He Breeds Dodger Blue

Since 1979, the safest bet in baseball has been that the National League Rookie of the Year will wear the uniform of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Four Dodgers in a row won the award starting in 1979; for the last five consecutive years Dodgers have been selected. Over the past few years, the Dodgers have found, signed, and developed more players who are in the major leagues than any other organization. Last year, the Sporting News named the Dodger farm system the best in baseball.

Ask Charlie Blaney, the Dodgers' vice president for minor league operations, how the Dodgers have achieved such a remarkable record when it comes to talent and, in true Dodger-blue style, he refuses to take any credit for himself. "It's good scouting, first and foremost," says Blaney, a 31-year Dodger veteran. "The scouts are the ones who go out and find the talent. Then you have to develop that talent. But the credit for that really goes to the player. The player is the one who has the talent. The player is the one who works hard. We're on the sidelines, encouraging, cheering, helping where we're needed."

As Blaney is quick to point out, baseball is like any other business: it's all about talent. And in its handling of talent, baseball offers useful lessons in the handling of talent: scouting, developing, teaching, and retaining the best players in the world, in an era of free-agency and ballooning salaries. Building a competitive organization in baseball, from the major leagues to the greenest farm club, in other words, is a lot like creating a fast company. Here are Charlie Blaney's tips on talent, the Dodger Way.

Here's the Point

First of all, you don't look at players with the idea of them being Rookie of the Year. Our goal is not to develop Rookies of the Year. Our goal is to win the league championship, and then to win the World Series. It takes quality players to do that. So our goal is to find every quality player we can. If they become Rookie of the Year, that's great. That's an indication that they're a quality player. But having five Rookies of the Year in a row isn't the point. The point is, we're not going to be satisfied until we win that next World Series.

Grow Your Own

Last year we had 60 players play in the major leagues who were originally signed and developed by the Dodgers. In Los Angeles, 18 of the 25 players on our roster were home-grown. Both of those figures were the highest in baseball. That's our philosophy: if we develop our own talent, we're more likely to win.

We put our best young players from the draft together each year in rookie ball and have them move up together. We want their competitive spirits to feed off each other: "You hit a home run last night. I'm as good as you. I'm going to hit one tonight." We bring them up together. They get to know each other, and they learn to play together on the field.

Part of our development in the minor leagues is to teach the player, "You're here to win." We want them to beat the other teams in rookie ball and Class A and Class AA and Class AAA, so when they get to Los Angeles, they've been beating the other teams for the last four years. It's nothing new.

You can't impart that pride and tradition when you just go sign a free agent or trade for someone who's come up through someone else's system. They don't really understand the Dodger Way until they've been here awhile.

Growing your own talent is also better in terms of economics. The way baseball is going today with free agency and the huge contracts, it's more economical to grow your own. Part of the basic agreement says that a player that you sign can't go anywhere else until after he's played for you for at least six years in the major leagues. But that's also why it's important to have a strong minor league system -- when you say goodbye, you've got someone to take their place. You also have more ammunition to use if you need to make a trade.

The Sixth Tool

The heart and soul of any baseball organization are the great scouts. They're the unsung heroes. They're the ones who are out beating the bushes, driving 200 miles to see a high-school game that gets rained out, or the opposing team walks the star player four times because they don't want to face him. They're the ones who deserve the credit for finding the talent.

Our scouts all have territories, and ever since baseball became a gold medal sport in the Olympics, we're scouting worldwide. We have 25 full-time and 10 part-time scouts who're scattered throughout the world looking for talent. Any high-school or college player in the United States or Puerto Rico gets picked through the draft. The rest of the world is open to the highest bidder, whichever organization can find a player and sign him. The Dodgers have more than 100 players under contract who aren't U.S. citizens, from 14 different countries.