June 5, 2012

Keller Passes

Hal Keller died today, Tuesday. He played briefly in the majors but was better known as a baseball executive. Six of his 11 hits did go for extra bases, however.

He was the first farm director of the expansion Washington club and remained with the organization from 1961 until 1978, when he left the Rangers to join the front office of the Seattle Mariners. Keller was with Seattle from 1979-85, spending the final three years as the Mariners general manager.

The younger brother of Charlie “King Kong” Keller, Hal Keller also scouted for California, Detroit and Cleveland Indians. He received the George Genovese Lifetime Achievement Award in Scouting from the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation.

Hal also pioneered the use of the radar gun as a coaching tool.

And he continually sought innovative ways to teach. In fact, he may have been a trend-setter. “I think I was the first man to use a radar gun,” he said. Sometime in the early ’70s, Michigan State baseball coach Danny Litwhiler, who used the gun, wrote to each major league team suggesting that they also might benefit from its use. Keller was intrigued, and bought one. Although he and Joe Klein, a former Senators minor leaguer then working in the front office, initially used the gun as a scouting tool, they soon found it had coaching possibilities, and so the radar gun as a teaching tool for Rangers’ prospects was born. Each scout in the organization was given a radar gun.

My thought go out to his family and friends.

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