGHT Mary Schroeder courtesy of the Detroit Free Press.

Left upper photo of (L-R) Alan Trammell, Dan Petry, Bill Lajoie,

Jack Morris, and Lou Whitaker:

COPYRIGHT Mary Schroeder courtesy of the Detroit Free Press.Used with permission from Major League Baseball.

Left lower photo of Bill Lajoie holding up 2004 World Series Trophy:

Courtesy of Bill Lajoie.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

70062

Contents

Note From The Author

Prologue

The Legacy

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

The Wisdom

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

Appendix E

Appendix F

Appendix G

Appendix H

Appendix I

Appendix J

Appendix K

Appendix L

Appendix M

Appendix N

Appendix O

Appendix P

Appendix Q

Appendix R

Appendix S

Appendix T

Appendix U

Appendix V

Bibliography

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the Lajoie family: dearly departed wife Gloria, sons Bill and Jeff, daughter Julie, and wife Mary. Success at the stadium is impossible without emotional support from home because a life in baseball brings travel and tension. Gloria stayed by his side to the end of her life, leaving her own career to accompany Bill in his journey. Bill Jr., Jeff, and Julie didn’t have their father home as often as other children, yet they were patient and always loving. In the golden years, Mary has been a replenishing source of strength and joy.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

The greatest compliment I can give Bill Lajoie is to say he ruined my life.

Had it not been for Bill, I would not be earning minimal wages as a baseball scout, writing this book.

I’d be a doctor making big bucks with a wife, three kids, and a dog. I’d have a million dollar house on Palm Beach.

But something happened on the way to Palm Beach. On May 31st, 1979, I turned on a twelve-inch television set with rabbit ears to watch the Detroit Tigers play the Toronto Blue Jays at Exhibition Stadium. I watched Pat Underwood make his major league debut against his brother Tom and beat him 1-0. Then I saw Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker turn a double play and my life has never been the same.

I was the son of Indian immigrants from a medicine-oriented family and I pursued that life until I was 27. But that was when I had my moment of truth. I finally gave into my true love for baseball and abandoned my M.D. to chase a dream.

Of course, it was Bill Lajoie who drafted Underwood, Trammell, and Whitaker, as well as my other boyhood heroes like Jack Morris, Lance Parrish, Dan Petry, Tom Brookens, and Kirk Gibson. Bill’s dream growing up on the east side of Detroit was to play for the Tigers, not to scout. But his failure as a player is what drove him to become an excellent scout (Chapter One). He’d reach his pinnacle in 1984, becoming the general manager for his hometown Detroit Tigers. Bill would acquire soon-to-be MVP closer Willie Hernandez and bring a World Series trophy to Motown.

I followed them every step of the way, listening to Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey, watching the telecasts of George Kell and Al Kaline. Sure, I loved the game itself and it helped that the young Tigers were talented. But what really grabbed me was the kind of people they were. While the 1984 Detroit Tigers were an assortment of both quiet leaders (Trammell, Parrish) and explosive tempers (Morris, Gibson), there was a common theme among the players brought together by Bill Lajoie: character.

I’ve often said that if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up in any other town, watching any other sport, or rooting for any other team. And it’s because Alan Trammell and the bunch were excellent role models for me and countless other youngsters in Detroit. I had a friend who once heard Lance Parrish say he never put a cigarette between his lips and decided for himself at age ten that he’d never smoke, either. If only today’s youngsters could have had real athletic heroes on and off the field as we did.

When I interviewed many of these same players for this book, I was delighted to discover that they were indeed men of strong character. They somehow lived up to my unreasonably lofty expectations and they remain my heroes even as an adult.

All of that goes back to Bill Lajoie. It would be a slander to his excellent staff to say he built these teams all by himself, but he was by all means the architect of that glorious era in Detroit Tigers history.

I first read about Lajoie as an eight year-old in 1979. Over the years, I began to idolize him from a distance after reading about how he did things like signing Trammell and Whitaker to extensions by buying them suits. He was undoubtedly a brilliant baseball man and talent evaluator. He was also the most aggressive and intense scout you’d ever want to meet, but what truly separated him was his ability to judge character. In today’s game, it gets lost in the shuffle of stats and tools and everything else. But I believe that judging character (i.e. makeup, insides) is every bit as valuable now as it was when Bill began scouting for the Cincinnati Reds in 1965.

