By John Klima
Staff Writer

If you wish to discover the baseball ancestry of the 2007 Milwaukee Brewers, you must first resign yourself to the past and a ballpark that is now a parking lot. The Bard’s Room of Old Comiskey Park in Chicago was where owner Bill Veeck would break open bottles of beer, share hot dogs and crush cigarette ashes into the hollowed-out tray he carved into his wooden leg. He would hold court with his baseball men in a ballpark dining room, humorously named for him, and dare them to build a trophy out of the trash.

With no money and a lot of ideas, a taste for telling stories and urging his people to be brazen, Veeck cultivated a culture that was absorbed by his General Manager, Roland Hemond. When Hemond became General Manager of Baltimore in the 1980s, his assistant was Doug Melvin, who, in turn, was granted the authority to incorporate the Hemond trademarks of trusting scouts and looking for players where other teams would scoff.

The Brewers arrive in Los Angeles Monday with a 26-16 record entering Saturday, comfortably in first place with a 5 ½ game lead in the National League Central and pursuing the franchise’s first winning record in 15 years. To the trained baseball eye, Melvin’s roster construction is a thing of creative beauty because it adheres to the laws of change, which originates from trusting your talent evaluators on the amateur and professional sides.

With big dreams and without big money, Melvin and his Milwaukee staff have built the kind of club Veeck dared his men to assemble a generation ago: one that succeeds with players drawn from every avenue possible, with only a few high-priced free agents.

“The best line that always stuck with me was when Roland went to Bill Veeck and asked what the budget was,” Melvin recalled in a telephone interview. “Veeck told him ‘You have to have money to have a budget. We don’t have any money, so go find me players.’”

The Bard had it right: crush another cigarette, down another beer, tell another story, and debate another player. But if you like that player, you had better be prepared to fight for him.

Melvin, who built the Rangers into a winner in the 1990s and became Milwaukee’s General Manager in 2002, rebuilt the Brewers with the same beliefs that can be traced back to the Bard’s Room. He reorganized scouting into amateur and professional divisions. He hired additional scouts. He gave his baseball people the room to dig out the bushes. He let amateur scouts work on amateurs and professional scouts cover the minor leagues. He followed the waiver wire and picked from it when appropriate. He let his minor league staff identify and develop those they really thought could play. He hired a young manager, Ned Yost, who stuck by those players when they took their first lumps as major leaguers.

The end result is a diverse roster that includes 11 players acquired by trade, eight originally drafted by the Brewers, one acquired on waivers and four free agents. It’s a testament to the reality that no two paths to the big leagues are identical, and the fact that it takes time and creativity to discover who fits what role best.

“There are 4,000 players to be seen,” Melvin said. “There are too many games and too many players. You can’t rely on just statistics to do that. You need to see people and people need to see players. They need to build relationships at ballparks. They need to see a player play every day. They need to evaluate their personalities. You have to evaluate their work ethic. You have to evaluate their overall baseball skills and performance.”

Only one pitcher – Ben Sheets – was originally drafted by the Brewers, a tribute to Dick Groch’s professional staff for helping Melvin plug holes on his pitching staff and overcome poor drafting under former General Manager Sal Bando. Prince Fielder, J.J. Hardy, Billy Hall, Rickie Weeks, Corey Hart and Tony Gwynn Jr. were each drafted by the Brewers more recently.

The decision to scale back the team’s budget from $40 million in 2005 to $28 million in 2006 gave Melvin the breathing room to sign right-hander Jeff Suppan to a four-year $42 million contract in December. He felt a slight payroll increase wouldn’t help as much as a stronger kick a year later. It also allowed Melvin to sign Craig Counsell as a fifth infielder to provide experienced insurance.

There’s also another principal at work. The Brewers are committed to no long term contracts beyond 2008, which means they can pick and choose, and keep the low-cost player acquisition cycle moving forward, save up for long-term deals for the players they want to keep most and achieve the always difficult balance of winning while turning the roster over. That cycle will probably remain the livelihood of the Brewers, who have a payroll estimated at just over $60 million this year, though keeping core players in place will likely require further financial commitments.

Milwaukee seems to have finally matured from a rookie team into an under-30 type team with a strategic sprinkling of veterans that plays like it expects to win. A closer look has to include the method by which the Brewers were built.

