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Fortunately for the Phillies, area scout Chip Lawrence stayed on the case. And when Brown was still available late, they decided to take a shot. He eventually signed for about $200,000, extremely high for where he was taken, but not for the second- or third-round pick that he probably would have been if the football option hadn’t clouded the picture.

“I’m going to be honest with you. Baseball is my first love. I told all the scouts that,” he said recently at the Carpenter Complex. “But I guess I was so highly ranked in football that they just wouldn’t believe that a guy with my caliber of skills on the field would choose the baseball route.

Area scouts are the lifeblood of the org.