Baseball has been a significant part of Kent Gregory’s life for most of his 69 years.
His baseball lineage traces back to age-group play as a youth, on to George Washington High School, where he played for coach Paul Vaughn, and then to the University of Denver and coach Jack Rose. An infielder, he played in The Denver Post’s Metropolitan All-Star Game that pitted the Denver high schools against schools in the suburbs.
These days he works scouting local high school and college players for the New York Yankees as well as filling his assignment as personnel director for the Mile High Collegiate Baseball League.
But he also is a member of the recruiting team for the French National Baseball Federation. He became connected to the French Federation in a chance meeting three years ago in France while there to watch some of his former players in the Mile High League who were playing overseas.
“France has had baseball for about 100 years,” Gregory said. “They want to build up their national team. One problem is they badly need to improve their pitching.”
Gregory’s job is to find players in Colorado who have French ancestry in their family tree and would want to play for the French national team.To find those players, Gregory has to dig. Player biographies usually don’t go much into ancestry, and there aren’t many players with a name association to France, such as DJ LeMahieu and Dustin Garneau of the Rockies.
“It’s tough to find them,” Gregory said. “It takes a lot of phone calls and word of mouth.”
Gregory has yet to add to the French national team roster, but he keeps looking.
But he’s still plenty busy with his baseball work. The high school and college seasons are going strong, and there are players to be found for the Mile High summer league that begins play in June with teams along the Front-Range from Fort Collins to Pueblo.
Irv Moss: 303-954-1296, imoss@denverpost.com or @irvmoss
