A breeze robust sufficient to rustle the plush inexperienced cover of oak bushes towering over the outfield fence at Red Wilson Field, house of the Cape Cod League’s Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox, takes the sting off a humid 83-degree game-day afternoon.
Fans in garden chairs — some who staked out prime backstop areas hours earlier than first pitch and one girl who has been clanging the identical cow bell right here for many years — ring the sector, whereas others sit on blankets on a berm down the left-field line.
The scent of grilled burgers and sizzling canines fills the air. The grassy areas behind the dugouts are abuzz, with younger {couples} pushing strollers, followers strolling canines, and Little Leaguers interrupting video games of catch to chase after foul balls.
The earlier evening’s beginning pitcher, in full uniform, roams the grounds promoting 50-50 raffle tickets. Youngsters are pulled from the group to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” through the seventh-inning stretch.
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1. Fans line the outfield whereas they watch the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox tackle Orleans earlier this month. 2. A younger fan exhibits off his autographed hat throughout a Y-D Red Sox recreation. 3. Kids line up on the concession stand at Red Wilson Field throughout a recreation earlier this month. 4. Two youngsters collaborating in a youth clinic run by the Y-D Red Sox. (Jacqueline Mia Foster / For The Times)
It’s a baseball recreation with the texture of a summer time cookout, the look of a Norman Rockwell portray and an attract that continues to appeal the stirrups off a grizzled veteran of a skipper who arrived on this syrupy scene greater than a quarter of a century in the past.
“It’s like heaven,” stated Scott Pickler, 74, the longtime Cypress College coach who is in his twenty sixth season managing the Yarmouth-Dennis membership, considered one of 10 groups within the nation’s premier collegiate wood-bat summer time league.
“Retirement is overrated. Maybe it would be different if I was a great golfer or had a lot of hobbies, but I’m a bad golfer, and this is my passion. I get to go to the yard and make kids better, and it’s so much fun.”
Pickler was 14 years into a 40-year neighborhood school profession by which he’s received almost 1,000 video games and 5 state titles when he received a name — seemingly out of the blue — in 1998 from then-Yarmouth-Dennis staff president Gary Ellis and then-general supervisor Jack Martin, who interviewed Pickler over the cellphone and finally supplied him the job.
“I told them it’s gonna kill my recruiting at Cypress, give me a day to think about it,” Pickler stated. “I called them the next day and said, ‘I’m gonna try this … for a year.’ ”
Pickler, who started drawing his full pension from the California state lecturers’ retirement system eight years in the past, loved it a lot he saved coming again, returning to the Cape each summer time since 1998 — apart from the pandemic-canceled 2020 season — just like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano each spring.
Scott Pickler, proper, works with Y-D Red Sox participant Will Tippett earlier this month. Pickler has managed some 125 future big-leaguers on the Cape, together with Buster Posey, Chris Sale, Justin Turner, David Robertson and present Dodgers Walker Buehler, Chris Taylor and Joe Kelly.
(Jacqueline Mia Foster / For The Times)
Pickler is as a lot a fixture within the Cape Cod League as he is within the Orange Empire Conference. He’s been right here lengthy sufficient to have develop into the winningest supervisor within the league’s 101-year historical past when he notched his 540th profession victory in 2022. He’s received six league titles, together with three in a row from 2014-2016.
Pickler has managed some 125 future big-leaguers on the Cape, together with Buster Posey, Shane Bieber, Chris Sale, Justin Turner, David Robertson and present Dodgers Walker Buehler, Chris Taylor and Joe Kelly.
He was inducted into the Cape Cod League Hall of Fame in 2019, considered one of 5 halls he’s enshrined in, together with the American Baseball Coaches Assn. and the California Community Colleges Baseball Coaches Assn. His smallish 5-foot-9, 170-pound body clearly belies his stature.
“Pick is a giant on the Cape,” stated Peter Gammons, 79, the previous Hall-of-Fame baseball author and ESPN analyst who lives in Cataumet, on the west aspect of the Cape. “He works so hard at it, he’s so competitive, and he always has a lot of good players.
