SAN DIEGO — Starling Marte stood still in left field Monday as the pale California sun sank low in the sky. Baseballs whizzed past, to his left and right and over his head, and rattled around Petco Park. The rest of the best players in the game were taking their swings. Who was he to spoil the show? By and by, a line drive screamed his way and Marte sprung toward the gap to snare it.
Marte, a first-time All-Star for the Pirates, believed he belonged here all along, but he needed help securing a spot on the National League’s roster alongside closer Mark Melancon. After he lost a fan vote for the final spot Friday, Marte smiled, shrugged and said, “Next year.” The next morning, he learned from a post on Twitter that he would replace injured New York Mets outfielder Yoenis Cespedes.
Rene Gayo, the Pirates’ director of Latin American scouting, could not have imagined Marte an All-Star when he saw a skinny, 18-year-old kid try out for a fifth time and finally signed him for $85,000. Marte could not have imagined this, either, when, two weeks earlier, his tryout with a Chicago White Sox scout was aborted after a former buscone, a Dominican street agent, showed up with a handgun.
“It all started with some kid from Villa Mella in the Dominican, with pigs running around in a field that is very far from the major leagues — and not just geographically,” Gayo said Sunday by phone.
The secret of scouting is simply to see things where others don’t. Even as baseball becomes more and more mathematically driven, Gayo said, “If you’re a scout, you’re a prophet.”
Long before Marte reached this step, before he batted .316 with 30 steals by the All-Star break, Gayo sensed the boy was a little different, a little better, in about every little way. There was the swing, the speed and smart instincts in the outfield that would win him a Gold Glove in 2015.
“There’s a quote by Grantland Rice,” Gayo began, explaining why signing Marte was a risk worth taking. “He said, ‘It’s hard to define ‘class.’ It’s in the flick of a thoroughbred’s hoof. In the swing of a slugger’s bat. In the flick of a quarterback’s wrist. But once you see it, you’ll never forget it.’
“That’s how Starling was. When you saw him, you saw class.”
Natural outfielder
On his phone, Gayo has a video clip from Marte’s final tryout. For a potential five-tool player, his defense at shortstop was troubling. This kid in a red T-shirt showed a cannon right arm, but Gayo swore he was out of position.
“This is his natural position,” Gayo says on the tape. “He ain’t an infielder. He’s a little too stiff.”
”Which one?” asks the cameraman.
”The red guy that ran,” Gayo replied. “The fastest guy. He’s going to be an outfielder. Starling Marte.”
Eleven years after leaving the infield, Marte still laughs when asked about the move. Monday, he recalled, “I was not happy. I was a shortstop.” He often takes ground balls at shortstop before Pirates games. But, he added, “Now I love outfield.”
This spring, Marte gave Gayo a gift — an autographed Rawlings glove with the gold patch on the wrist strap, the type awarded only to Gold Glove winners. The scout got choked up as he described the particulars of the glove, which now is displayed in his office at home.
“He told me that Gold Glove was as much mine as it was his,” he said. “He didn’t have to say that.”
In the Dominican, top baseball prospects ideally are purchased by major league teams at 16. Marte was older than 18 when he signed, but Gayo said he doesn’t concern himself with age.
“I’ve never ever see a guy go up to the plate in a major league game and seen the umpire ask for his I.D.,” Gayo said. “You don’t see that. If you do, call me. I don’t care if it’s 2 a.m., call me.”
What mattered more than age were the five tools, and about those there were few questions.
“He ran beautifully,” Gayo said. “You knew that if this guy was an American, he’d be playing in the NFL. He’s a running back. And that swing. The only thing you didn’t know at the time was, is this guy ever going have any power? If you said he did or said he didn’t, both were guesses.”
Family moments
A few minutes after Marte left the dais in a ballroom Monday at Manchester Grand Hyatt hotel, a workout and media day before the All-Star Game, he returned to retrieve the name placard that had been posted behind him. “Why not?” he remarked as he carried it away.
Marte guessed he brought 15 family members and friends to San Diego. Along with his wife, Noelia, and his three small children were his father and his sisters. Marte’s mother died when he was 9. His father worked long hours at a slaughterhouse, so the Marte children lived with their grandmother.
Gayo, meanwhile, spent Monday rushing home from a youth tournament in Panama City, where he had spent a week scouting 14-year-olds in hopes of finding the next Marte. Marte texted Gayo when he found out he had made the team. They still talk on the phone nearly every day.
“He’s proud of me,” Marte said. “He looks at me like I’m his son. I look at him like he’s my father.”
Like a father would, Gayo has a cherished moment seared in his memory.
“The home run that ended 20 years of losing in Pittsburgh,” he said, referencing Marte’s ninth-inning, playoff-berth-clinching homer Sept. 23, 2013, at Wrigley Field. “The greatest honor God has ever given me is to be able to wear the Pirates ‘P’ that [Roberto] Clemente wore. To have a hand in making the Pirates relevant again is something I’ll take to my grave and thank God for the day I stand before him.”
Stephen J. Nesbitt: snesbitt@post-gazette.com and Twitter @stephenjnesbitt.
First Published: July 12, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
Updated: July 12, 2016, 4:31 a.m.
