By Jim Ecker
Thursday, April 23, 2009

Abe Flores began his long love affair with baseball the first time he entered Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles as a kid. That was in the 1970s, and the Dodgers had an all-star infield of Ron Cey, Bill Russell, Davey Lopes and Steve Garvey.

“That was the Beatles to me,” said Flores.

Flores, now 45, is the Director of Player Development for the Los Angeles Angels, so he hasn’t strayed too far from his home in southern California. He visits mostly minor-league parks these days, but that first visit to Dodger Stadium got it all started.

“It’s one of those things,” he said. “You never forget the first time you walk into a big-league stadium.”

Flores played baseball in junior college and at Cal State-Sacramento, but wouldn’t have given himself good grades on a scouting report. “I was a mediocre college player,” he said, “and that’s being kind.”

Now he looks for diamonds in the rough. The Angels have 153 active players in their minor-league system and 14 more on “Rehab Row.” That’s a lot of players, and Flores made a point of holding a five-minute meeting with all of them at the beginning of spring training.

Flores asked each player to describe his three strengths and weaknesses, and also to set three non-statistical goals for the season. Flores calls them “sticking points,” ideas that will stick with a player throughout the year.

Flores was joined in those meetings by Angels’ minor-league managers, coaches, rovers, coordinators and other personnel. The whole idea was to make players think about their careers.

“Some people really can break themselves down and understand their strengths and weaknesses. Some players cannot,” he said. “We had to actually help them with their goals.”

As Yogi Berra supposedly said, 90 percent of the game is mental. The other half is physical. But no matter how you mangle the math, you have to think yourself through a ballgame and through a career.

“I want every time they come into the clubhouse, turn their chair toward their locker and think, ‘What is my plan today?’ Keep reviewing the plan,” said Flores.

“It’s tough as hell to get that many meetings in, because you’re talking about 150 meetings,” he said. “But it really pays off. You’d be surprised. People were writing crib notes as they came into those meetings. I said, ‘It’s your meeting, there is no cheat sheet.’ I think they thought they were going to get yelled at or they thought it was some magic test. It’s really a simple thing.”

Flores received a master’s degree in sports management at the University of Arkansas. He worked as an assistant baseball coach at Arkansas and Southern Cal and aspired to be a head coach, but said jobs were scarce. He worked as a scout for the Colorado Rockies for nine years, then succeeded Tony Reagins as the Angels’ Director of Player Development in October of 2007 after Reagins became the club’s General Manager.

“I love it. It challenges you every day,” Flores said during a visit to the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Kernels, the Angels’ Class A team in the Midwest League. “With this, you actually see young men grow. And develop.”

Flores plans to visit all of the Angels’ full-season minor league clubs at least three times this year. That means three trips to Salt Lake City (Triple-A), Arkansas (Double-A), Rancho Cucamonga (High A) and Cedar Rapids (Low A), as well as trips to the Angels’ three short-season Rookie teams.

He said he’s “on point” every day, keeping track of all the players – their successes, failures, injuries and development. He said he asks lots of questions, keeps lots of notes and reverts to his training as a scout during games, looking for strengths and weaknesses. He said he’s also in charge of discipline, quality control, staffing, dress codes and other issues.

“It’s kind of like being a high school principal,” he claimed. “Everybody needs you, but nobody really wants you to be around very much.”

He said his job requires a heavy dose of patience.

“The rule of thumb is, as you get older you lose patience,” he said. “In my job, it is absolutely critical that you have an abundance of patience. That’s a tough skill that I’m always working on. You have to be patient with people’s skill level, and you have to be patient with people’s talent level. Sometimes, that’s as good as they’re going to be, and that’s it. We try to squeeze everything we can out of them.”

Flores measures a player’s size, strength and speed, but knows that good players come in different packages, some smaller than others.

“You can’t measure his heart,” he said, “or his drive.”