Twins scouting legend Mike Radcliff dies at 66

MINNEAPOLIS -- Right around now is when scouts around the baseball world start ramping up for the long season ahead -- which, of course, means that Mike Radcliff would already be out and about. Former general manager Terry Ryan, his longtime boss, figures Radcliff would maybe take only a day or two off until November.

And during that time, it might as well have seemed like the man in the visor, Tommy Bahama shirt and sandals would be everywhere, all at once. Twins vice president of amateur scouting Sean Johnson remembers once accompanying his mentor to a game in Arizona and hearing a cacophony of confused scouts wondering how it was possible that Radcliff could be there, given that he’d just been sighted in Miami -- or maybe it was Dallas.

“I think other scouts, for a while, tried to keep up with him, but he was hard to keep up with,” Johnson said. “Just relentless. He just cared so much about the Twins, and he was proud. I think we all stand on his shoulders. When people think about the Twins' scouting culture, most people will say a lot of kind things, to this day. We take no credit for it. It's what Mike started [36] years ago.”

Scouting is a gloriless, solitary profession at times, with grueling hours and even more brutal travel schedules. For all those hundreds of thousands of airline miles and myriad nights away from home, perhaps there are Twins fans out there who still don’t know that Radcliff was the one who made the call to select Joe Mauer with the No. 1 pick in 2001, or that he put his foot down to insist on picking Torii Hunter in the first round in 1993, or that he was the architect behind the selections and signings of countless generation-defining fan favorites over the years.

But Radcliff never sought that recognition, even as it grew increasingly difficult to find any corner of the organization that wasn’t touched by his fingerprints across 36 years of tireless work. Radcliff earned the undying admiration and respect of fellow scouts, executives and staff as he poured everything he had into the Minnesota Twins until his death on Friday following a years-long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 66.

Radcliff never had the loudest voice in the room, but his was the most respected one as he quickly rose through the organization after he first joined the Twins as an area scout in 1987 and was promoted to Midwest supervisor in '88, then to scouting director in '93, then to vice president of player personnel in 2007. He was the longest-tenured scouting director in baseball at the time of that final promotion to the role he held until his passing.

But it was his grace, humility and consistency that cemented his stature around not only the Twins, but also throughout the sprawling world of baseball scouting, earning him spots in the Professional Scouts Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Killebrew Root Beer Professional Scouts Hall of Fame in '21. He was also the 2016 recipient of the George Genovese Lifetime Achievement Award in Scouting and the '21 Herb Carneal Lifetime Achievement Award.

“To me, he's the definition of how you can impact people, how you can impact who you work with,” Johnson said. “And it wasn't just within the Twins' organization. You get to go to the Winter Meetings, the Scout of the Year Award, and all of the scouts that are in the Hall of Fame all think Mike Radcliff walks on water. He was the gold standard for literally everybody.”

His work ethic was legendary. His memory was second to none. Radcliff knew about “every great amateur player on the earth,” Johnson said, whether in Asia or in the Dominican Republic or in the late rounds of the domestic Draft. Johnson marvels at how, going back years and years, Radcliff could remember exactly the day he saw any amateur player and what they did, what he thought of them, and if his evaluation was correct.

Never was that more important to the Twins than in 2001.

The Twins held the No. 1 selection in the Draft, with USC ace Mark Prior widely considered the consensus top player available. Georgia Tech slugger Mark Teixeira also prominently figured into the conversations. But Radcliff and the Twins were also very familiar with a local high school catcher named Joe Mauer -- and though the Twins drew some criticism for the move at the time, Radcliff selected the hometown kid.

“You're looking at a high school guy versus a polished college pitcher, and we were always looking for pitching,” Ryan said. “Mike ended up saying, 'We're going to take Mauer.'

“That's probably the toughest decision he had to make as a scouting director, and we all supported it. When Mike set his mind to it, he had reasons, he had depth, he had character, he had makeup, he had signability, he had injury history. There wasn't anything you could get by him. He had all that on that particular choice and felt very confident Joe was the guy. He was [convinced] that was going to be the right choice.”

That Draft night, Radcliff told MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis -- then with Baseball America -- that Mauer’s swing reminded him of someone, but that he couldn’t reveal the comparison because it would put too much pressure on Mauer. Years later, he’d tell Callis that the comparison was Ted Williams.

During Radcliff’s tenure as scouting director, he selected numerous other fan favorites like Jacque Jones (1996), Michael Cuddyer ('97), Justin Morneau ('99), Denard Span ('02) and Glen Perkins ('04). Following his promotion to vice president of player personnel, he remained heavily involved in evaluations, highlighted by the 2009 international signing class that featured Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco and Miguel Sanó, as well as the 2012 selection of Byron Buxton.

Even after Radcliff was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019 and he was initially sidelined to undergo treatments, he joined the Twins via Zoom to help with their preparation for the '20 Draft, as reported by The Athletic, and soon enough, not even ill health could keep him away from the diamond -- the place he truly belonged.

“One day, I called him, and I knew he wasn't supposed to be out, but he happened to be in Oklahoma,” Ryan said. “I was surprised. 'Mike, you're not supposed to be traveling.' He couldn't stand sitting at home when other people were out doing their evaluating. ... I don't think there was any trip mileage-wise he wouldn't take. He would get in that car and he'd commute if he had to. His health dictated that he probably should have been at home.”

The heart matched the hustle, and that reputation permeated the industry. Johnson remembers when, during his first week of professional scouting, a colleague working for another team told him that Johnson had just been hired to work for the best scouting director in the game.

Johnson hadn’t met Radcliff at that point. But after they began working together in earnest, Johnson wanted to be more like Radcliff so badly that he went to the Tommy Bahama outlet in Las Vegas and bought around 30 shirts that were probably meant for gentlemen much older than he was at the time in an effort to match Radcliff’s ubiquitous uniform. (“Mike kept them afloat for years. He had to have,” Johnson said.)

Though Radcliff exuded quiet confidence in his decisions at every turn, he showed a trust and humility toward his entire staff from day one that made them feel safe and valued in giving him any opinion – from first-year scouts to grizzled veterans of the industry. That’s a value that Sean Johnson – and Deron Johnson before him – have tried to carry through to how they have managed their own staffs, now that they’ve followed in Radcliff’s footsteps.

Every day, with each passing decision, Johnson asks himself how Radcliff would have handled that choice. In that way, his presence will always live on within this organization, for as long as Johnson, his disciples and their disciples after them carry forth that banner.

And even if, at some point down the line, they don’t consciously find themselves asking that question, it’s safe to say that every decision they make, every scouting report they file, every player they draft -- it’ll all serve as a continued manifestation of Radcliff’s trust and the skills and memories he imparted upon them. Those echoes will linger around the baseball world as the recognition he never sought -- but earned for perpetuity.

“I think it falls on the leaders of our department to keep his legacy alive for a long, long time,” Johnson said. “I promised him I would do everything I could when I had the chance to tell him that.

“We care about each other deeply. It's a true team family environment. We don't ask people to do things that anyone else wouldn't do, because Mike never did that. I don't know if it's possible to replicate what he did, but we're going to try our best to do so in his honor, because that's what he deserves. That's the legacy he's left for us. It's our jobs to carry that forward and carry that torch."