I’ll never forget listening to Sportswrap one night in 1989, which was a popular sports talk show hosted by Frank Beckman on WJR in Detroit. Beckman had asked Bill about how he was so successful scouting players. Bill’s response, when you’re in Trammell’s or Whitaker’s house, and you meet them with their family, you can tell within about 30 seconds that they’re going to be successful. You can tell that you want them to play for your team.

Baseball will lose one of its greatest minds whenever Bill Lajoie retires from his most recent post as senior advisor with the Pittsburgh Pirates. His legacy is one that will not be forgotten by baseball men like myself. My generation and the ones behind me have much to learn from this man and I hope his philosophy comes through in these pages. While the game changes and trends come and go, there are certain things that endure. This is a man who was a great scout in the 1960s, a great scouting and farm director in the 1970s, a World Series winner in 1984 and 1995 (Atlanta Braves), and finally Theo Epstein’s indispensable assistant for the historic curse-breaking Boston Red Sox of 2004. Many in the game have referred to Bill as the most astute baseball man they’ve ever known. Dodgers GM Ned Colletti nicknamed him The Godfather. Here we hope to reveal the formula of his success and the philosophy that built World Championships for three different franchises in three different decades.

Central to Lajoie’s success is character. Not only the character of Bill Lajoie as a man himself, but the character of the players he chose to add to his organizations. Nobody read character as well as Lajoie. Statistics have overtaken much of modern scouting in baseball at the expense of the human element. But Lajoie’s success is living proof that character is not dead in baseball and that teams today would be wise to still consider the human element over numbers.

So yes, he did ruin my life. He probably ruined some other lives, too. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.

-Anup Sinha

PROLOGUE

Character is not a statistic. What does it mean and what does it have to do with Bill Lajoie?

Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti nicknamed Lajoie The Godfather for his ultimate wisdom and enduring success in baseball. Precious few garner as much respect from their peers as Bill Lajoie. A number of players, coaches, scouting directors, and general managers consider Lajoie to be their mentor and their greatest influence.

His track record is sterling. Lajoie was the architect of the 1984 World Series Champion Detroit Tigers, who rose from the basement over ten years with Lajoie calling the shots as a scout, scouting director, farm director, and general manager. He proved indispensable as an assistant to Atlanta Braves GM John Schuerholz in the 1990s when Atlanta was a National League dynasty, winning 14 consecutive division titles. Then in the 2000s, Lajoie was instrumental in ending the Curse of the Bambino and bringing to Boston the 2004 and 2007 World Series trophies after 86 years of Red Sox heartbreak.

It didn’t matter where Bill Lajoie went. His teams won.

Lajoie is a shrewd baseball man who can evaluate talent and break down a player’s future with the best of them. Throughout his career he’s displayed exceptional intelligence and the competitive fire to outwork his opponents. But as great as his talent and dedication, it was his ability to recognize character that ultimately made Bill Lajoie so wildly successful in baseball.

Incidentally, it is character that has taken a beating in the modern game. The very distinction that made Lajoie so triumphant over five decades has been tossed aside by younger general managers and scouting directors in favor of the objective and the more impersonal. Nothing symbolizes the modern obsession for numbers better than the best-selling book Moneyball (Michael Lewis, W.W.Norton & Co., 2003) that chronicled the Oakland A’s earlier in the decade.

A scouting director for a prominent franchise recently expressed to his scouts his decision to de-emphasize makeup (the scout word for baseball character) because he couldn’t measure it quantitatively. In his mind, he could measure a hitter’s power, a pitcher’s fastball velocity, and a centerfielder’s running speed in numbers, but there was no way to put a number on a player’s makeup so he wasn’t going to let it get in the way.

Other organizations have put all their character evaluation eggs in the basket of psychological exams, believing that a simple written test can reveal everything a young man has in his heart and soul.

