George Bradley (scout)

George W. Bradley

• Born November 15, 1942
• Died September 14, 2001 in Tampa, FL USA

Biographical Information

George Bradley was a longtime baseball scout who served as scouting director of the Detroit Tigers from 1983-1985. During his career, he scouted for the Tigers in 1981-1982 and also worked for the Oakland A's (1969-1972) Philadelphia Phillies (1973-1981), Chicago White Sox (1986), California Angels (1988), New York Yankees (1899-1990). While working as a scout, he was responsible for signing Champ Summers, Jim Abbott, Mark Lee, Jim Walewander, and Kevin Ritz among others.

He was briefly a top executive with the Yankees from 1988 to 1990. In that confusing era when George Steinbrenner would shake up responsibilities in the front office every couple of months, he was appointed as Vice-President of Player development and scouting in 1988, then of Player personnel in the fall of 1989, but in fact was a senior GM overseeing the titular holder of the office, Harding Peterson. The two were often at odds, though, and in any case it was Steinbrenner who was ultimately calling the shots. When Steinbrenner was forced by Major League Baseball to step away from actively running the team on August 20, 1990, because of his association with gambler Howard Spira, he named Gene Michael as GM in his last move, and switched Bradley to V-P for Baseball Operations, reporting to Michael.