(Editor’s Note: Story was originally published on Nov. 12, 2016. We will have coverage of the Agostinelli Memorial Tournament beginning tomorrow at Baseball Heaven.)
It was 1993 when Jay Hankins approached the Triple-A catcher for the Philadelphia Phillies with a question.
“Hey Sal, did you ever think about being a scout?”
“The only thing I know about scouting is that it’s old guys in chairs,” Sal responded.
“Well, I think you would make for a good one,” he stated.
As fate would have it, that catcher was Long Island native Sal Agostinelli, who went on to accept a position as the area scout for the Phillies and his area would be New York and New Jersey.
As time went on and he had success in his coverage area, the front office tasked him with more and more territory.
The next year was Delaware, then they added New England. By 1997, his territory was Canada through Delaware when they had bigger plans for him.
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“A member of the front office approached me and said what do you think about working in Latin America?”
“I don’t know, I never really thought about it,” Sal replied.
“Well, I see you speaking Spanish with the players and you work well with them.”
“In college, I minored in Spanish and my degree is in international business.”
And the rest, as they say, is history. Sal accepted the position of Director of International Scouting for the Phillies–a tremendous amount of responsibility and power.
“Thirty-one Major League players and 20 years later, here I am,” said Agostinelli.
The list of players he has drafted is extraordinary. Among the current big leaguers are Freddy Galvis, Antonio Bastardo, Hector Neris, Cesar Hernandez, Maikel Franco, Jonathan Villar and his proudest one–Carlos Ruiz.
“I’ve just been really blessed and really lucky,” said Agostinelli.
The Ruiz signing in 1999 was especially important because he was the player with the ball in his glove when Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske to deliver the first World Series for the Philadelphia Phillies since 1980.
“He’s just one of the finest people I know,” he said in regards to Ruiz, who still keeps in touch with him to this day.
For Agostinelli, his baseball days date back to the Bronx–where he grew up a Yankee fan, since he was just 20 blocks from the stadium.
At the age of 13, he moved to Deer Park and attended Half Hollow Hills East HS. He was fortunate to spend a lot of time around former New York Met pitcher Al Jackson, whose son attended Hills East as well.
“I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time around great baseball guys,” he said.
As an undersized catcher, Agostinelli didn’t get the Div-I offers he was hoping for. Rather, he attended Dowling College as a freshman but took the advice of his buddy and transferred to a small Div-II in Western PA, Slippery Rocky University.
It was there that he emerged as one of the best players in the country. As a freshman on the JV team he hit .500 (18-for-36), but made the varsity team as a sophomore where he set a school-record with a .466 AVG.
After the season, he went on to play in the Stan Musial League, which he stated helped his development as a player.
“There were no college leagues back then,” he said. “You played in the Stan Musial against men, some that had been drafted. Going back to college after that, I faced players not as good as them.”
In his junior year, he had another stellar season–this time a .418 clip with 25 stolen bases in 27 tries.
That summer he was spotted by an Atlanta Braves scout who offered him a spot as an undrafted free agent, but he declined in fear that the team would have a short-leash on a UFA.
He returned to Slippery Rock, where he had a down season by his standards, but still a strong .359 AVG. He was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 20th round of the 1983 MLB Draft.
After playing in their system for six years, he was traded to the Phillies oganization and assigned to the Scranton Red Barons of Triple-A.
Agostinelli was primarily the backup catcher for future big leaguer Ray Stephens for much of his time there–peaking at 258 at bats in 1989.
He noted that he nearly got the call in 1991 when Lenny Dykstra and Darren Daulton got into a car crash but it wasn’t meant to be.
After being a player-coach with Double-A in 1992, his professional playing career was over at 30 years old, but a new career begun.
In 2007, Agostinelli began the Antonia Agostinelli Memorial Tournament after his mother passed away from lung cancer. He vowed to donate the first $5,000 to research for lung cancer but also gives to other charities such as Angels Without Wings.
In the first year of the tournament, Agostinelli ran into one of his former teammates observing a game.
“What are you doing here?” Sal asked him.
“I’m watching my son play,” he stated. His son happened to be a young player from Milville, NJ who stood out from the rest of the competition and was named MVP of the tournament.
You may know him as the 2014 AL MVP Mike Trout.
Since that time, the tournament has only grown and this year there was over 70 teams.
“I can’t thank my friends enough in the baseball community,” he said. “We had over 110 games that weekend. Luckily we have great relationships with Baseball Heaven and all the other turf facilities that were used.”
The tournament has brought to light some of the brightest players on Long Island over recent years. Some of the players have ended up being drafted by Sal’s Philadelphia Phillies–Jesse Berardi (Commack ’14), Nick Fanti (Hauppauge ’15) and Kyle Young (St. Dominic ’16).
“These kids are great players and they deserve to get drafted,” he said.
While Agostinelli’s job features being on the road 180 days out of the year (he was in Mexico this weekend to watch a workout), he thanked his wife and kids for being great and understanding the time commitment that it requires.
While Long Island has received praise for their development of pro players in recent years, Sal is one person that doesn’t get nearly as much credit for playing a role in these players getting recognition.
Follow the author on Twitter @V_Messana, or our publication @axcessbaseball.