“He’s a great hitting coach and a really good teacher.
Red Sox players sign autographs after a game earlier this month. “He’s really good at having his players interact with fans and be a part of the town, both in Yarmouth and Dennis,” stated Peter Gammons, the previous Hall-of-Fame baseball author who lives on the Cape.
(Jacqueline Mia Foster / For The Times)
“He’s really good at having his players interact with fans and be a part of the town, both in Yarmouth and Dennis. There’s just an energy about him. And guys really like him.”
Along the best way, Pickler has develop into so ingrained on this seaside neighborhood that he was named Yarmouth resident of the yr in 2017, although he spends solely 2 ½ months a yr right here. Pickler and his spouse, Sharon, who’ve been married 49 years, most likely have extra buddies right here than they do in Orange County.
And they really feel as a lot at house in New England as they do in California, Scott capable of shuck oysters as simply as he flashes a hit-and-run signal, Sharon needing solely two summers to correctly incorporate the phrase “wicked,” as in, “It’s gonna be wicked hawt today,” into her vocabulary.
“It’s like having two different lives,” Pickler stated. “Two different but perfect lives.”
It took some serendipity involving his son, Jeff, a former Cypress College participant and one other Hall-of-Fame baseball author for Pickler to land this splendid summer time gig.
Jeff Pickler, now a Cincinnati Reds recreation planning and infield coach, completed his junior season at Tennessee in 1997 however wasn’t drafted, releasing him to simply accept an invite to play the ultimate three weeks of the Cape League season for the Wareham Gatemen.
“My dad was like, ‘I’ve heard about this Cape thing my whole life, I’ve never been, it’s the end of the summer, Cypress hasn’t started up, I’m going to go there, hang out and see what it’s all about,’ ” Jeff Pickler, 48, stated. “So he flew himself out with no place to stay, no plans, no nothing.”
It didn’t take lengthy for the elder Pickler to really feel the tug of the Cape.
“The first night I see a game,” he stated, “it’s Mark Mulder vs. Barry Zito at Wareham.”
“It’s like having two different lives. Two different but perfect lives.”
— Scott Pickler, on teaching for Cypress College and spending summers managing within the Cape Cod League
Pickler requested an older man on the gate — Cape League video games are free, however donations are urged — for a lodge advice, telling him his son was the brand new Wareham second baseman.
“He found me during the game and said, ‘I have a place for you — you’re staying at my house,’ ” Pickler stated. “So I go there, and I’m telling you, it was a trailer. The bed was a pullout couch. The foam was like this,” Pickler says, wrapping his knuckles on an aluminum bench. “But I was so tired it didn’t matter.”
Pickler stayed for 2 extra nights, getting a really feel for the league’s expertise — rosters are largely stuffed with freshmen and sophomores from Division I universities — its venues, which look extra like American Legion parks than SEC and ACC stadiums, and its followers, who appeared educated, passionate and welcoming to strangers.
He was hooked.
When Scott Pickler interviewed to be the supervisor of the Y-D Red Sox, he promised to spice up the group’s youth camps, one of many membership’s main sources of income. Working with youngsters at these camps is a part of a typical day for Pickler.
(Jacqueline Mia Foster / For The Times)
“He was like, ‘This is baseball heaven, this is amazing,’ ” stated Jeff Pickler, who helped Wareham win a league title that season. “So we get out of that summer, and he was like, ‘Man, that would be really fun to do.’ And I don’t know, he must have a horseshoe up his [rear end], but the next summer, he was the coach at Y-D.”
Pickler didn’t match the unique profile of what the Red Sox have been searching for.
“The whole [search] committee was like, ‘We don’t want a junior college coach, and we don’t want anybody from California,’ ” Ellis, 69, stated. “They don’t like bringing people from California here when we have guys in the East Coast who would love the job.”
Pickler was advisable by former Los Angeles Times nationwide baseball author Ross Newhan, whose son, David, performed for Pickler at Cypress in 1992. David additionally performed for Yarmouth-Dennis in 1993 and 1994, leaving the impression of a well-coached, well-prepared participant earlier than his eight-year profession as a big-league utility man.
