THE WORLD'S LARGEST AND MOST COMPREHENSIVE SCOUTING ORGANIZATION

| 2,576 MLB PLAYERS | 16,376 MLB DRAFT SELECTIONS

2,576 MLB PLAYERS | 16,376 MLB DRAFT SELECTIONS

General | General | 2/14/2007

Baseball Dirt!

Perfect Game Staff

Honesty Takes a Back Seat to Greed

We recently received an interesting phone call from a lady in Connecticut.

The mother of a player who was listed in the player information booklet at the Perfect Game National Underclass Showcase called us last week. She called to say, she had just been contacted by a certain Showcase Company who was very interested in her son attending their events. After listening to her talk, we asked her if she could email us an account of what was said. She said she would and that she could remember things almost exactly as they happened, since she had just finished talking to the person.

For those interested we should first say that this does not in any way involve Team Connecticut Baseball or College Select. Just in the interest of class, we will leave out the name of the company involved.

The interesting thing about this mom is the fact that her son has been to a few PG events, but he had to withdraw from the National Underclass because of a last minute emergency. She is someone we consider a friend and her son is very talented. It was too late to remove her son’s name from the player information sheets which were printed a week before the event.

Below is the email we received from her. The Showcase Promoters’ name is left out.

Hi, here is the exact phone call that just came into me....

This call came in to my personal cell phone..... ***-***-****
He asked for Mrs. ********

I said yes this is she.....

He said he was calling about my son ****.

He said "My name is Ron ******** we saw your son play at a recent showcase and are interested in inviting him to our showcases."

I was confused but said...which company are you with?

He said **** **** *******....

I said ok....

He said that "we recently saw your son play and are interested in how we can help him."

Still confused because my son has not played since fall, I said ok....

He said "we are the oldest scouting organization. He said we have all the important contacts in baseball and have quite an extensive list of showcases that **** might be interested in attending." He said" The largest one is at **** ****** University and there is one coming up at the single A stadium here in New England. We are very impressed with your son."

He said" if you want to check out our schedule and our information you can visit www.***************.com and see if there are showcases you want to attend and then call me back and I can arrange to send you information packets regarding the event you choose."

I said" well I am sort of confused..how did you find out about my son again?"

Ron said " we had a staff member recently at the showcase in Fort Myers...it was a Perfect Game Showcase and we saw him there and are interested in him and what we can do for him"

I said"ok (now realizing a scam)...but no disrespect intended, I was led to believe that Perfect Game was the world's largest showcase organization?"

He laughed (literally) and said...."well I normally do not want to bad mouth anyone....but we are the ones who have been around for ** years. We have all the important contacts. They (PG) just fool more people and take advantage of them". We can do things that they can’t do because of who we know.

I thought that odd, when I considered how they got our son’s name.

I said "well what would you say are the main differences between the showcases we have attended with Perfect Game and what you have to offer my son?"

He said" Well most importantly we believe in giving all the kids equal playing time. Other parents have told us that their kids have not gotten equal playing time as other kids at Perfect Game events after spending $500.00 to go there."

We limit our rosters and don't just put huge teams together. We also put the players profile on our website, Perfect Game does not do that. Therefore, you could get calls from coaches all over the country not just the ones that have personally seen your son play. He then asked me if **** has decided what area of the country he wants to attend college in?

I said, well Perfect Game actually does put all the profiles on their site, but "no...he is looking at a lot of different things right now"

He went on to say " The other thing that makes us better than Perfect Game is that we call colleges and arrange interviews for the kids....we stay very involved. Whereas at Perfect Game...if your kid doesn't get recruited..well then he just doesn't get recruited."

I guess I don’t know how this all works, but don’t the colleges decide who they want to recruit? What does arrange an interview mean unless the college wants to interview someone?

I told him I appreciated his call and would look at his website and call him with the camps I thought **** might be interested in attending. I asked him what number should I call him back on.....

He said ***-***-****. I read it back to him...
The number that showed up on my call ID however was ***-***-****....

So there it is...let me know what else you want to me to do....
This is very close to an exact replica of my conversation with him.... What a slime ball!

Guess these people don’t know the background of the people who work at Perfect Game?

Later,

*** ********

What to think?

OK, there’s probably nothing wrong with finding a name and calling the number. But just how dishonest is a person or company who claims to have seen your son somewhere and became very interested in him, when he was not within 1,000 miles of there at the time and place they claimed to see him?

We often get calls from parents telling us they spoke to someone who claimed to see their son at a PG event and he wasn’t at that event. Usually this was followed by a blast towards Perfect Game. Wonder if they ever realized they got the contact information from the people they are downgrading.

So when you get a phone call or literature in the mail claiming that they have seen your son play, take it for what it’s worth. It could be someone important who is telling you the truth or………. It could be dirt!

If we get upset enough we might just fill in the names and reprint this, but many of you already know who the missing names are!

PERFECTGAME.TV

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