San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Legendary Bay Area scout Gary Hughes dies
Gary Hughes, a legendary figure in Bay Area baseball circles and one of the most renowned scouts in the game’s history, died Saturday at age 79. USA Today, which first reported Hughes’ death, said the cause was liver cancer.
Hughes was a scout, personnel director and trusted adviser for several teams, including the Giants, in a career that spanned more than a halfcentury. He got into scouting after coaching baseball at Marin Catholic High School.
He was the Marlins’ first scouting director when the club was formed in 1991. Before that, Hughes was a chief scout for the Expos responsible for signing several players who starred on manager Felipe Alou’s teams in the mid’90s, including Delino DeShields, Marquis Grissom and Rondell White.
Working for the Yankees, Hughes drafted twoway players John Elway and John Lynch from Stanford before they chose to play pro football.
“I’m grateful that Gary took a chance on a skinny, nonscholarship, twosport athlete and gave him a chance to chase a dream,” said former Giants outfielder Randy Winn, who played baseball and basketball at Santa Clara and was drafted by Hughes’ Marlins.
“I enjoyed seeing him around the park as a player and later as a player development assistant and front office employee. Gary’s contributions to the game go far beyond evaluating talent.”
Hughes also scouted for the Red Sox and Cubs, to name a few, and most recently with the Diamondbacks, who issued a statement on his passing.
“Gary’s impact on the game of baseball was exceeded only by the number of friends he made throughout it,” the statement read. “More than anything, he was a tremendous person, a great storyteller and friend to everyone whose path he crossed.”
A’s manager Bob Melvin, who starred at MenloAtherton High and went to Cal before the Tigers drafted him in 1981, said Hughes “scouted me in high school. I’ve known Gary for that long, and I consider him a friend, a good friend . ... This guy was a star in the game for years and years and years at every level and is an icon in the Bay Area as far as scouts go.”
Hughes graduated from Serra High in San Mateo, a teammate of Jim Fregosi, an infielder who spent 18 years as a majorleague player and 15 more as a manager. When Fregosi turned 70 in 2012, two years before his death, he got a card from Hughes. It was a weathered clipping from a Peninsula newspaper showing the stats from one season at Serra, with Hughes outperforming Fregosi.
Hughes was a fixture at Oracle Park, often arriving hours before the game to sit in the stands and talk baseball, all the while scouting players as early as batting practice.