Beyond the McCourt circus aspect, and the implication (hope?) that the Dodgers really are in financial trouble, this is a sad story. George Genovese should never have been working for the Dodgers. He was probably the greatest scout the Giants have had since moving west. The Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation named its Lifetime Achievement Award after him. From the late-60s through the late-80s he was responsible for a long, long list of major-league hitters we drafted out of southern California – Jack Clark, Matt Williams, Chili Davis, George Foster, Chris Brown, Royce Clayton, Dave Kingman, Gary Matthews, Garry Maddox and others. That is a pretty impressive list for one team, let alone a single scout - especially when taking into account (and who can forget) that this team still hasn’t developed a full-time starting position player out of the draft since Bill Mueller, who was selected in 1993 (though apparently, hopefully, finally, that is about to change).

The Giants fired Genovese after the 1994 season. He was 72 and had been with the team for 34 years.The year he was let go two of his signees comprised the left side of the Giants’ starting infield. Williams had hit 43 HRs in the 115-game strike-shortened season, finished 2nd in the MVP voting, won a Silver Slugger and Gold Glove and was the NL starting 3rd-baseman in the All-Star Game. Teams were cutting costs because of the strike and I remember reading an article back then about how miserly Genovese’s firing seemed and how poorly the Giants’ had handled it, and it didn’t make me proud to be a Giants fan. The team, with good reason, makes a big deal about the Giants’ “family” and about community service. Well, this seems like someone we should have been taking care of all these years.