The Devotion of Bill Bryk

Baseball lost a gentleman and one of the most loyal champions of the underdog

I had planned to tell a story about a contract negotiation and the conversations that occurred behind the scenes, but all I have been thinking about was what I wanted to say afterwards. So the reflections on the 2012 extension of Miguel Montero will wait.

The world lost a true gentleman earlier this week. Bill Bryk, a friend to anyone who ever met him, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 70.

I wrote about my time scouting in the Arizona Fall League with Brykie back in February. I had no idea at the time that he’d be gone less than two months later.

I can’t remember my first encounter with Bryk. When I joined the Padres in 2005, he was the Minor League Field Coordinator, working daily to instill developmental philosophies into minor leaguers and promote individual player growth.

He had a single office on the ground floor of the Padres administrative building — somewhere between the minor league coaches’ locker room, the dining area, and the minor league players’ locker rooms — in Peoria, Arizona, the site of Spring Training and year-long minor league operations. On his door was a sign, handwritten by someone other than the man who occupied it: Bryk Shit House. It seemed like a closed-door experience that all players wanted to avoid.

That was my first impression of Bill Bryk, who believed that if he wasn’t honest and direct with players — and people in general — then they had no chance of getting better.

I got a true understanding of Bryk once he became a special assistant to Kevin Towers. In that capacity, he was generally scouting in American League ballparks or at Padres affiliates. I played a supporting role in pro scouting at that time, so he and I had reason to speak regularly.

In the fall of 2010, Brykie and I hit the road for two weeks of advance scouting together. It was a strange time for both of us. One year prior, there was an ownership change, and 2010 was the first season that the baseball operations department was under new leadership. The Padres were in a pennant race, at one point in late August leading the division by 6.5 games. After dropping three of four to the Giants in early September, the two teams were tied for first.

Sometime during the week leading up to that four-game series against the eventual World Champion Giants, it was leaked on MLB Trade Rumors that A.J. Hinch — who had just been fired as manager of the D-backs and is currently manager of the Tigers — was being brought on as the VP of Professional Scouting. At the time, I was the manager of professional scouting. As sure as there are three outs in an inning, I can tell you that no team, especially in 2010 or 2011, needed both a VP and a manager of pro scouting.

Meanwhile, our former boss Kevin Towers was about to accept the GM job with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Prior to Saturday’s game, the Diamondbacks honored Bill Bryk.

It was the time in the season when — if your team is in or on the bubble of playoff contention — postseason advance scouting begins. The schedule-makers aced the NL West that year; the Padres finished the season with three games at AT&T Park (now Oracle Park) against the Giants.

It was no secret that Bryk and I were both still close with Towers, and many people already assumed that we’d both be heading to Arizona. Still a Padres employee, though, and still very much wanting to win the division, I handed out scouting assignments to the pro scouting staff. I decided that Bryk and I would follow the Giants.

I spent the final two weeks of the 2010 regular season on the road with Bill Bryk. Our first stop was in Chicago, his hometown, and before I had my bags packed, he already had an itinerary planned that included when he’d pick me up from the hotel to drive me to Wrigley (en route from his home in northwest Indiana) and on what day he’d be taking me to his favorite deep-dish spot in Chicago.

We were both fairly certain that this assignment would be the final chapter in our respective Padres’ tenures. On the drives to and from the ballpark, we talked a lot of baseball and very little else. For me, it was a learning experience with daily challenges of keeping up with the information and making sure I’d be prepared to present it to our manager, Bud Black. For Bryk, it was the continuation of a lifetime of work and the opportunity to mentor and bond with another colleague.

If those two weeks had been a buddy cop film, I would have been the overeager rookie to Brykie’s veteran detective who had retirement in his sights but knew he would never be able to leave the beat.

We spent two weeks in Major League ballparks — Wrigley Field, Coors Field, and AT&T Park — in three of the best cities in the country. We had the luxuries of nice hotels, great bars and restaurants for post-game food and drinks, and the thrill of scouting and following meaningful baseball in September. Meaningful baseball in September should never be taken for granted.

While Bryk loved being at the ballpark, gathering in the press box with fellow scouts and members of the media, and holding court in the scout section, his real passion came far away from the bright lights of big league cities.

Brykie’s heart was in independent league baseball — the Sugarland Skeeters, Somerset Patriots, Joliet Slammers and Windy City ThunderBolts. The indy leagues are unaffiliated. They have no connection to MLB teams, no parent club to stock them with young prospects. These leagues are populated by players and coaches who were overlooked or released for one reason or another by affiliated baseball. They are all underdogs, each player and coach holding on to the dream of playing professional baseball and getting noticed, being rescued and added to the roster of a minor league team.

Bryk would have fit in perfectly with the earliest generations of evaluators, when searching for players came with little guidance, and hustle and grit were even more important. During his scouting days, Bryk loved to alternate between the structured certainty of Major League Baseball and the desperation and unpredictability of independent ball.

Brykie referred to it as TUB — Totally Unorganized Baseball. Of course, the independent leagues had come a long way since Bryk’s first taste of it decades prior. But he loved the underdog; he loved a good comeback story.

Trivia question: Who was Tony Gwynn’s first manager in professional baseball? You guessed it: Bill Bryk, in 1981, with the Walla Walla Padres, the short-season affiliate in the Northwest League.

Here’s the catch, though. Bryk spent much more time talking about independent league players than he did reminiscing about interactions with Gwynn, or with any other blue chip big leaguer. This was part of Brykie’s South Side DNA. He wanted guys who had to fight their way to the middle. He loved grit and character and perseverance — the intangibles very often cast aside in today’s game.

When we joined KT in Arizona prior to the 2011 season, it was of paramount importance to Bryk that we host an open tryout. Anyone — and I mean anyone — who could make it to the field on time would be given a look.

The on-field performance was comical at times. I think one of the pitchers was a forty-something bartender Brykie knew from Chicago. He was our Sam Malone, but without the big league pedigree and the polished shine of Cheers. Our bar would have probably been called Boos. But that didn’t matter; the beer would have been cold, and the laughter would have filled the joint and spilled onto the streets after last call.

On March 6, 2011, everyone in the Diamondbacks organization showed up to scout the tryout. A pipeline to the independent leagues would become a critical piece of player procurement.

Talent wasn’t the point that day. It was about relationships — and, damn, Brykie was a master of that part of the game. It was easy for him because he cared about everyone. He wanted to make sure everyone got a fair chance, and he never had anywhere else to be once he set foot on the field.

The independent player tryout that day in March of 2011 was as much for invited independent league managers and commissioners as it was for us. It was his way of planting the Diamondbacks flag in the independent leagues and letting everyone know that the D-backs cared.

Bryk used his position to serve as a voice for the discounted or dismissed players and coaches. He knew that the road out of the independent leagues was long, but I don’t think he cared about that part. The battle was not insurmountable, and he wanted to grant every player the chance to chase a dream.

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During our first year with the Diamondbacks, we were fortunate enough to win the NL West and revisit the advance scouting process as part of postseason preparations. I spent a few days with Bryk in Milwaukee prior to our series against the Brewers, and I had been in regular — almost daily — contact with him throughout the season.

A couple weeks after our season ended, I went out to dinner with Kevin Towers. At one point in the evening, KT told me that he was going to make me his director of baseball operations. It was a big moment in my career.

“Brykie tells me you’ve got a good feel for players,” KT said to me. You see, Bryk staunchly supported his friends as much as he did unknown players. He wanted to make sure loyalty and hard work were rewarded.

I’m going to miss having my friend in my corner.

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