Minor Made Imprint In 65 Years In The Game

DENVER—In the hours leading up to the 1982 draft, the Mets debated which Tampa prep righthander to select with the fifth overall pick: Dwight Gooden or Rich Monteleone?

Finally, veteran scout Harry Minor spoke up.

“Do you realize this other guy is 19 and Dwight is 17?” said Minor, a national crosschecker for the Mets at the time. “When Dwight is 19, he’ll be pitching in the major leagues. I was being facetious, but sure enough, he was.”

The Mets selected Gooden, and he proved Minor right. Gooden broke camp with the big league team at the age of 19 in 1984 and claimed the National League Rookie of the Year Award that year and the NL Cy Young Award the next. At age 20 in 1985 he went 24-4, 1.53 and completed 16 of his 35 starts.

It was one of many highlights during Minor’s 65 years in baseball, which began with 12 years as a player in the minor leagues and ended (in 2011) with 44 years in various areas of player evaluation for the Mets.

The Gooden story is one of many that will be told when Minor’s peers reminisce about his career. He passed away on Jan. 18 at the age of 88.

Minor passed at his home in Long Beach, roughly 30 minutes after being brought home from the hospital at his request, according to his son Bob.

A Distinguished Record

Minor spent time as a pitcher, catcher, first baseman and third baseman in his playing career. He managed three years in the Braves system (1958-60) and a year in the Mets system (1969), but it was a 51-year stint as a scout in which he made his mark in baseball.

The Braves made Minor a scout in 1960, and he moved to the Mets in 1967 for what became a 44-year relationship that included him becoming the first scout inducted into the franchise’s hall of fame in 2013.

How good was Minor? Good enough that he survived the tenure of nine general managers with the Mets. Good enough to understand how to make his point without making himself a nuisance.

“A lot of scouts have (Frank Sanatra’s) ‘My Way’ played at their funeral,” Minor once joked. “I told my wife Liz, ‘Don’t you dare play that at mine.’ Because when you last 44 years with one club, you didn’t do it your way, you did it their way!”

But Minor did have his way more often than not. He earned respect with a scouting sense that led to him being involved in the signing of numerous amateur players for the Mets, including Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra, Mookie Wilson, Wally Backman, Greg Jefferies, Hubie Brooks, Kevin Mitchell and Kevin Elster.

Wilson was one of his more enjoyable finds.

Minor, a crosschecker for the Mets at the time, showed up a night before a large group of scouts descended upon the University of South Carolina to see righthander Randy Martz, who wound up being drafted by the Cubs with the 12th overall selection in 1977.

Not one to sit in his hotel room or hang out in a local establishment, Minor decided to see the Gamecocks game the night before, and Wilson had a big night. Wilson struggled the next night, with a crowd of scouts on hand, but Minor never forgot what he had seen the night before.

It was one of those little edges that helped Minor make a big impact.