Vern Law

When I graduated, I had eight or nine scouts knocking at my door. At the time [popular crooner and movie star] Bing Crosby had a part interest in the Pirates. He had a personal friend in Idaho, a local lawyer and later U. S. Senator, Herman Welker, who had gone to college with Bing at Gonzaga. He saw me pitch and called Crosby, who called the front office to send a few scouts out to look at me. So when I graduated, Welker and the Pittsburgh scout, Babe Herman, were there, in the midst of all these scouts coming in to talk to my parents. I wasn’t there. Welker and Herman bought a box of cigars and passed them out to all the scouts that were going to be doing the interview with my folks. In our [Mormon] religion, we don’t use tobacco, so when they came in smoking their cigars, my dad would politely tell them, “You can leave that outside but you can come in.” So a lot of them didn’t make too good an impression.

But when the Pirates came in, they had a box of candy and some roses for my mother. During the conversation, the phone rang and on the other end of the line was Bing Crosby. It had all been worked out.

I wasn’t aware of all this until Bing Crosby told me what happened some years later in the clubhouse at Dodgers Stadium.

Oh well, all is fair in love and war and signing ballplayers.