What made Lajoie a great scout from day one was not just the fact he could evaluate physical talent, but that he could see into a player’s heart and gather a gut feeling as to what the young man would do with his career once he signed a professional baseball contract. The modern scouting director is correct; no number or quantitative measurement can be put on character, but the ability to recognize it in a baseball player is the difference between winning and losing in the end. There are young men pumping gas who at one time had as much talent as Albert Pujols or Roy Halladay. There are successful players in the big leagues whose natural ability alone would put them no better than the middle of the pack among minor league players. If you don’t recognize character, you’ll never be able to make the separation.

The baseball draft is a great example of the surprisingly fine line between becoming an All-Star and ending up a career minor leaguer.

The draft may appear a crapshoot to the uninitiated because only 15% of drafted amateurs who sign pro contracts will play even a day in the major leagues. The success rates are low even within the first round, the first thirty players selected among 1,500; only 75% of those elite talents will ever play a day in the big leagues and roughly 25% will become legitimate five year-plus major league players. All of these players have big-time big league talent, still three out of four fail.

Sometimes it’s due to injuries or bad luck, but usually it’s due to character.

If baseball players were robots, the 1st-rounders would make it exclusively and have better careers than every player taken after because they are the thirty best talents. But they are not robots, only flesh-and-blood human beings who feel hot and cold, tired and crazy, and respond to challenges in different ways. That’s where Bill Lajoie made his career, he was blessed with the almost magical ability to see into the motivations of young people. Lajoie can eat at a McDonald’s and walk out of the restaurant knowing which kid behind the desk was going to be a doctor and which one would still be working there ten years later. Becoming a major league baseball player is not altogether different than succeeding in other professional avenues. It necessitates a certain amount of character and dedication to go along with natural ability.

Character is not a statistic in the proverbial sense because it isn’t doomed; character is by no means a drunk driver or a chain smoker. Whether baseball scouts today want to pay attention to character or not, it’s real, it’s present, and it’s not going anywhere as long as humans play this game instead of machines.

Character is important to Lajoie’s career in another way and it has to do with his own personal character. What Bill Lajoie is as a person is very much a part of his success as a baseball scout and executive.

Rarely has there been a GM who didn’t thirst for power, who didn’t go to great lengths to keep others down in order to enhance his own image. Rarely has the game seen a scout who cared so much about the players he signed, who would call them, pitch batting practice to them, tell them how to open bank accounts and where to buy clothes. Rarely has the game seen a front office executive who treated players the way Lajoie did, like a friend, a son, a nephew, but never like a lab rat or a robot.

The common theme when speaking to those who played for Bill Lajoie’s Detroit Tigers is their admiration for their former general manager as a man. They often refer to him as a father figure and mentor. When you ask a typical major league player about a typical GM, the words father figure and mentor are nowhere to be heard. Usually you get some combination of cheap bastard and in it for himself! But Bill Lajoie never treated his players nor his staff in that manner. As competitive as he was, as successful as he was, Lajoie stayed a true and loyal human being with genuine concern for others. The players who knew Lajoie best were inspired to succeed for him.

In the cut-throat baseball world, Lajoie remained honest and diligent, earning promotions based on qualification. There was never any back-stabbing or abuse of political connections. Lajoie was not a people person to start, it was something he had to learn, but he never learned how to take credit and self-promote. Unlike many baseball executives today, Lajoie was not at all concerned about drawing attention to himself and carrying a high-profile image. Perhaps his lack of self-absorption hurt his status with the media and the public over the years, because others would often be given credit for his accomplishments. Lajoie put it best to Detroit Free Press writer Joe Lapointe (The Tigers’ Unknown Soldier, (Detroit section) April 7th, 1985) when Lapointe asked him who should portray his role in a movie.

James Whitmore… a guy who has had a 30-year career. Not a top-billing guy. He was the sergeant in the movies when good guys like George C. Scott were generals or captains.

Like a James Whitmore character, Lajoie was never comfortable with the attention, never front-and-center to the public, not even in 1984 when he’d put his Detroit Tigers on top of the baseball world. Lajoie was just a man who loved baseball, loved scouting, and did everything he could to win. Lajoie had the hard-lined cylindrical face of a former athlete. There was no toothy grin for the camera. He made no effort to smoothen his deep, gravelly voice. On TV and coming out of the radio was nothing but roll-up-your-sleeves intensity; grace and charisma were never a part of the package, at least not to the public. But none of it mattered because it had nothing to do with winning a World Series. Lajoie didn’t care about his image or about who got the credit, his only concern was with the results on the field.

