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May 17, 2009 “You don’t have to be a superstar, you just have to be willing to work hard, and have fun” -Bobby Scales 99% of you have never heard of Bobby Scales. But columns like this are my favorite ones to write. I’ve been following Bobby Scales since he was an unheralded walk-on 2nd baseman at the University of Michigan in 1996. I noticed him right away because of the way he approached the game with his enthusiasm, intensity, and desire. I asked then-Michigan Coach Geoff Zahn about him, and Zahn simply said, “I love this kid, he refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer.” By his senior year, he was an All-Big Ten Selection, and in June while golfing, his cell phone rang…He learned he’d just been drafted by the San Diego Padres. The young man had come a long way from his humble beginnings at Milton HS in Atlanta, Georgia. On May 4, 2009, Bobby Scales made his Major League debut with the Chicago Cubs, and although it took almost 10-years of toiling in the minor leagues, he never took ‘no’ for an answer although he felt like quitting a couple of times. Thank God he didn’t… Ironically, his first home run, last Wednesday, was against the San Diego Padres, the very team in which he made his professional entrée into the low minor leagues. There aren’t many 31-year old rookies in the history of Major League Baseball. Because not many people would be willing to stick it out in over 1,013 minor league games, 3,300 at-bats, countless bus rides, moving to 8 different cities, and all the while, ‘working for scale.’ To supplement his paltry minor league income, Scales has been a substitute teacher at his alma mater in Georgia, but he won’t have to do that anymore. All the 4:00am bus rides, being away from family, and trying to make ends meet… let’s just say he paid his dues and he’ll have the victory within for the rest of his life. “I always believed from the depths of my soul, I could play and help teams win games,” Scales said recently. I believed it too… That’s the reason I approached Coach Zahn back in 1996. Scales has been an instant hit with Cubs fans, for obvious reasons, and most of the Cubbie faithful have been asking, “What took so long?” If character were weighted like statistics, then Bobby Scales would already be in the Hall-of-Fame. Who could say ‘no’ to that? (c) 2009 Novi
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