January 27, 2000

Through a hooded spokesman, the Moline Greens announced yesterday that Fate Norris, age unknown, director of scouting and player development for the Green and architect of the team's farm system, has died, passing on just days before the latest Shoeless Joe League supplemental draft. Neighbors in Orion, Illinois, said that Norris, still physically active despite his advanced years, had not emerged to clear his sidewalk of a light overnight dusting of snow Sunday night. Friend and neighbor Rene Larson entered the Norris home and discovered the body of the longtime baseball associate in bed with various scouting reports, draft lists, and notes scattered about him. The coroner's report ruled the death a stroke.

Greens' general manager Rolf Samuels called the news "devastatingly sad." Norris was a "baseball sage, a humble but knowledgeable man who knew more about baseball than most other organizations combined. He had players he never even told me about. I grieve for his parting but also for the player names and scouting reports he took with him." Assistant director of scouting Josh Logan described himself as "sad but grateful" for all that Norris had taught him and for a chance to continue the "Norris legacy" within the Moline organization. Samuels said that Logan would oversee the Greens' draft in the immediate future, including this year's two supplemental drafts. It was not clear who would succeed Logan in the assistant director position.

After a varied baseball career that included minor-league player and roving scout in various areas of the West and Midwest, Norris left the Cubs in November, 1993, joining the Greens' organization that winter. Norris oversaw a strong team draft in March of 1994 that netted the organization starters Charles Johnson, Todd Walker, Manny Ramirez, and righthander Darren Dreifort, recently traded to Miami. Norris led the way on each subsequent Moline draft, as the team acquired a succession of players--Andruw Jones, Scott Rolen, Vladimir Guerrero--whose development gradually moved the team from second-division status to league champions this past year. But the SJL Shoe was almost beside the point for Norris. Championships were simply a byproduct of successful player development. "He always talked about the long term, always," said Samuels. "He never wanted to acquire players that were useful only for a year or two." The day after Moline won its first league championship this past fall, Norris was out on the road, talking with his area scouts and gathering information for the drafts of this year and the years beyond. "Fate believed," said his long-time friend Larson, "in the infinite deferral of closure, professionally and personally. I wish he'd been right."

Norris divulged little of his past and his exact age was unknown, though his claims to have seen Joe Jackson and Ty Cobb play ball, if true, would have put him near 100. Norris is succeeded by no immediate family. He willed his Orion home to Christian author Kathleen Norris, whose exact ties to the elder Norris are unknown. The Norris estate included a home, farm equipment, 30 acres near Orion and, surprisingly, 90 acres just west of Anchester, England. Although rumors have long circulated that Norris was the same man who played banjo with Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers , a Georgia string band of the 1920s and 30s, Norris steadfastly denied the claim. He made no mention of the band in his will and bequeathed his beloved banjo, "JoJo," to the Boggus family of Aledo. Recently, some speculated that Fate was actually Steven Land Norris, the so-called "other Norris," banjo accompaniest of Fiddlin' John Carson's band. Some observers have even speculated that Fate was actually Stevland Wonder, a.k.a. Stevie Wonder, but evidence for that theory was in noticeably short supply. A spokesman for Mr. Wonder did not return phone calls and Fate is himself dead.

Moline team ethicist Suzann Moertl described Norris as a "gentle, intense, contained man, open to talking baseball but reluctant to discuss the past and the condition of his soul." Moertl said she hoped to meet Norris again in the Edenic paradise that will soon avenge the "ongoing injustice of this world and the rule of Satan." Greens' team atheist Liane Luckman answered that such a reunion was "not likely," not simply because "God isn't real" but because Norris's body has already been cremated and his ashes cast upon the waters of the Edwards River. "It'd take some doing to get those ashes recovered, untorched, reassembled, and reanimated," suggested Luckman. "But, hell, I concede, if anyone could do it, I guess it would be God. And if and when that happens, I'll resign my position within the hour, I promise, and do whatever Suzann says."

The death of Norris marks the third loss to befall the team's department of scouting and player development within the last year. Fate's lifelong friend and minor-league star Leo "Muscle" Sholes passed on in February. In March, longtime area cross checker Lynn Orrion Mast died in Ohio while farming with his brother, formerly also a scout with the organization. Two years before, the Mast brothers had worked together to cover the fertile territory of the Ohio River Valley. It was the Masts who first called attention to Pat Burrell, whose bat blossomed in Ohio Legion ball play the summer of 1995. On the recommendation of the Mast brothers, Moline drafted Burrell in 1997, and "Pat the Bat" enters the 2000 season as the Greens' top prospect.