In the heyday years that surrounded their first World Series championship in 1980, no Major League Baseball team was more hidebound to the traditions of how an organization scouts prospects, develops its roster, and plays the game than the Philadelphia Phillies.
It was in that incubator of old-school ball that Ruben Amaro Jr. first experienced the Phillies Way as a batboy during high school. Paul Owens was the general manager, a believer in the virtue of a bountiful farm system and the legion of bird dogs who stocked it as they sat in sweltering stands at high school and college games and didn't need a stopwatch to know if a player was fast or a spreadsheet to know if he could get on base.