It is this character, Bill’s character, that further separates him in baseball and provides a crucial aspect of his legacy.

Lajoie’s accomplishments in baseball are nothing short of extraordinary. Everywhere he went, his clubs underwent a miraculous transformation. It was masterful how he rebuilt the Detroit Tigers from cellar dwellers into World Champs. Both the Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox owe him a share of their championships as well.

So how did Bill Lajoie do it? How did he gain this wonderful insight to peer into young men’s hearts and accurately project the kind of ballplayers they would grow up to be? How was he able to put together some of the best drafts, best teams, and best trades in baseball history?

It all began on a broken dream.

THE LEGACY

CHAPTER 1

Some Dreams are Meant

to be Broken

I heard one story he told about how he got hurt trying to rob a home run when he was caught on a fence. I heard stories about how he could really play and that he tried to play through his injury, but it never worked out. That was when I thought ‘Oh my God’. I didn’t know how much talent Bill had or anything, but I felt like I wanted to run through a brick wall for him.

Dan Petry, longtime Detroit Tigers pitcher

I always used to tell people my dad was a really good player who didn’t make it because he had two broken legs. He told me he just wasn’t good enough.

Julie Lajoie, daughter

He always had a glove in his hand, I’ll tell you that.

Mary Ann Lajoie-Sandroff, sister

It is not at all unusual for greatness to come out of happenstance. History is filled with such examples, but still we are enamored by the man who becomes great at something he never intended. It’s because we all relate to broken dreams. Every being to walk the earth has suffered a broken dream, but success in life and in baseball depends on what we do in our next at-bat.

To understand Bill Lajoie as a baseball scout and as the architect of World Series Champions is to understand his broken dream. Growing up in Detroit, Bill Lajoie was infatuated with baseball. But Bill’s dreams had nothing to do with becoming a major league general manager and all to do with becoming a major league player.

Born on September 27th, 1934, as the first of two children to Thomas and Ladyne Lajoie, William Richard Lajoie began his life living in the downriver Detroit suburb of Ecorse. His sister Mary Ann was born two and a half years later.

Ecorse was (and still is) a hardscrabble, racially mixed, blue collar town that like much of Detroit, owed its livelihood to the automotive industry. It was as a child in Ecorse where young Bill discovered and fell in love with the game of baseball.

In America, it has become commonplace for fathers to push baseball upon their children. A survey of major league players today will show that most were offspring of aggressive fathers who signed them up young and handled every detail of their career from little league up. No sport is more father-son based than baseball. A kid can go shoot a basketball alone or with his friends, but he needs a dad to play catch with. Some fathers take it too far, living their dreams through their child. Nevertheless, there are few successful ballplayers without strong father figures.

Bill’s father figure was unquestionably strong, but Tom Lajoie never pushed his son to play baseball. As far as Bill knew, his father had never played baseball himself, only football in high school. Bill discovered the sport on his own, one day when he stumbled upon a group of kids playing a pickup game on a dusty field in Ecorse. He was just a tyke, maybe five or six years old, and he didn’t own a glove.

The only gloves available were for righthanded throwers. So young Bill put the glove on the other hand and played anyway. It wasn’t long before he was hooked, playing baseball in the summer and then learning to ice skate in the winter. There were no televisions in the 1930s and early 1940s, the days were passed playing outdoors with the other kids. At the time, Belle Isle on the Detroit River was a popular leisure destination and thousands of children could be seen playing in the canals and on the playgrounds every summer.

Thomas Lajoie was bred with an exceptional work ethic that began at age 15 when his father passed away; he was forced into employment in order to help his mother. Tom first worked in the steel mill and then became a firefighter during Bill’s early youth. In 1943, Tom left the family for World War II at the relatively advanced age of 35. Much to his consternation, he was the only fireman in his department who was drafted to the war. Tom spent three years working on fire control for ships attacked by the Japanese kamikaze fighters.

During this time, the remaining Lajoie family still lived in Ecorse in a house where Bill’s paternal uncle and aunt stayed upstairs. Bill had another uncle in the area, as well. While his father was overseas, both uncles would go out of their way to get him tickets to watch the Detroit Tigers at Briggs Stadium.

