By Kevin Glew
Special to The Tri-City News
Heplayed with Rollie Fingers before the moustache and Reggie Jackson before the swagger.
So when Port Moody native Wayne Norton met up with his former teammates last summer, he had plenty to reminisce with them about.
"I saw them at Pat Gillick's Hall of Fame induction," said Norton, now a scout with the Seattle Mariners. "I've seen Reggie over the years, but I hadn't seen Rollie for a while."
The trio waxed nostalgic about its championship-winning season with the Double-A Birmingham A's in 1967. That powerhouse squad, which captured the Southern League and Dixie Series championships, also featured Tony La Russa, Dave Duncan and Joe Rudi.
"Playing on that team was probably the best two months I ever spent in baseball," recalled Norton.
And with over 50 years in baseball as a player, coach, manager, administrator and scout, that's saying a lot. Growing up on Canada's West Coast, Norton couldn't have dreamed that he would spend more than half a century making a living in a sport that he fell in love with as a five-year-old.
After toiling on loosely organized squads in Port Moody until he was 16, Norton played Connie Mack baseball in Coquitlam, where his prowess as a pitcher and shortstop would earn him a scholarship to Whitworth College in Spokane, Wash., in 1961.
"I hurt my arm getting ready for the season, but I was the only left-handed hitter on my college team," he recounted. "I went seven-for-seven as a pinch-hitter, so the coach put me in the outfield, where I had limited experience."
The six-foot-one Canadian proved to be a quick study in the outfield and was signed by the New York Yankees later that year and dispatched to their Class-D club in St. Petersburg, Fla. He would struggle at the plate until Yankees roving instructor Steve Souchak worked with him.
out a week and got me on the right track, to the point where I hit close to .500 in August," recalled Norton.
His hot hitting impressed the Kansas City A's, who would select him in the off-season Rule 5 draft. Assigned to the A's Class-B affiliate in Lewiston, Idaho, Norton would belt a career-high 21 homers in 1962, before being elevated to Double-A Binghamton in 1963 where he became a centre fielder.
The following season, he suited up for the first integrated team in Birmingham, Alabama's history at the peak of the civil rights movement.
After another campaign in Double-A, he was promoted to Triple-A to compete for his hometown Vancouver Mounties. Over the next three seasons, he would be shuttled back and forth between Vancouver and Birmingham.
"I think it was a lack of confidence at the time, but I found it stressful playing in Vancouver in front of friends and relatives," he said.
Norton points out, however, that five future big league managers - La Russa, Marcel Lachemann, Rene Lachemann, Steve Boros and Joe Nossek - played with him on the 1968 Mounties.
"Some might not count Nossek," explained Norton. "But he was a bench coach for the White Sox for close to 17 years and I imagine he sat in for the manager a few times."
In all, Norton would play parts of five seasons in Triple-A, but it wasn't until 1969 that he was finally rewarded with a big league call-up. While manning centre field with the Iowa Oaks on Aug. 10, 1969, Norton was told that A's centre fielder Rick Monday had broken his wrist and Oakland wanted him to join the big league club in Baltimore the following day.
"That night my wife packed my only sports jacket and I was to leave around nine in the morning," Norton recalled. "It was going to be a Monday night game on TV, so we phoned relatives and told them to watch the game."
But just as he was preparing to board the flight to Baltimore, an Oaks representative tracked him down at the airport to let him know that the A's had changed their mind and were calling up another player instead.
It was heart-breaking for Norton, who had laboured loyally in the A's organization for eight seasons, but there's not a trace of bitterness in his voice today.
"I did have some raw power, but what kept me back was hitting consistently for average," said Norton, who batted .242 and slugged 107 homers in 1,206 minor league contests.
Norton would retire after the 1970 campaign. After being out of baseball for a few years, he became involved with the Canadian national team at every level.
While pioneering programs with Baseball Canada, Norton doubled as a part-time scout for the Montreal Expos. In 1977, he helped launch Baseball B.C.Norton says his proudest accomplishment in baseball was establishing the National Baseball Institute (NBI) in Vancouver in 1986. This ground-breaking facility brought together many of Canada's top baseball prospects to hone their skills and obtain a post-secondary school education.
"We had the same rules as a major college," noted Norton, who hired legendary coach John Haar to work with him at the NBI. "The kids had to go to school and they had to have a certain grade point average."
It was through his work with the NBI that Norton cemented his friendship with Gillick, but they had actually played against each other in the Eastern League in 1963.
"We kid each other now that we couldn't have been very good because we don't remember each other," said Norton with a chuckle.
The NBI survived until 2000 and can count former big leaguers Matt Stairs, Denis Boucher, Corey Koskie, Steve Sinclair, Paul Spoljaric, Rob Butler, Jason Dickson, Aaron Guiel and Derek Aucoin among its graduates.
Norton was perfecting his golf game when Gillick, who had accepted the Orioles' general manager's position, called to offer him a scouting role in 1996. He accepted and scouted Canada for the Orioles for three years.
When Gillick moved on to Seattle in 2000, he hired Norton again and the highly respected talent evaluator continues to be employed by the club today.
In his close to two decades as a scout, Norton, 69, has become known for uncovering lesser-known prospects, especially in Canada.
"Each organization that Wayne has been with, he has been instrumental in having Canadian players drafted," said Greg Hamilton, director and head coach of Baseball Canada's national teams.
"The key to good scouting is to go and watch games," Norton said.
"There's definitely more competition to sign Canadian players than there used to be."
