Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Torii Hunter and Michael Cuddyer are all in the Twins Hall of Fame, and Mike Radcliff is the man most responsible for bringing them to Minnesota. Yet Radcliff, who who died at 66 Friday after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer, was just as comfortable discussing a 40th-round minor prospect as the stars who made him one of the sports' most respected and successful scouts.
"You could ask Mike about just about any player in the country, and he'd tell you his life story, where he went to school, his strengths and weaknesses. It was amazing," said Twins vice president Rob Antony. "No one was ever going to outwork him. He would have longer draft lists than any scouting director in the country, not even close. But that's what he liked to do, scout and evaluate."
And that's what he did for more than 35 years, after being hired by scouting director Terry Ryan as an area scout for the Twins in 1987. By 1993, Radcliff had been promoted to that job himself, eventually heading a staff of more than 60 full- and part-time scouts, and then to vice president of player personnel in 2007.
But Radcliff preferred to do much of his work sitting behind the plate, not in an office. He spent several weeks each spring personally scouting potential draftees, driving from campus to campus before the draft, then from Twins affiliate to affiliate after it.
"He believed in getting into the trenches with his people and going where the players are. He liked to get a lot of opinions," Antony said. "He liked to have his guys crosscheck other players, so you could have healthy discussion when you got into the draft room."
Radcliff was a consensus-builder, Ryan said, shepherding all those strong opinions while making the final call himself.
"He wasn't ever the loudest voice in the room, but he certainly was the most respected," Ryan said. "If he was in the ballpark, there was a reason for it, and people would take notice."
The most difficult and controversial decision he ever made, Radcliff said in 2017, was bypassing pitcher Mark Prior and first basemen Mark Teixeira, each of whom had major-league careers, in order to choose Mauer with the No. 1 overall pick in 2001.