TOOLS OF THE TRADES : Being a Good Scout : Baseball: Joe McIlvaine would rather look for players than just about anything else.

SAN DIEGO —  He is in charge of his own baseball team now. The official title next to his name reads “executive vice-president baseball operations & general manager.”

He makes his own trades, negotiates contracts, decides who to hire and who to let go. He watches the waiver wire and keeps up with the free-agent market.

But Joe McIlvaine’s favorite part of baseball hasn’t changed. It still is scouting.

Ask him about it and he speaks with enthusiasm in his voice and a smile on his face.

“That’s still my favorite thing to do,” McIlvaine said. “It’s the most challenging.”

McIlvaine spent 10 years in the New York Mets’ organization. His first job was director of scouting. He was in charge of Met drafts from 1981 through 1985, and among their picks were Dwight Gooden, Kevin Elster, Gregg Jefferies and Dave Magadan.

The first lesson of scouting, according to McIlvaine, is that it is sometimes better to see a kid fail than succeed.

“When you see a kid strike out with the bases loaded or a pitcher give up a three-run home run, that’s when you are riveted to the player,” McIlvaine said. “Adversity is a mirror to what is inside of a kid. You watch his face, his body language, his actions, to see if he has the emotional makeup. To see if he bounces back.

“You can see it in Little League. It’s easy to see at the lower levels. If a kid has a terrible temper or throws bats, that’s not necessarily a negative quality. It may be a manifestation of immaturity.”

Or a manifestation of . . .

MEAN UMPIRES

McIlvaine once went to scout pitcher Bob Kipper in high school in 1982. For 6 2/3 innings, Kipper had a perfect game. One more out and it was his.

The count on the next batter went to 3 and 2. Then . . .

“The next pitch was borderline,” McIlvaine said. “It could have been a strike or a ball.”

Ball four, said the umpire. So long, perfect game.

“The catcher threw the ball back, and Kipper never changed expressions,” McIlvaine said. “He never kicked the dirt. And the next batter, it was strike one, strike two, strike three. It was the best performance I ever saw. He didn’t have the best stuff, but I said, ‘That guy is going to be a major leaguer.’ ”

Sure enough, Kipper has been in the major leagues since 1985.

McIlvaine prefers building through the amateur draft as opposed to free agency.

Two of his philosophies:

Free agency is a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

There is a correlation between what an organization does in the draft and what the parent team does four to five years later.

McIlvaine prefers hiring young people as scouts and training them, as opposed to hiring experienced scouts.

“It’s the old theory about having to teach an old dog new tricks,” he said.

He says it takes three to five years for someone to become a “productive” scout.

“The most important quality, what separates everything else, still has to be judgment,” he said. “You could have the best work habits, but if you sign the wrong players, you’re still going to be ineffective.

“The next thing still has to be mobility and salesmanship. You’ve got to be able to go into a home and sell the player and his family on your club.

“The other thing is work ethic. You’ve got to be able to work all the time, seven days a week, and be a self-starter.

“The only way to develop judgment is through experience. Managers, even at the major league level, a lot of time aren’t real good judges. They see the trees, not the forest. When you judge young players, you have to look at the long range rather than the short range. Managers tend to be short-sighted. They tend to worry about today.”

John Barr, McIlvaine’s assistant, was hired by the New York Mets in 1984 as an administrative assistant in scouting and minor-league operations. McIlvaine was the one who hired him, and Barr recalls open-minded discussions in evaluating players.

“Joe believes in using your instincts, or your feel,” Barr said. “When you watch a player, don’t try to like that player. If he’s good, he’ll make you like him.”

Or someone else will kindle your interest. Those are the times you might feel like you’re in some sitcom, such as . . .

TAXI

Scouting can be funny. Claudell Washington was found by a policeman in Oakland. And his isn’t the only wild story. One day, McIlvaine flew into Tallahassee, Fla., and caught a cab to the field and . . .

“Who you going to see?” the cabbie asked.

“This catcher, Butch Benton,” McIlvaine replied.

“He’s not even the best player in the city.”

“Who is?”

“The guy from Florida A&M.;”

Guy’s name was Andre Dawson. And McIlvaine didn’t even have time to see Dawson on that trip. Montreal later held a tryout in West Palm Beach and “discovered” Dawson.

“If I’d a had any brains, I’d have listened to that damn cabbie,” McIlvaine said.

Usually, though, cabbies are not your top-of-the-line scouts. In any given organization, there are a several different types . . .

Area scouts: These guys are responsible for specific territories, such as one or two states or, in the case of California, part of one state. They look at all potential high school and college prospects in their area.

Cross-checkers: Major-league clubs usually have two or three of these. The Padres have three, each responsible for a third of the country. He criss-crosses his area comparing and contrasting prospects from reports filed by area scouts.

“The hardest job in baseball,” McIlvaine said. “You’re on an airplane every day, getting one look at a kid in a raw setting, comparing high school kids and junior college and college players.”

Advance scouts: These are the guys who scout upcoming opponents, staying one step ahead of the team. If the Padres play the Dodgers on a weekend, for example, the advance scout watches the Dodgers earlier that week.

Major league scouts: They scout other major league teams and prepare reports on players the Padres are interested in acquiring or on teams the Padres might play in postseason.