Bill’s mother Ladyne remained the family rock and was an elementary school teacher as well as a devoted parent to Bill and Mary Ann. When Bill came down with the whooping cough as a third grader, he was forced to stay home for six weeks. For most children, this would set them back at school. But most children don’t have mothers like Ladyne Lajoie, who home-schooled her son so thoroughly that when he recovered from his illness, his teacher at the elementary school recommended he skip third grade and go straight to fourth.

After the war ended in 1945, Thomas Lajoie returned. He would resign as a firefighter and go to work in construction, building the Lajoie family’s new house on 15469 Hazelridge Street in Detroit while they took temporary quarters in East Detroit. Bill was in eighth grade.

While in East Detroit, Bill continued to play baseball and also learned how to swim while attending Jackson Intermediate School. He had never swam before in his life, but his strong-limbed athletic ability transferred quickly to the pool and he would go on to earn three varsity letters as a freestyle swimmer in high school.

The new home on Hazelridge was on the east side of Detroit, right across from Denby High School. The location was purely intentional. Tom Lajoie built the house himself and wanted it to be so close to the high school that his kids would have no distractions going back and forth. It would be much easier to monitor them and keep them out of trouble. The Denby High baseball field was within view of the Lajoie’s front yard.

While neither Tom nor Ladyne Lajoie pushed baseball on Bill or dance on Mary Ann, they recognized their children’s talents at an early age and did everything they could to allow their children to pursue their dreams. The family as a whole shared in each other’s interests, going to Bill’s ballgames and Mary Ann’s recitals. The Lajoie parents ran a strict household where the kids had little time to socialize or go to parties. They were careful with their children’s’ diets and their bedtimes.

For Mary Ann, Tom used his wondrous building skills to put down a wooden dance floor in the basement. He also added a ballet bar and attached mirrors to the wall. Mother Ladyne was not a dancer herself, but she spent considerable time learning the art and supporting her daughter. Mary Ann would go on to become a very successful professional dancer and television model, moving to Chicago after graduating high school and appearing in numerous shows and commercials. In her later years, Mary Ann would adeptly run a dance school in Wilmette, Illinois. She would trace her success as an adult directly to her upbringing.

With Bill, Tom was more hands-on. He would play catch with and pitch to his son whenever he could. It became evident around age 15 that Bill was an exceptional baseball talent who would have a future beyond high school. It was at that time Tom became extra vigilant in working with his son.

But Tom never pretended to know anything about baseball. He never told Bill how to hold the bat or throw the ball. He simply made things available for Bill and his interest followed his son’s passion. As he built a dance floor for Mary Ann, Tom also used his building skills to make a weight to add to Bill’s bat during warm-up swings and an L-screen from which to pitch batting practice behind; both inventions were patented by others in later years.

When Bill was in high school and his coach asked him to play first base, Tom went to the store and bought his son a new first base glove. Money was short for the Lajoies in the 1940’s and it might have been the last thirty dollars Thomas Lajoie had, but by God his son was going to get what he needed.

One time when Bill was a teenager, he egged his father on during a practice session at Denby High School. You’re always pitching to me, why don’t you hit for once? Let me pitch to you?

Bill went into his lefthanded wind-up and delivered to his father, who took a big wallop and hit the ball over the outfield wall, beyond the fence that surrounded the track, and onto the school’s football field. It was a blast of the likes Bill had never seen before, not by himself nor any of the other high school kids who played on that field.

To this day almost sixty years later, Bill has no idea where that power came from. Tom wasn’t a particularly big man, though he was strongly built at 5'7". Bill had never even seen his father swing a bat until that moment.

While Bill grew up a Tigers fan, it was a Cleveland Indians centerfielder who quickly became his favorite player. Larry Doby was the American League’s Jackie Robinson but with much less fanfare. At the end of 1947, he became the junior circuit’s first black player. When the Indians came to town, Bill would take the bus down Hayes Street and then walk another mile from the Hudson’s bus stop to sit in the bleachers at Briggs Stadium and watch his hero up close.

As he would be for the rest of his life, Bill was oblivious to race and it was never more evident than with his admiration for Larry Doby. While most of America at the time swooned over the very white and very famous Yankee Joe DiMaggio, it was Larry Doby’s baseball intelligence and lack of flash that appealed to a young Bill Lajoie. What he saw in Doby was simply a man who knew how to play center field like no other.

