John Kazanas had a lot on his mind when he marched with the Greek baseball team in the Olympic Opening Ceremony in Athens.
There were his four children. There was his late wife, Chris, a Phoenix schoolteacher who tied of cancer last year. There was his friend, Rob Derksen, who was to manage the Greek team before dying of a massive heart attack two months ago.
There were Jerry Reinsdorf, Duane Shaffer and others with the White Sox, who have given him support at a difficult time. And there was Bryan Wagner, a star athlete the Sox selected with the last pick of the draft despite his own battles with cancer.
Some people go into a shell when tragedy strikes their family. Kazanas, a veteran scout who has been with the Sox since 1992, has gone into overdrive.
“My No. 1 thing is to do a good job for the White Sox, help out Shaffer, to do the best job I could if Chris was there,” he said. “I’m not going to let up. In everyone’s life, there are going to be times you have to make adjustments. You just find a way to make it work. I’ve always been a survivor.”
The Arizona Republic chronicled Chris Kazanas’ two-year battle with cancer. She provided access to reporter Connie Cone Sexton, who wrote a series of articles detailing what she and her family were going through.
Not so long ago Cone Sexton approached Kazanas about doing a story on how he has handled his new demands as a widowed parent.
“She already had a title–`Three Strikes and I’m Still Batting,”‘ Kazanas said. “I said no. There are a lot of worse-off people than I am. They probably need to focus some attention on those folks.”
Kazanas hasn’t gotten as far in his profession or life by feeling sorry for himself. He was raised in St. Louis, where his father died at 33, when Kazanas was only 8. His mother had emotional problems handling his loss, which led to Kazanas and his siblings being raised in a children’s home. He was on his own after high school, and he found his way into a career in baseball.
Kazanas was the head coach at Missouri-St. Louis and then moved to Phoenix to work as an assistant coach at Scottsdale Community College. That was then the spring home of the Oakland Athletics, and he got to know officials with the A’s.
He was hired to scout the Phoenix area for Oakland and then moved to the Sox after Ron Schueler, a special assistant to Athletics general manager Sandy Alderson, was hired to run the Sox’s baseball operation.
Kazanas is an old-time scout in most ways, catching as many high school and college games as possible, most of which he drives to in his well-traveled auto.
The one thing that distinguishes him from most of his peers is that he also shoots video of the prospects he scouts, figuring he might as well let others in the organization see the prospects he finds, not just read his reports on them.
During his 12 years with the Sox, Kazanas has fed the pipeline of the organization’s talent. His best find to date could be Dan Wright, who won 14 games in 2002 before elbow problems put his career on hold. Kazanas also is credited with the signing of top prospect Brian Anderson, a Jim Edmonds-type center fielder who could arrive in 2005, if not September.
The Arizona Fall League is among Kazanas’ assignments. It was there that he first saw catcher Miguel Olivo and pitchers Neal Cotts and Jon Adkins, all of whom were Oakland property at the time. His recommendations influenced the trades made by Sox general manager Ken Williams.
With the help of a nanny as well as his 21- and 19-year-old sons, Nick and Kevin, Kazanas has managed to run a household where the primary daily concern is the well-being of his two daughters, 11-year-old Julie and 8-year-old Rachel. He said the key is “being organized as hell.”
It can’t be as easy as that.
“We have days that we struggle,” Kazanas said. “Obviously we all miss Chris a lot. It’s been a big adjustment, especially having a parent in sports. They tell me every day how much they miss me. I do little things all the time so they understand (that he cares).”
Always proud of his Greek heritage, Kazanas was a natural to help develop Greece’s Olympic team. He was drafted by Derksen, who had been an international scout for the Baltimore Orioles. And Orioles owner Peter Angelos was helping to finance the team.
Under international rules anyone with a parent or grandparent born in Greece would be eligible.
Chicago native Erik Pappas, a 38-year-old catcher who played parts of three seasons with the Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, has become one of the leaders for a team that includes many players on leave from their minor-league teams.
Infielder Clay Bellinger, who played in 19 postseason games for the New York Yankees, adds stability. Baltimore prospect Nick Markakis, a first-round pick in 2003, has the ability to be a star.
The Greeks finished second in the European championships in 2003 but are 0-5 in the Olympics and won’t challenge for a medal. Kazanas, who joins North Florida coach Dusty Rhodes in managing the team, hopes to change that.
Kazanas has combined his work as a scout with the Olympic challenge. He has given the Sox an international presence that could pay off in signings after the Olympics.
Finishing the job that Derksen started pushes him.
“We’ll hang Derk’s jersey in the dugout, and we’ll definitely miss him,” Kazanas told Baseball America. “He did a fantastic job of finding players.”
Competitive by nature, Kazanas wasn’t thinking of wins and losses when he befriended Wagner. A quarterback and pitcher at Thunderbird High in Phoenix, Wagner figured to be sidelined for his senior season after doctors removed a fist-sized cancerous tumor from his left leg.
A relationship was begun that would include Kazanas standing beside Wagner and his parents during each of the harrowing doctor’s appointments.
“There was a chance they were going to have to take his whole left leg off,” Kazanas said. “The doctor wound up taking a lot of bone. It left him with something like a chicken bone, but he’s been able to do amazing things.”
Wagner did so much rehabilitation that he was able to get medical clearance to play his senior season of baseball. He struck out 14 batters in his first game back, then threw a no-hitter against one of the area’s top teams. He finished the season as an all-state pick.
Along the way Kazanas gave him on-the-job education in scouting.
Wagner is likely to continue playing, most likely at the University of San Diego, but it doesn’t appear he needs to make it as a pitcher to work for the Sox organization.
“I wanted him to know there’s a way to stay in baseball,” Kazanas said.
Wagner was the Sox’s 50th-round pick in the draft. It was as much a tribune to Kazanas as to Wagner from Shaffer, the Sox’s scouting director.
“It was so great when we drafted him,” Kazanas said. “Duane Shaffer agreed to it. It’s a great way to give a kid some motivation, some hope. When I told Bryan, he was so pumped. This kid’s got a great future ahead of him, one way or another.”
