'They'd laugh in my face': New York woman ignored ridicule to become a respected MLB scout
Dorothy Fox didn't set out to have a career in baseball. It just worked out that way.
"It started out as a hobby," Fox said, "but it became life-consuming."
She started attending Rochester Red Wings games as a young girl and seldom missed a game, always keeping score and recording notes on visiting players.
The Charlotte High graduate had a keen eye for evaluating talent, and the Baltimore Orioles tapped her expertise to provide scouting reports on players in the International League. When the Red Wings weren't in town, Fox would drive to Buffalo, Syracuse or even Scranton, Pennsylvania, to catch a game.
She was one of only a handful of women working as a scout, but her work was well-respected within the baseball community.
Over the years, Fox compiled in-depth scouting reports on more than 8,200 players.
"I'll have a card on any player you care to name," she told the Toronto Globe and Mail in 1992, "and they're detailed. A lot of people in my profession would give their right arms for my file."
In addition to the Orioles, she also scouted for the then California Angels, Chicago White Sox, Milwaukee Brewers, Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays and Arizona Diamondbacks.
"When people in baseball first found out about Dorothy, they'd laugh and ridicule us," said Harry Dalton, a former Brewers' senior vice-president and the man who personally hired Dorothy when he was with the Orioles and Angels.
"After a while, though, it stopped happening. It was clear that Dorothy was very good."
Fox remembered her early humiliation in the Globe and Mail article.
"When I first started doing this," she said, "other scouts used to give me a terribly hard time. ... They'd laugh in my face. It was tough.
Fox became a member of the Rochester Community Baseball board of directors in 1984. She won the Jean Giambrone Award for commitment to local women's sports and was elected to the Frontier Field Walk of Fame in 2011.
The longtime Irondequoit resident died in 2012 at the age of 89. She left a collection of more than 900 scrapbooks, chronicling more than 60 years of Rochester Red Wings history. The Dorothy Fox Collection is maintained as a research resource by the Rochester Baseball Historical Society.
Sean Lahman is a former investigative reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle and served as an editor of a number of best-selling sports encyclopedias — including Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball and The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia.
This story was published in April 2015 as part of the RocJocks series.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Dorothy Fox of Irondequoit was a well respected MLB scout