“We can’t recall if it was the lady whose house we stayed in on the Cape or the GM, but they asked us if we knew of anyone, and we told them about Scott,” stated Newhan, 86, who was enshrined in Cooperstown in 2000. “We gave them his phone number, and they took it from there.”
Pickler, considered one of six candidates who was interviewed, promised to construct a aggressive staff and increase the group’s youth camps, one of many membership’s main sources of income.
“We weren’t doing well,” Ellis stated. “I remember talking to Jack [Martin] and saying, ‘We’ve got to run this like a business. And if we’re doing this as a business, who would you hire?’ And we’re both going, ‘Pickler.’ ”
Pickler felt some trepidation in regards to the job when he first arrived in South Yarmouth, a central Cape city of about 12,000 that is much less touristy than so most of the space’s quaint seaside villages.
Sure, it got here with a furnished home and automotive, however the Red Sox’s house subject on the campus of Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School had no dugouts, no press field, no concession stand, no bleachers, an uneven infield and a picket fence within the outfield.
Ellis and Martin have been dipping into their very own financial savings to buy bats and balls. Attendance at Pickler’s first youth clinic: Six.
“We were like the Montreal Expos,” Pickler stated. “There was a bowl in the infield, and when it rained, I was out there with sump pumps and running extension cords. I wore boots, because I would get shocked if I didn’t.”
Fast ahead 20 years: Red Wilson Field now has concrete dugouts, a full-service concession stand, a two-story constructing behind house plate that homes a press field and merchandise stand and several other units of bleachers. Water now not swimming pools closely on a laser-leveled infield, and a chain-link fence rings the outfield.
A mural on the again of the press field at Red Wilson Field shows notable figures who’ve been a a part of the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox, together with supervisor Scott Pickler, higher proper.
(Mike DiGiovanna / Los Angeles Times)
“He started with very little money, no fans and a bad field,” Jeff Pickler stated, “and it has since become kind of the crown jewel of the Cape.”
The Yawkey Foundation, which honors the legacy of former Boston Red Sox house owners Tom and Jean Yawkey, helped fund the upgrades, however so did elevated revenues from youth clinics, which common 60-70 campers a week, and attendance, which elevated because the staff improved.
“We used to struggle to make $40 a game, and now, on a good night, we clear a few thousand, $5,000-$7,000 for a playoff game,” stated Ellis, a lifelong Cape resident who was a batboy for the league’s 1969 All-Star Game. “Pick has been great for the economy here.”
Pickler used the relationships he constructed with school coaches whereas funneling gamers from Cypress to Division I faculties and his contacts within the scouting neighborhood to recruit higher gamers, lots of them from California.
Yarmouth-Dennis received its first league championship beneath Pickler in 2004. The Red Sox received titles once more in 2006, 2007, 2014, 2015 and 2016 and have been in first place within the East Division with a 17-8 file getting into this weekend.
“He’s at the very top, he’s what we all aspire to be,” stated Kelly Nicholson, 64, a Los Angeles Loyola High School math instructor and former baseball coach who is in his twentieth summer time managing the Orleans Firebirds.
“Six league titles, he manages a game as well as anybody on the Cape, he’s humble, he’s a fantastic teacher … I’m always trying to look, listen and learn when we play them, because he’s such an unbelievable baseball mind.”
Scott Pickler talks to individuals on the youth clinics run by the Y-D Red Sox. “I think what keeps him going is he just loves doing it, so he doesn’t think about getting tired or resting,” Sharon Pickler, Scott’s spouse, stated of his involvement with the Cape Cod League.
(Jacqueline Mia Foster / For The Times)
A typical summer time day for Pickler: arrive on the subject at 9:30 a.m. to greet youngsters on the clinics, which run for six weeks. Early hitting from 9:45 to 11 a.m. Go house for lunch — he lives a mile from the sector — and perhaps make the five-minute drive to the seaside for a dip within the ocean. Return to the sector at 1:15 p.m. for pregame work.