It wasn’t just that he caught every ball hit into Briggs Stadium’s massive center field, but that he almost never had to run, much less dive. It looked too easy. It was like Larry Doby always knew where the ball was going to be hit. He’d jog to the spot and camp under it. How can he always be in the right place?

Unlike Bill, Doby was a righthanded thrower, but he was also a lefthanded hitter. Later on in his career, Doby became home run happy. His defense and his batting average suffered over the years but in his early career he made a huge impression on the budding star from Denby High School.

At the time Bill was growing up on the east side, his neighborhood was exclusively white. If you visit the area around Hazelridge Street today, you will see few white faces. The houses are old, charming, and well-maintained, but not too far away you’ll run into slums. Denby High School at the time was also exclusively white though today it is attended almost completely by black students.

Like most high schools at the time, Denby started at the tenth grade and when Bill enrolled the fall of 1949, he was only 14. With the discipline instilled into him and his sister by two hard-working parents, Bill would do well not only in sports but also in school. He was a straight-A student at Denby who was equally focused in the classroom. Poor little sister Mary Ann had a tough act to follow when she enrolled. It seemed like every teacher and student at Denby was in awe of her big brother.

Baseball in the city of Detroit has decayed of late, but in Bill’s day it was a hotbed and Denby High School was a perennial power. Several players had already signed pro contracts out of Denby before Bill enrolled. Six kids off of his 1951 team would eventually sign as well.

But even among a team of stars that won the 1951 city championship over Detroit powerhouses like Northeastern and Eastern, Bill Lajoie stood out as the superstar. In addition to his swimming exploits, Lajoie’s baseball skills earned him Most Athletic Boy honors in his senior class mock election at Denby. The flat-top, curly brown-haired and French-featured Lajoie was skinny as a rail at 5'11", 155 lbs, but he was wiry strong and could run like the wind. Bill was the best hitter on the team, its fastest runner, and a terrific centerfielder with a very strong arm for the high school level. Beyond the skills, he was a hell bent competitor known for hard slides and running into fences.

His coach at Denby was Len Stark, who was more or less a teacher who coached baseball on the side. Bill learned most of his baseball over the summers.

There was a scout with the Cleveland Indians at the time named Nap Ross, who signed future big league first baseman/outfielder and manager Joe Altobelli out of Detroit Eastern High School not long before. Ross had a facility near the famed (for boxing) Kronk Gym where he would work with talented young ballplayers and give them pointers. Lajoie would take three different buses to get to Kronk Recreation Park on weekends so he could benefit from Nap Ross’s lessons.

Among the players Bill would befriend at Nap Ross’s facility was none other than Frank Tanana, a rival centerfielder who played at St. Andrew High School. Tanana would later have his promising professional career with the Indians cut short by his decision to stay at home and take care of his firstborn, Frank Jr. The younger Frank Tanana would go on to fulfill the older Frank’s dreams of playing in the big leagues and his life path would cross Bill Lajoie’s many times.

Another friend at Nap Ross’s facility was Jerry Olesko, who played baseball and basketball with Tanana at St. Andrew’s and would later sign with the Chicago White Sox.

Most of the summer league ball was played at Northwestern High School, which owned a complex of six baseball fields that ran the gamut from little leaguers all the way up to adults. Bill would have to take two buses to get to his games from the east side, but his passion to play was relentless and undeterred by the long commute.

He would go on to earn three varsity letters in swimming and two in baseball. During his junior year, Denby would win the city baseball championship in no small part because of their centerfielder. Major league scouts approached Bill with interest, but most encouraged him to attend college as he was only 155 lbs and clearly had the intelligence to earn a degree. His mother and father also approved of the idea.

Bill would graduate early in the middle of his senior year in December of 1951, which was not unusual at the time. He accepted a baseball scholarship to Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, about 140 miles west of Detroit on Interstate 94. By 1952, Western Michigan was already a good program under coach Charlie Maher and considered a national power. They had produced several major league players, most notably Detroit Tigers star outfielder Charley Sunday Maxwell. Though the Broncos had yet to play in a College World Series, they had an excellent facility in Hyames Field that received national exposure by hosting the College World Series as a neutral site in 1947 and 1948. (It was not until 1950 that the College World Series found its home in Omaha, Nebraska, where it has since become a fixture.)

