As a national baseball correspondent, Mr. Beaton toured spring training camps each year and attended the All-Star Game and World Series for two decades. He was among the first sportswriters to focus attention on amateur and minor league players before they became big-league stars.
He cultivated a network of scouts and coaches around the country and often traveled to distant corners of the country for firsthand glimpses of young players. He collected his observations in columns that highlighted minor leaguers from each franchise and discussed draft prospects and rumors of potential trades and free-agent signings. Many future stars gained their first national exposure through Mr. Beaton’s writing.
“Back before the Internet gave us so much information so easily about so many teams,’’ baseball reporter Tom Verducci wrote on the Sports Illustrated website, “if you wanted to learn something about teams outside of your home market … you read Rod Beaton.’’
Mr. Beaton interviewed hundreds of athletes over the years, but he had a particularly testy encounter with Bonds, the volatile slugger of the Pittsburgh Pirates and later the San Francisco Giants.
In 1996, while Mr. Beaton was waiting before a game to interview one of Bonds’s teammates with the Giants, Bonds ordered him to leave the clubhouse. Mr. Beaton said that, by major league rules, he still had 15 minutes to talk to players before the game.
“Time, dude, gotta go,’’ Bonds said, according to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Time to get out of here.’’
Bonds then approached Mr. Beaton, waving a finger in his face before shoving him in the chest.
“I stepped back and slapped his hand away,’’ Mr. Beaton told the Chronicle. According to other reports, he added, “Barry, you’re not my social director.’’
Several years later, after symptoms of Mr. Beaton’s illness had become apparent, he was unable to rise from a chair at a baseball gathering. Other sportswriters and baseball officials walked past, but when Bonds saw him struggling to stand, he helped Mr. Beaton to his feet.
After that act of kindness, Mr. Beaton’s wife said, her husband never again criticized Bonds.
Mr. Beaton leaves his wife, Maria; their two sons, Kyle and Cody; and a brother.
