Billy Blitzer

Billy Blitzer grew up in Brighton Beach, has lived in Sea Gate for the past 36 years, and is a pro scout for the Chicago Cubs.  Baseball has been an integral part of his life since he played Little League at Coney Island's Kaiser Park and with his team at Lincoln High School. When he was a student at Hunter College he got involved with coaching Youth Service League "sand lot teams" in Brooklyn because he wanted to stay in the game. Blitzer was first recruited to work as a scout by the Major League Scouting Bureau in 1975 and is one of only a few scouts honored with his own baseball trading card.  During his years as an amateur scout, he enjoyed "the thrill of finding a player as a high school or college player and one day turning on the TV, seeing him, and saying, hey, I signed this guy. Out of every 100 signed, only 5 get to be big league players," he says. This year, 2018, is his 43rd season of scouting and his 36th season as a scout for the 2016 World Series Champion Chicago Cubs. Blitzer talks about the camaraderie of scouting and shares anecdotes about Brooklyn-born major league players, including Lee Mazzilli, who was his high school classmate at Lincoln.