Lajoie was only 17 years-old when he stepped onto campus in January of 1952. Because he was born in September and had skipped third grade through the home-schooling of his mother, Bill was exceptionally young and understandably overwhelmed by the college environment. In fact, he was sent home by coach Maher before a trip to Ohio State and had to call his dad to pick him up from Kalamazoo. It was a difficult phone call and a disappointing freshman year that saw only four at-bats. The Western Michigan ballclub would make their first visit to the College World Series that spring. They’d finish third, but it was with no contribution from Lajoie.

For the first time, Bill would not be the superstar, and it would be a learning experience. It would also be the year that Bill would meet a local Washington Senators scout named Dick Wiencek. Wiencek was in his first year as a full-time area scout and would go on to a legendary scouting career himself. Their paths would cross again.

It was as a sophomore in 1953 that Bill would buckle down and blossom as a college player, winning the starting center field job. Bill would become the superstar that coach Charlie Maher envisioned. By his senior year, Bill had earned All-America honors three times, making the first team in both 1954 and 1955. As a senior, he hit a whopping .400 with six home runs and six triples.

The Western Michigan Broncos were a loaded ballclub during Bill Lajoie’s collegiate career (1952-1955), with a collection of baseball talent one will never find in a cold-weather school today. Bill played alongside leftfielder Al Nagel and rightfielder Lowell Johnson, both of whom were all-conference collegians and pro prospects who signed for big bonuses. It was considered the best outfield in college baseball. The irony is that none of them made it to the big leagues while their seldom-used backup did.

His name was Dan Dobbek. Dick Wiencek signed him in 1955 for the Washington Senators. He would reach the big leagues for them in 1959 and play three seasons before injuries cut his career short. In later years, Lajoie would tell Wiencek that he knew Dick was a great scout when he picked up the backup over the starters and the backup ended up the big leaguer.

Two other Broncos from Lajoie’s time would also play in the big leagues. Giant 6'7", 225 lb first baseman Ron Jackson, a teammate from 1952-1954, would go on to play for the Chicago White Sox and shortstop Ken Hamlin (1954-1957 at WMU) would play for four different teams in parts of seven seasons.

While in Kalamazoo, Bill would also meet his future wife Gloria. Gloria Stanik was from Detroit as well, attending Mackenzie High School before enrolling at Western Michigan to get her degree in education. They would marry two years after Bill left college, on January 2nd, 1957, and stay married almost 33 years until her passing in December of 1989.

The singular story that best describes Lajoie’s college career would be what happened in WMU’s second game of the 1955 College World Series. The setting was Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Nebraska. The Broncos matched up against Oklahoma A&M, after beating the University of Arizona in game one. It was one of the most surreal endings in the history of NCAA Baseball.

The Okies were leading the Broncos 4-2 going into the bottom of the ninth. After the first two hitters walked, Bill Lajoie came to the plate with no outs. Ever the team player, Lajoie laid a sacrifice bunt down the third base line, hoping to move both runners into scoring position so the sluggers behind him could drive them in.

The Okie third baseman Jim Woolard charged the bunt and proceeded to throw it wildly into right field. Both baserunners scampered home and Lajoie, who never stopped hustling, came all the way to third.

Then the rightfielder’s throw came in and hit WMU first base coach Dick Erickson in the head. Players on both teams jogged over to check on Erickson, who collapsed and lay unconscious on the ground.

But nobody called time out. And before anybody knew what happened, Bill was on a mad dash for home and scored the winning run to advance Western in the College World Series.

It was a display of speed. It was a display of baseball instincts. But most of all, it was a display of Bill Lajoie’s desire to win. It was his run-through-a-wall competitiveness that was his trademark as a player and would later drive him to excel as a scout and front office executive.

Bill Lajoie is surely the only man to ever win a College World Series game with a walk-off bunt home run.

Coach Erickson would be all right despite the blow to his head. Coach Maher ushered his players to scurry off the field, worried the umpires might regroup and change their mind on the call.

