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If you want to learn about lions, sometimes you have to spend some time in their den. Recently I was invited to speak to a major league club's scouts. This was a real switch, because on those occasions when I've been lucky enough to be around scouts, I've done as much listening and as little talking as possible. This time I didn't have a choice, though. And of course within a few minutes I'd wedged my foot deep inside my mouth.

Maybe someday (I posited) we'll be able to feed a high school pitcher's height and weight, his parents' heights and weights, the speed on his typical fastball, the break on his curveball (or slider), his grades and his SAT scores, his personal habits, and a few dozen other things into a computer program, wait 0.00037 seconds, and voila, out pops a result: Jimmy Billy has a 43 percent chance of reaching the major leagues and a 13 percent chance of becoming a big star.

Could that happen within 50 years? Probably not -- and, in fact, the notion didn't really occur to me until that very moment. But for some reason I felt compelled to throw out the possibility, and you can imagine the response.

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