---

Lifelong baseball man Harry Minor served the game for most of his adult life. After a dozen seasons playing minor league baseball, Minor embarked on a scouting career that lasted the rest of his life.

A fixture in the Dodger Stadium press box, Minor talked baseball with the scribes and fellow scouts before games in the press dining room. The amiable Minor was friendly to all who wanted to talk baseball.

ESPN SportsTicker’s Jim Smiley met Harry and the pair often talked about the game. Along the way Harry told of his long association with the Mets. He was especially proud of friendship with Casey Stengel, for whom Minor served as a pallbearer.

Upon seeing some of the collection that’s now on CoopestownExpert.com, Minor mailed a few Stengel-related items to Smiley. Shown here is the letter sent by Harry Minor. He also enclosed some pieces now featured on Stengel’s page on this website.

Minor had a solid minor league playing career. The highlight came in 1949 when he hit .350 to lead the Central Association. That year he slugged 24 homers and drove in 97 runs.

Articles about his scouting career mention that he helped sign Darry Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Lenny Dykstra, Mookie Wison, Wally Backman, Gregg Jefferies, Hubie Brooks, Kevin Mitchell, and Kevin Elster. Though he wasn’t the signing scout for many of those players; he may have covered them as a cross-checker.

---

This envelope arrived at Jim Smiley’s doorstep filled with goodwill from Mets Scout Harry Minor. To see the Casey Stengel material that accompanied this letter, click here.

A scout for more than 50 years, Minor received the George Genovese Lifetime Achievement Award in Scouting from the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation in 2007. Six years later Harry became the first scout inducted into the New York Mets Hall of Fame.

---

Brent Strom is best remembered most today as the pitching coach of the 2017 World Series champion Houston Astros. Nearly a half century before that, Strom was one of the best amateur pitchers in the country.

An All American and two-time NCAA champion under Rod Dedeaux at USC, Strom was one of the most sought after hurlers in the college game. Drafted by the Mets as the 3rd overall pick in the first round of the 1970 MLB June Draft, Strom was excited to begin his professional career. Mets scout Harry Minor who had followed Strom was sent with fellow scout Dee Fondy to sign the pitcher.

Just seven days after seeing his young Astros pitching staff help propel Houston to its first Word Championship, Strom recalled the 1970 interaction with the two scouts. “Still remember both he (Minor) and Dee Fondy sitting in my parents small loving room offering me 5k with an incentive bonus added. Just coming off a CWS championship and All American announcement I balked at first and threatened to go back to Alaska for another summer…they simply said ‘go ahead’…I blinked and signed for 10K and headed up to Visialia Cal Lg…and here we are today…funny.”

In the collection is this questionnaire filled out by Strom when he was barely old enough to buy a drink. In it he lists Minor and Fondy as the scouts who signed him.

Interestingly Strom was also the second player behind Tommy John to go through the groundbreaking surgical procedure pioneered by Dr. Frank Jobe. Though injuries derailed Strom’s professional pitching career, he remained in the game for decades.

The Astros’ championship came when Strom was 69 years old. A career 22-39 win-loss record in the big leagues fails to even scratch the surface of the contributions the man made to his life’s pursuit.