Add all of these to the major league scouting bureau, an organization of scouts established in 1975, and scouting is more extensive than ever. The bureau scouts file their own reports on players, and teams compare these reports to their own--or find out about a player the club may have overlooked.

Most Padre scouts--there are between 40 and 50 in the organization--will concentrate strictly on amateur baseball until the June amateur free agent draft. After that, the Padres will turn their attention to professional baseball--both minor and major leagues. By the end of the summer, they will have scouted every minor and major league team at least once.

At times, they’ll find a kid who looks like . . .

THE NATURAL

Such as the time McIlvaine went to see Larry Sheets in Staunton, Va. McIlvaine arrived during batting practice, and Sheets hit five consecutive pitches out of the park.

Then the game started.

Sheets’ first at bat: Home run.

Second at bat: Home run.

Third at bat: “He hits an absolute frozen rope between first and second,” McIlvaine recalled.

Fourth at bat: Intentional walk.

Fifth at bat, with the game on the line: “He hit the longest home run of the day,” McIlvaine said.

Sheets, according to McIlvaine, was a below-average fielder, runner and thrower.

“But I had to give him the highest grade as a potential power hitter,” McIlvaine said.

Scouts look at potential, not performance. Good scouts always keep the future in mind. Can this guy develop? How much?

They especially need to keep this in mind when they see . . .

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

Once, McIlvaine went to Cheraw, S.C., to scout outfielder Ty Gainey. McIlvaine landed in Charlotte, N.C., drove to Cheraw and arrived about game time.

“I watch him come to the plate four times,” McIlvaine said. “He’s intentionally walked four times. He never moved from first base.

“He played first base, and his pitcher pitched a perfect game. There wasn’t a ground ball hit. I watch this kid seven innings and I haven’t seen him swing at a pitch, run, throw or catch. And I have to make a complete value judgment on him.

“That’s impossible.”

Sometimes, it is all scouts get. Sometimes, they have one night to see a kid before moving on to check out the area’s next big name, and they don’t always get to see a player at his best.

Sometimes, they have to use their imagination and be creative.

In the case of Gainey, McIlvaine happened to have some baseballs in the trunk of his car. After the game, he asked Gainey’s coach if the coach would throw a few pitches to his star player.

“I watched him swing, and he hit something like eight of 12 pitches out of the park,” McIlvaine said. “And he ran like a 4.1 down to first base.”

Of course, if things are going right on a particular night, such as McIlvaine’s experience with Sheets, a scout might see everything he needs in the first three innings.

“Joe has always emphasized a lot of basic tools like running and throwing,” Barr said. “Then, everything comes together. ‘Here are all of the tools.’ The biggest thing Joe taught me was to give an honest opinion. Don’t go with what other people say. Trust your own instincts.”

But McIlvaine’s philosophy includes more than just physical talent.

“More players fail because of psychological and emotional reasons,” he said. “In other words, if a player has great talent but has no confidence or no ability to perform under pressure, his chances of achieving success are greatly diminished.

“So you may love a kid’s physical ability, but then you have to employ these psychological tests.

“I’ll take the guys who have the emotional makeup and less talent than the guys who have talent and no emotional makeup, because they tend to become overachievers.”

Since McIlvaine took over, the Padres have not changed the structure of their scouting department, only some of the faces. They have two major league scouts, one advance scout, three national cross-checkers and more than 30 area scouts. McIlvaine wants to observe for a year to see whether he thinks the current system is effective.

Planning and organization are nearly as important as anything else. A scout has to make his own schedule and be on the move. When a high school coach changes the game time and doesn’t put out the word, the scout is on his own. Sometimes, he winds up . . .

HOLDING YOUR NOSE

Once, when McIlvaine was working in Santo Domingo in the late 1970s, he was all set one day to run a tryout camp. But a near-riot broke out at a nearby high school, and the police were called. Finally, the kids causing the disturbance disbursed.

“I’m getting ready,” McIlvaine said, “and suddenly, the kids in the outfield were on their knees, coughing. Some tear gas had drifted right across the street. We had to call it all off.”

So McIlvaine, working for the Angels at the time, called his boss in Anaheim. Tryout camp called on account of tear gas.

Most scouts’ big day is the June draft. As it approaches, McIlvaine said the various Padre scouts will meet for about five days to argue, cajole and compare notes. They will compile a list of about 250 or so players, in the preferential order.

“No matter where you draft, it seems you’re always going to get three of your first 25 players,” McIlvaine said. “Somehow, some way. If you get more than that and you’ve judged correctly, you’re going to have a heck of a draft.”

And that’s your reward for all of those muscle strains while lugging radar guns and stopwatches, notebooks and pencils. You are sometimes gone 200 or more nights a year. You bust your hump for a boss in a faraway place, and if your club drafts and signs one of your players, you feel nearly as proud as if your own son signed.

And then, there are other times, times when you just shake your head and wind up saying . . .

HUH?

That’s what Cincinnati scouts were saying a few years ago when Reds owner Marge Schott started looking for ways to cut expenses. She sent down a mandate that scouts had to use pay telephones on the road rather than hotel phones. That way, she figured, the club would save the 50- or 75-cent surcharge hotels tack onto phone calls.

Schott even thought of getting rid of her scouts.

“Why do we need them?” she wondered. “All they do is watch baseball games.”