Would he do it all again?
That was the only question I wanted to ask Benny Gallo. He wanted to talk baseball.
Baseball isn’t what he does. It’s who he is.
It’s the wonder at a glimpse of a freshly mown field, the pride in identifying a teenager who might be good enough to make a living playing the game, the camaraderie among colleagues who sacrifice nights and weekends for something can be less of a job. and more of a calling.
“The energy of baseball and the people involved in baseball, it’s really contagious,” Gallo said. “You are in your element.”
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For Gallo, that’s all in the past. His baseball life ended three years ago when the Washington Nationals fired him as one of their scouts. The Nationals had required their employees to get the COVID vaccine. He refused.
He filed a lawsuit. The Nationals had advised employees that they would consider “reasonable accommodations” for employees with “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
In his lawsuit, Gallo cited in part his beliefs “as a devout Christian regarding the sanctity of his physical body.” The team had told him it “recognises and respects” his religious beliefs, but could not accommodate him because not vaccinating him meant he would “pose an unacceptable risk to the health” of those he would come into contact with.
Before a possible trial, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the Nationals could challenge the sincerity of Gallo’s religious beliefs. The Nationals’ lawyers did just that.
“I had to go through all the reasons why I was going against the church’s recommendations,” Gallo said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t agree with what the Pope is telling me to do.’ ”
Ultimately, there was no lawsuit. In August, two years and four months after Gallo filed suit, he and the Nationals reached a confidential settlement. He would have to wait months or years before an actual trial would take place, and he said the nonprofit that funded his lawsuit had expressed concerns about the length of the case.
“I would have liked to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court,” Gallo said, “but reality is setting in.”
Gallo did not get his job back with the Nationals. He stays out of baseball.
He was driving from his home in Encinitas to Orange County one day last spring, an unemployed scout who just wanted to attend a high school game with Harvard-Westlake shortstop Bryce Rainer, soon to become a first-round draft pick.
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“Really talented,” Gallo said. “You could tell this guy is legit.”
Gallo’s stance on vaccinations might not worry a team today.
The Nationals did not return a message asking whether the team is still mandating COVID vaccinations for its employees, but Major League Baseball is not, according to a person familiar with the situation but not authorized to discuss it. In 2021, MLB required COVID vaccinations for employees in the league office, the person said.
Nineteen states have passed laws regarding COVID vaccination exemptions in the past three years, including 10 that require private employers to exempt anyone who cites religious reasons for refusing the vaccination, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy.
Gallo wonders if his refusal to get the vaccine could explain why he can’t get a scouting job or even a job interview. But as Gallo acknowledges, this is not a good time for any scout to look for work.
“You have a better chance of getting a seat on the next Space Shuttle than you do of getting another job,” he said.
He is 66. He is aware of the lawsuit filed against MLB last year by 17 former scouts, alleging age discrimination. The pack has been expanded to 35 scouts, but no trial date has been set.
In the data revolution, teams often choose to supplement or replace scouts with video that can be evaluated by analysts in the office.
Just last month, MLB announced a deal with a Swiss technology company that the company said would transform player talent scouting by providing video-driven analytics of 20,000 professional, amateur and international games annually to the league’s 30 teams.
Life was simpler in 1980, when Gallo was selected in the same draft as Darryl Strawberry.
“He was one,” Gallo said, laughing. “I was 396.”
He played. He coached. He scouted. Then he refused the vaccine and essentially banned himself from the sport he loved.
He sold cars. He drove to Lyft. He became certified as a personal trainer. He’s thinking about bartending.
“I took my Social Security early and took my baseball pension early, so I have that,” he said. ‘But it’s been hard.
“I miss baseball. I think that’s where I belong.”
He looked straight at me.
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“If someone told you you couldn’t write anymore,” he asked, “what would you do?”
No one told Gallo he couldn’t scout anymore until he refused the vaccine.
“If anyone thought taking the vaccine was the right thing to do, for whatever reason, that’s fine,” he said. “But for me, what I did was the right thing to do.”
So the question I’d been waiting for: Would Gallo do it all again, knowing what he knows now?
“I would do it again.”
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
