LJ baseball: Skiles the scout

 

Doug Skiles, LJHS grad

and Yankee scout

(from online image)

By Ed Piper

"I remember when the baseball field was in the corner of the football field," said Doug Skiles, a 1981 La Jolla High graduate, looking down from the present Muirlands facility toward the ballplayers' old digs on the lower campus. "An ongoing issue was the number of track athletes who would get hit with the ball."

That was a while ago, and Skiles, now an international scout for the Yankees, was enjoying Viking head coach Gary Frank's annual batting practice for alumni (though Skiles didn't take swings) the day after Christmas, Dec. 26. The two are friends, and were almost teammates at LJHS, Doug preceding Frank by half a decade.

The two share this commonality: both led their respective Viking squads in batting average, Skiles hitting .341 in the spring of 1980 (his junior year), Frank crushing the ball at a .426 clip in 1989, .372 the next year.

Another lifetime highlight for the homegrown baseball talent: Skiles spent almost 12 years in Sweden coaching the Swedish national team from 2001 to early 2013. His wife is from Sweden.

An associate of Doug's who knew he personally couldn't go back to Scandinavia to continue with the national squad told Skiles of the opportunity, and voila! It worked out extremely well. "We have lived back in the U.S. for nine years now," said the coach/scout.

In between coaching baseball at La Jolla High for six seasons (1987-1992) and his Swedish coaching immersion, he served as Padres bullpen catcher during the 1995 season.

His resume shows Skiles scouted for the Yankees for five years in 2010-2014; later the hated team to the north, the Dodgers, in Mexico, Europe, Africa, and Australia; and finally back with the Bronx Bombers since 2018.

Scott partially explained the story of how Gary Frank, a natural lefthander, became a second baseman. Gary's father, Howard, coaxed his son to throw right, while allowing him to continue batting from the portside. This was a good career move for the future, since lefthanded throwers are not allowed to play second, short, or third by coaches or organizations, who don't want to give up the advantage of the quicker throw with the right arm to first base from those positions. But Howard didn't reveal what he did to motivate his son.

Skiles also outlined the narrative of how Ronnie Spellman Field on the Muirlands Middle School campus came into being. Riding in the car that killed Spellman, who sat in the back seat, Scott had broken bones as well. "My face had total road rash," he recounted, as he ended up 300 feet from the vehicle speeding down Nautilus. He wasn't discounting the tragedy of his teammate's death. He was just explaining.

When word got out of Ronnie's essay on why La Jolla needed a baseball field (not on the football field), donations began coming in. A team of folks made the dream a reality in 2010.

"I use it as a coach," said Skiles of the auto accident. "Kids in La Jolla get a car at 16 years old. No one talks about speeding. I talk about that." He explained, "There were no drugs or alcohol involved." His point was that young people get their hands on the wheel of a machine that can go unlimited speed.