There are not any lights, so house video games start at 5 p.m. Road video games — the longest journey for the Red Sox, who journey by yellow faculty bus, is to Falmouth, 45 minutes to the west — begin between 5 and seven p.m. Pickler is often asleep inside minutes after returning house from a work day of 10 to 13 hours.
“I think what keeps him going is he just loves doing it, so he doesn’t think about getting tired or resting,” Sharon Pickler stated. “When he goes down, he’s out. But the next day, he’s fine. He has the energy.”
New York Yankees scouting director Damon Oppenheimer, who has recognized Pickler for 30 years, was shocked when he was instructed Pickler is 74 years previous.
“Really?” Oppenheimer stated. “I just never think of him as an old guy, because he always seems like he’s mentally so young.”
As Pickler racked up wins and titles at Cypress, his first three state championships coming in 1991, 1994 and 1997, he flirted with the concept of leaping to a larger faculty. He turned down overtures from Wake Forest within the late Nineteen Nineties and interviewed for the UC Irvine job that went to John Savage in 2002.
“Jeff used to tell me all the time, ‘Dad, why aren’t you coaching at a Division I school?’ ” stated Pickler, who coached at Anaheim’s Savanna and Loara excessive faculties from 1979 to 1984 earlier than shifting to Cypress in 1985. “Because the grass isn’t always greener, buddy.”
But the grass is a little greener on the Cape, the place Pickler is managing higher-caliber athletes in a skilled setting, gamers utilizing wooden bats and taking part in 5 – 6 video games a week throughout a 44-game common season and weeklong postseason that runs from mid-June to mid-August.
One in six present main leaguers performed on the Cape, the place followers relish the prospect to see gamers earlier than they develop into family names. Six Hall of Famers — Pie Traynor, Carlton Fisk, Frank Thomas, Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell and Sunday inductee Todd Helton — performed on the Cape.
“I think there was a bit of an itch to scratch in terms of coaching really talented collegiate players,” stated Jeff Pickler, who spent the summer time of 2009 together with his father as an assistant coach, “and he thought maybe this was a way to do it without leaving Cypress.”
Scott Pickler talks with Y-D center infielder Phoenix Call, a rising sophomore at UCLA. “I think the biggest thing with Coach Pick is he teaches the fundamentals, how to play the game right,” Call stated. “And he doesn’t … how do I put this? He doesn’t let you get away with things. He’s on top of you, but he doesn’t hold grudges, either.”
(Jacqueline Mia Foster / For The Times)
The problem for Pickler is threading the needle between growing gamers and molding gamers from all around the nation into a cohesive and aggressive unit.
“A lot of players go to the Cape to either showcase their skills or work on a few things,” Jeff Pickler stated. “But he knows the only way they’re going to play their best and develop is to play competitively. They’re going to play the game right and try to win.”
That means bunting when the scenario requires it. If a participant doesn’t dash down the first-base line, he’ll possible be pulled. And if a speedy outfielder asks for a inexperienced mild on the bases, like Vanderbilt star RJ Austin did earlier than a current recreation, the reply is no.
“I think the biggest thing with Coach Pick is he teaches the fundamentals, how to play the game right,” stated center infielder Phoenix Call, a rising sophomore at UCLA. “And he doesn’t … how do I put this? He doesn’t let you get away with things. He’s on top of you, but he doesn’t hold grudges, either.”
The Cape league has misplaced a little little bit of its sheen during the last decade, with gamers turning into extra transient, extra transactional.
Some school coaches received’t enable pitchers to take part, preferring they throw their innings for his or her faculty, and a few will ship pitchers to the Cape with strict innings limits. Some coaches who exert much more management require gamers to stay on campus through the summer time.
With the switch portal and identify, picture and likeness cash spawning bidding wars for faculty athletes, some coaches are leery of sending gamers to the Cape for worry they are going to be poached by different faculties.
And when Major League Baseball moved its draft from early June to the All-Star break in 2021, it created a subset of gamers who spend two or three weeks on the Cape in hopes of bettering their draft inventory earlier than leaving in early July.
Arkansas shortstop Wehiwa Aloy was main the league with eight house runs and 24 RBIs in 21 video games when he left Yarmouth-Dennis this month. Pickler is continuously on the cellphone with school coaches and advisors seeking to plug holes on his roster.