Western Michigan’s valiant effort and their defeat of Oklahoma A&M guaranteed a trip to the final championship game because they were the only unbeaten team. In today’s format, they would have a bye the rest of the way, but in 1955 they still had to play out their bracket. Western had already beaten Wake Forest once and could eliminate them with a second victory on June 13th, but Wake staved off elimination by winning 10-7. Western did have a bye from that point, while Wake Forest had to defeat Oklahoma A&M before advancing to again meet WMU in the finals.

Wake and Western met for a third time and Western lost in heartbreaking fashion. They would go down 3-0 early, then explode with a comeback to take a 6-3 lead. But that lead would be blown as Wake Forest would go on to win 7-6 in what is oddly the Atlantic Coast Conference’s last CWS title to date. Lajoie would go 2-4 and score two runs in the losing effort. Wake Forest reliever Jack McGinley shut out the Broncos for the last 5 1/3 innings to get the win.

(Sadly, the Broncos were so close in 1955 and they still have never won a College World Series. As the sport has become dominated by sunbelt and west coast schools over the last twenty years, it seems unlikely that a Midwest American Conference team will win a CWS in the near future.)

With the last game played of Bill Lajoie’s four-year college career at Western Michigan, the pro scouts were hot on his trail in June of 1955. In what would become a fateful decision, Lajoie ended up signing a major league contract with the Baltimore Orioles for $4,000. The area scout credited was a gentleman named Lou D’Annunzio. But Bill was physically signed by Bill Enos, who was the Orioles’ crosschecker covering the College World Series in Omaha.

In 1955, four grand was a lot of money to give an amateur player and by the rules of Major League Baseball, the Orioles were required to put Bill Lajoie on their 40-man major league roster.

At the time, the Orioles were a struggling franchise. They existed previously as the St. Louis Browns prior to their Maryland move in 1954. In St. Louis, the franchise was notoriously cheap and uncommitted to winning. They had lost 100 games during their last season in St. Louis and again in their opening campaign in Baltimore. With their woefulness at the big league level, it appeared the Orioles were in for a long-term rebuild, which Lajoie believed would play in his favor. In his mind, he would be given better opportunity to play in the majors as an Oriole than he would with another organization, especially having been offered a big league contract from the get-go.

Paul Richards was hired as both manager and general manager in 1955. The former big league catcher had no patience for losing and he proceeded to spend big money towards procuring talent, whether it was approved by ownership or not.

In addition to Lajoie, the Orioles signed three other amateurs to bonuses of $4,000 or greater during the summer of 1955. It was Richards’s valiant attempt to give the farm system the kick it so badly needed after decades of futility in St. Louis. High hopes were had by Paul Richards for the quartet of Bill Lajoie, Bob Nelson, Wayne Causey, and Brooks Robinson. Nelson would never reach the big leagues while Causey would play parts of 11 seasons as a major league middle infielder with his best years as a member of the Kansas City A’s.

Brooks Robinson was a second baseman fresh out of an Arkansas high school; he would play that year with Lajoie for the York White Roses in the Piedmont League. Robinson started his pro career on fire, hitting .331 with 11 home runs and 67 runs batted in over a mere 354 at-bats. He was so impressive that the Orioles called him up that September to make his major league debut at the age of 18. Such a practice is unheard of in today’s game, where even the best high school prospects don’t make it in three years much less three months. Robinson would return to the minors three more times before sticking with the Orioles for good and putting together a Hall of Fame career. He would be converted to third base where he’d become recognized by baseball historians as the greatest fielder of all-time.

Once the York White Roses were eliminated from the Piedmont League playoffs, Lajoie was also called up to join Robinson with the Baltimore Orioles for the final weeks of the season. In today’s game, this would be a young player’s greatest thrill, the culmination of a dream. Would it not be the culmination of Bill Lajoie’s dream?

Keep in mind that he was a bonus baby, placed by major league rules on the 40-man roster, and obligated for a call-up. It was very unlikely that the Orioles would use him in a game. In a move he would be forced to second-guess later in life, Lajoie requested to return home and skip the big league promotion. His idea was that he could finish his degree since he wasn’t going to get playing time with the Orioles, anyway. Lajoie was also concerned about the Korean War. The army was drafting young men who were done with high school left and right, but they were not selecting college students.