Melvin compares the process that has occurred in Milwaukee to the rebuilding process that transformed Baltimore in the late 80s, when Hemond first turned Melvin loose.

“Roland was that way when I worked for him in Baltimore,” Melvin said. “He gave me the latitude to go out and find players. If you really believed in a certain player, he’d say, go do it. He gave me the authority to go make a deal.”

Long before Melvin took the wrecking ball to the Brewers, he did it to the Orioles. He liked right-hander Alan Mills more than the Yankees did, got him for cheap, and found a soild reliever for a few seasons. He traded for Randy Milligan and Joe Orsulak to help bridge the gap until the drafting improved and Gregg Olson, Arthur Rhodes, Mike Mussina and Jeffrey Hammonds arrived. Hemond traded for Brady Anderson, Mike Devereaux and Chris Hoiles. The Orioles won again.

“Baltimore is a very similar situation to Milwaukee,” Melvin said. “We had Ben Sheets, Geoff Jenkins and Billy Hall. Other than that, the first two years were about looking for which players we were going to keep for the long haul and which players we were going to have to move and get some return on.”

The first step to rebuilding a roster is to admit that you don’t have one. That included hiring his evaluation staff, where historically Melvin has proven to have a talent. His first orders of business were to hire Groch away from the Yankees and bring in Reid Nichols, who had been his farm director in Texas, to run player development for the Brewers. Groch, an ace area scout in the Midwest who signed Derek Jeter in 1992, moved to the pro side because Melvin retained amateur scouting director Jack Zduriencik, who had been hired in 1997.

“I believe in putting a team together in all areas of procurement, whether it’s amateur, whether it’s waiver wire, whether it’s professional scouting with a trade,” Melvin said. “I knew we were going to have to make better trades. I knew we were going to have to find guys on the waiver wire. I want to tap into every facet we can.”

The fun began after the 2003 season when Melvin traded popular power-hitting first baseman Richie Sexson to the Diamondbacks, knowing he had no chance to re-sign him. Enter Groch’s staff, who liked left-hander Chris Capuano more than the Diamondbacks did, and in particular pro scout Chris Bourjos, who watched Capuano waste time in Tucson for almost two years. The first impact trade Melvin made is still influencing his club five years later.

Melvin got six players in return. In Milwaukee, first baseman Lyle Overbay hit for the power Arizona didn’t think he would, but with Fielder – Zduriencik’s call – marching to Milwaukee, Melvin traded Overbay to Toronto for right-handed starter Dave Bush, believing Bush was better then a 5-11 pitcher in 2005. Bush won 12 games in 2006 and is an innings eater. The Overbay trade also brought outfielder Gabe Gross and triple-A left-hander Zach Jackson. Melvin credits scouts Charles Aliano and Larry Haney with the coverage.

Melvin traded Junior Spivey, another component of the Sexson deal, to acquire Tomo Ohka from Washington in 2005 before letting Ohka leave this year because of concerns about the right-hander’s shoulder. He traded Jorge De La Rosa, also from the Sexson deal, to get Tony Graffanino from the Royals last year.

“That Sexson trade can go on a family tree,” said Melvin.

It was the late scout Hugh Alexander who believed that memory is to a talent evaluator what eyesight is to a hitter. Melvin’s waiver wire workings further illustrate his long memory and the way his mind works, drawing in components of his experience with the Rangers to keep mental tabs on inexpensive players he liked.

When outfielder Scott Podsednik, who was originally drafted by the Rangers and blocked by Rusty Greer, was waived by Seattle in 2002, Melvin and Nichols adopted their former farmhand. The Brewers played him and watched Podsednik establish himself with very solid years in 2003 and 2004. Melvin then traded Podsednik to the White Sox for Carlos Lee. When it became evident that he would not be able to retain Lee, Melvin picked up the phone and called Texas to plunder another piece from his former club.

He sent Lee to the Rangers for closer Francisco Cordero, whom Melvin had traded for in 1999 when he sent Juan Gonzalez to Detroit. Cordero was needed when Derrick Turnbow, a waiver wire pickup the Angels in 2004, put up a sub-seven ERA in 2006 after recording 39 saves in 2005.

