GRAND JUNCTION — A pack of men with radar guns at the ready huddle in the stands behind home plate each year at JUCO.

Watching for a player with a good arm or a fast swing is only half their job. After the games, professional baseball scouts meet the players they’ve been eyeing and the players’ families, girlfriends, best friends, coaches and teachers to see if the player is physically and mentally prepared to play in the minor and maybe major leagues.

Al Geddes, a scout from Oregon for the Chicago Cubs, said friends and family let him know about everything from injuries to whether a player is prepared to leave home.

“Some kids get homesick or they have a girlfriend that says, ‘It’s me or baseball.’ And sometimes the answer is ‘Me,’” Geddes said.

If Geddes likes what he hears, he puts them in a round for the baseball draft and their name gets tagged to a roulette wheel-like board filled with players’ names and positions. Age and collegiate level don’t factor into his potential draft picks.

“If you’ve got it, we want it,” Geddes said.

After a long day at the ball field, scouts still need to fill out a report sheet on the players they saw and spend much of their time in the car driving from school to school in their territories or flying to events like JUCO.

Dustin Smith, a Texas Rangers scout based in Kansas City, covers a territory that includes Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and the Dakotas. Like most scouts who have served as a player or coach before becoming a scout, Smith played minor league ball and played at JUCO in 2001.

“I wanted to stay in the game and be part of the game,” Smith said of his job choice.

It’s far from a 40-hour-a-week job, and the pay isn’t exorbitant, said Angels scout Arnold Brathwaite of Dallas. But the job has its perks.

“I’m in Grand Junction, Colo. That’s a perk,” Brathwaite said.

“What’s better than watching baseball for a living?” he added.

Reach Emily Anderson at eanderson@gjfreepress.com.