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FeedFit for a King
A former Phillies scout and batting practice pitcher takes his baseball prowess to the kids.
Photo by Jared Castaldi Published June 28, 2010 at 11:59 AM
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Anyone who knows Hank King didn’t expect he’d sit still. Not after keeping on the move—and the road—for 34 years in the Philadelphia Phillies organization, a tour of service that ended after last season. Though he tries to get a grip on the reality of retirement, it eludes him.
“Every day, I say, ‘Where are we today? Retired!’ I want to be involved. My main job has always been baseball.”
And it still is, really. An Upper Merion High School graduate, a decades-long advance scout and former batting practice pitcher for the Phillies, King has delved more deeply into the sport he loves at his Kingplex. He opened the training center for youth and advanced players a decade ago in his Limerick backyard. This spring, he was the assistant baseball coach at Valley Forge Military Academy & College in Wayne, where he’s long-helped as a recruiter. He’s speaking and making appearances at camps and clinics, plus coaching an American Junior Legion team in Pottsgrove.
With as much as he threw a baseball in the 1970s and early ’80s, it’s a wonder King can still throw at all. He’s often asked how many pitches he threw in his career. “What if I had a dime for each?” he jests. “What if I had half a penny? In spring training, I’d throw three to five times a day. Tony Taylor would take a stopwatch, and we figured, if I could throw 12 pitches a minute, we could really get a hitter loose and get through four rotations at 15 minutes a group. But then, we always had less time on the road.”
Raised in King of Prussia, King signed with the Baltimore Orioles right out of Upper Merion in 1962. His first roommate in rookie ball was Mark Belanger, who spent his major league career as a shortstop for the Orioles. King blew out his elbow in his third year. Five years later, he reunited with a former minor league coach, Billy DeMars, who was coaching with the Phillies. King signed on to throw at batting practice for the team for $15 a day. “After the first day, they told me to come back tomorrow,” he says. “I did for 34 years.”
That was long enough to be with the 1980 and 2008 world champions, though King doesn’t wear either ring. “They’re in the house,” he says.
From 1984 to 2008, King was the team’s advance scout. That put him on the road all season, watching opposing teams. The reports he’d file helped prepare for the games ahead.
The longest tenured advance scout in professional baseball, King was on the road so much that he’s still only attended seven games at Citizens Bank Park—most of them during the 2008 championship run. Before each World Series game, without another team to scout, he met with the coaching staff to share his opinions and observations from the previous outing.
That off-season, King was presented with the 2008 George Genovese Scout of the Year Award in Los Angeles. He shared a stage that night with George Brett, Whitney Herzog, Rich “Goose” Gossage and the Alou family, who all won other awards. King chose former Phillies general manager Pat Gillick as his presenter.
“In all the years, he was the guy who treated me the best,” says King. “He was the one who began having 11 a.m. conference calls on Wednesdays, where he opened it up and asked for everyone’s opinion. All the other GMs just read the reports. He wanted to hear it from you.”
Last year, King was promoted to pro scout. It involved less travel and fewer reports. He crafted his own schedule and followed specific players under evaluation for possible trades or minor league deals. But after a serious illness and a five-day hospitalization in September, he missed the 2009 World Series run, retiring as the season ended.
“It was awfully strange not going to spring training and not having a job,” he says of this past spring. “But I stepped away as advance scout after we won it all. I guess it was the best time to get out.”