For good measure, Melvin also took outfielders Kevin Mench and Laynce Nix in the trade, each originally signed by the Rangers during his tenure in Texas. Melvin also took originally Ranger-signed pitchers Danny Kolb and Doug Davis off unemployment.

Kolb learned a slider, for one year at least, before Melvin flipped him to Atlanta for Jose Capellan, a nice pitcher with a level head. Davis became a solid left-handed starter that Melvin then moved to upgrade his catching.

He included Davis in a three-for-three trade last November to get Johnny Estrada and much-needed pitching depth in Greg Aquino and Claudio Vargas, making one wonder if the Diamondbacks, as well as the Rangers, are Milwaukee affiliates.

Then there is the matter of the amateur drafts. The bottom came in 1993 when the Brewers had five picks in the first two rounds and a splendid opportunity to transition from the Robin Yount-Paul Molitor-Jim Gantner era into a younger and fresher franchise. But the Brewers took an o-fer that it could be argued set them back a decade. Once it became clear that Jeff D’Amico couldn’t stay healthy, Kelly Wunsch was too high of a hunch, Todd Dunn was soon to be done, Brian Banks couldn’t cash in, and Danny Klassen was barely a big league utility guy, the Brewers were in trouble. Antone Williamson, 1994’s No. 1, ballooned in every way except production. Jenkins saved face for 1995. Chad Green, 1996’s No. 1, proved hitting isn’t easy. Right-handers Kyle Peterson, J.M. Gold and Nick Neugebauer, top picks in 1997 and 1998, respectively, paid for a few rounds of golf for their orthopedic surgeons.

But Hall came out of the sixth round in 1998, Hart came out of the 11th round in 2000, No. 1 2000 pick Dave Krynzel became part of the payment for Estrada, and in 2001, things began to change when J.J. Hardy was a second-round pick. Zduriencik pulled one from the Bob Zuk school of how to spot a power hitter, choosing Fielder first in 2002. Weeks and Gwynn came from the 2003 draft. Third baseman Ryan Braun, who will soon hit his way to Milwaukee, came from the top pick in 2005, and dreams of a Fielder-Weeks-Hardy-Braun infield will make Bob Uecker want to hang around and crack jokes for another ten years. Melvin’s trade efforts to upgrade the major league pitching staff allowed Zduriencik to take a shot on another power-arm, Virginia High School right-hander Jeremy Jeffress, with the club’s first round pick in 2006.

Yost’s role in this should not be overlooked, either.

“The other key to this is having a manager who understands what you’re doing,” Melvin said. “Ned was very good at knowing what we were going to have to do. He knew it would be a grind for three years or so. He knew he was going to have to have patience, understand player development and understand the scouting aspect of it. He was on board for all of it.”

That held true when Hardy – who has emerged as an all-star caliber hitter in 2007 – struggled in 2005, hitting .180 at the all-star break. It was true for Weeks, especially in 2006, when he struggled defensively at second base. The player development philosophy held true on the big league level.

“People wanted us to send Hardy back to Triple-A and Ned refused,” Melvin said. “People wanted us to move Weeks to the outfield. Ned said no. He said that if we’ve identified a player as our guy for the future, then we’re staying with him. If he’s our guy, he’s got to play.”

Still, Melvin wants to get better. He wants the Brewers to become competitive in Latin America, where they have only one position player, double-A second baseman Hernan Iribarren, on the 40-man roster. He tells his pro staff to look everywhere. The Brewers are one of the few clubs that has a scout assigned to coordinate independent league coverage.

Melvin has been called a scavenger, which is as accurate as calling a meticulous archaeologist a grave robber. Melvin’s moves have not been random but detailed, and no one with a grave robber’s lack of patience could have built a staff that would studiously evaluate as many players as many times before deciding who they really believed could perform.

Having to take the spare parts of other organizations would hardly be the first choice of any baseball man, but digging has its perks. If you can’t beat them with dollars, beat them with determination. These are Melvin’s marching orders. Beat them not with hired guns, but with a stop watch, projection, networking, creativity and work ethic. Use men over money. It’s an approach the Bard would surely approve of as the formula to turn late-night discussions into late-night celebrations.

John Klima is a baseball writer for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group.