“It used to be that you’d have 25 to 30 players for the whole summer,” Gammons stated. “Now, most teams have 60 players.”
Scott Pickler, visiting the mound throughout a pitching change earlier this month, entered the weekend with a 594-480 profession file at Yarmouth-Dennis.
(Jacqueline Mia Foster / For The Times)
Players nonetheless dwell with host households, and lots of work as camp instructors to earn extra cash, however they aren’t positioned in summer time jobs like the times of yore, when Buck Showalter, who hit .434 for Hyannis in 1976, labored as a short-order breakfast prepare dinner and cleaned fences on the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, and Albert Belle — often known as Joey then — labored as a gasoline station attendant whereas taking part in for Chatham in 1986.
Two summers earlier than the Angels made Darin Erstad the primary general decide within the 1995 draft, the Falmouth outfielder labored as a cashier at a Bradlee’s division retailer and was named worker of the month for June after setting a file for effectivity. The subsequent summer time, he mowed the grass and did the laundry at Falmouth.
Erstad went on to assist the Angels win their solely World Series in 2002, however round these elements, he’s remembered because the star participant who was so good “he probably walked every old lady across the street in Falmouth at one point or another,” Gammons stated.
“Damn,” Erstad stated in a textual content message, “I miss those days.”
But Pickler doesn’t discover himself pining for the previous or making an attempt to vary his strategy, which has been constant since he arrived on the Cape.
“I got out here that first year and my assistant said, ‘Hey, are we coaching these guys up or are we just playing the game? These are somebody else’s kids,’ ” Pickler stated. “I said, ‘No, I brought you up here to make these guys better. We’re gonna get after it.’”
Pickler decreased his workload at Cypress in 2017 when he was named head coach emeritus and Anthony Hutting took over as coach, however Pickler nonetheless arrives on campus within the morning to work with hitters and attends each afternoon observe and recreation.
The days are simply as lengthy on the Cape, however Pickler, who entered the weekend with a 594-480 profession file at Yarmouth-Dennis, exhibits no indicators of slowing.
He nonetheless loves working with younger gamers and grooming assistants reminiscent of Matt Blake, the New York Yankees pitching coach whom Pickler employed out of Cressey Sports Performance in 2015, and Roberto Mercado, the Baltimore Orioles double-A supervisor whom Pickler employed out of New Britain (Conn.) High School in 2014.
He nonetheless loves interacting with scouts who worth and belief his evaluation of prospects.
“You’re gonna get an honest opinion, not only about the physical tools, but about what kind of kid you’re dealing with,” stated Colorado Rockies GM Bill Schmidt, who coached with Pickler at Loara and was a common on the Cape throughout his 20-year run because the Rockies’ scouting director. “It’s important, the makeup and where they come from.”
Scott Pickler talks to individuals at a youth clinic the Y-D Red Sox host through the season. “Retirement is overrated,” Pickler stated. “Maybe it would be different if I was a great golfer or had a lot of hobbies, but I’m a bad golfer, and this is my passion. I get to go to the yard and make kids better, and it’s so much fun.”
(Jacqueline Mia Foster / For The Times)
Pickler, who additionally has a daughter, Kari, 44, and two grandchildren, is in good well being — his father, former Anaheim councilman Irv Pickler, was 98 when he died in 2019. Pickler stays up on new teaching methods and the usage of analytics.
“I told him, ‘If you feel like you’re still learning, you’re still resonating with players, then you can still teach it,’ ” Jeff Pickler stated. “We all know at some point there’s the right exit off the highway to take, but when I talk baseball with him, he’s still as sharp as a tack.”
Pickler may be nearing the off ramp, however his almost three-decade, two-coast joyride isn’t over. There is nonetheless some life left on this baseball lifer, who stated he plans to return to the Cape — land of lobster rolls, ice cream parlors, miniature golf and a number of the nation’s most idyllic baseball settings — subsequent season.
“Everybody asks me how much longer I want to keep doing this,” Pickler stated. “I hope I know before I go too long.”
