Venezuelan Bust, Baseball Boom: Andres Reiner and Scouting on the New Frontier

6. On the Road to El Dorado: Scouting on the Frontier of Baseball

77 Rafael Cariel is an old-time scout, combing the countryside in search of prospects, romancing their families, and selling his team, the Houston Astros. Because he does not speak English nor travel to the United States, he is almost unknown to people in the front office in Houston. But Cariel has been crucial to the Astros’ success in Venezuela . Originally hired as a scout to cover the eastern region of the country, he now supervises all scouting for the Astros in Venezuela. Cariel recently retired from his job at the university in Cumaná and moved to the academy in Guacara where he also works with catching prospects. I arranged to go along on a scouting excursion with Cariel in eastern Venezuela in 1997 for an article for usa Today Baseball Weekly.1 Cariel, now in his early fifties, is reserved, soft-spoken, and calm in his approach to his work. As I spent time with him, I came to appreciate his engaging personality, his subtle sense of humor, and his straightforward, honest manner of dealing with people. Cariel’s success is due in no small part to his wonderful smile. He is also very thoughtful, treats everyone he meets with great respect, and is a very good judge of baseball talent. “Mr. Reiner told me I could take a plane or ride on a burro, I just needed to bring him players,” said Cariel when he greeted me at the airport near Puerto La Cruz. We got into his old vw Beetle, his preferred means of travel at the time. Cariel seldom flies and has never had to go by burro, although he does have to take a ferry to the tourist island of Margarita. On the Road to El Dorado Scouting on the Frontier of Baseball 6 78 On the Road to El Dorado “Vamos hacia el monte manaña—We’ll go to the countryside tomorrow —for a tryout. Today we’ll check out some kids here in town.” He cautioned me not to expect to find any ready-made players on our trip. “We are looking for rocks which may contain diamonds, other scouts look only for diamonds.” Fifteen minutes after I got off the plane, we were on our way to the ballpark to see a youth league game. We passed by the home of Jackson Melián, who in 1996 received a $1.6 million signing bonus from the New York Yankees. “Here is Jackson Melián’s house, do you want to take a picture?” asked Cariel. “I went to see him play four times. I talked to Jackson and to his parents. I went to the swimming pool where he worked out, and I even went to the beach to talk to his mom. I always had an open door with Jackson’s family. I gave the information to Andrés, and I told him Jackson was going to cost a lot of money. Houston had all the information.” But clearly, Jackson Melián was already a diamond and not the kind of prospect the Astros would be signing. Melián had a showcase in Sarasota, Florida, agent Scott Boros got involved, and several organizations made offers. Cariel’s scouting reports on Melián, however, were not wasted. Bob Watson, the Astros’ gm in 1994 and 1995, who read Cariel’s assessments of the young Venezuelan outfielder, was named gm of the Yankees in 1996. Melián never developed his potential, and eight years after signing with the Yankees bounced between the minor league systems of several organizations and had played only a few games above the Double-A level. Tragically, both of Melián’s parents died in a traffic accident in North Carolina in 1998 where they had gone to see him play. It is difficult to know what impact their deaths had on setting back his progress. We went to see a couple of innings of a game composed of thirteen -and fourteen-year-olds at a stadium in Puerto La Cruz. There was no grass on the infield, and I was told that this was very common in this part of the country. The dirt infields and the erratic hops the ball takes off of them were given as reasons why Venezuela had produced so many outstanding shortstops—Aparicio, Carrasquel, Con- 79 On the Road to El Dorado cepción...