Seattle Mariners executive Allison started as player in Alaska baseball leagues

From a little Alaska town too small to have its own baseball team to a Major League Baseball front office, Tom Allison's baseball journey was an improbable one — and it's not over.

Allison, who attended Susitna Valley High near Talkeetna in the 1980s, is the vice president of player personnel for the Seattle Mariners, a position he's held since October.

His baseball career has taken him all over the United States and to Japan, South Korea, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Great Britain.

But Allison's baseball origins go back to the Alaska baseball diamonds where many of the American Legion and Alaska Baseball League teams are finishing their seasons this summer.

Before Allison played in the minor leagues and traveled the world for five MLB teams over the last two decades as a baseball scout, he spent his summers playing for Bartlett's American Legion team and Emmitt Wilson's Anchorage 49ers, a defunct adult league team that often played against ABL opposition.

"I'll never forget being in the Alaska league and being able to play against the elite college players at such a young age playing for the Anchorage 49ers during the mid-'80s," Allison said. "To this day, I don't think there was ever a runner I saw that was faster than Tommy Goodwin (of the Fairbanks Goldpanners).

"I was a young 16-year-old, fielded a ground ball, came up to throw (and) he's by the bag. I remember, Emmitt Wilson at the time — who was obviously my baseball mentor in Alaska — going 'Well, that's what big leaguers look like.' "

Childhood friend Harlow Robinson, now the director of the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame, said Allison always carried a couple of baseball gloves around just in case someone wanted to play catch.

He was good at other sports too.

"He immediately became the star of our basketball team," Robinson said. "He was a gifted athlete. He was the president of our class. He immediately became a real leader in sports and in the classroom in our school."

During Robinson and Allison's senior year at Su Valley, their basketball team qualified for the state tournament, where they finished runner-up.

Allison also spent the winter months racing sled dogs in the Junior Iditarod and Fur Rendezvous races, but his true love was always baseball.

He got to pursue his dream of playing in professional baseball in 1990 when the Mets drafted him in the 48th round with their last pick.

"Regardless of where you're drafted, of how much money your signing bonus is, you now have the lottery ticket," Allison said of being drafted. "You have an opportunity to become a successful player … I knew I was blessed to have that opportunity."

Allison climbed to the AAA level, but could never get over the hump into the MLB. He finished his five-season minor league career with a .241 average, 64 RBIs and 35 stolen bases 303 games.

In 1994, Allison was asked to stay with the AA Binghamton Mets as a player-coach. The next year, he started scouting for the team.

Allison said he was leery at first because he was still confident in his abilities as a player.

"When that first happened and I was approached (for) scouting, I was like, 'Man, scouting. Those are those old guys who sit in the stands and tell me I can't play,' " Allison said. "But the reality of it was is I had many great role models and mentors that sat me down and helped map out what scouting (entailed) and certainly felt that it would be something that matched my skill set."

They were right.

When Allison couldn't reach the majors as a player, he used his baseball smarts to make it instead as an executive.

The first step was as a player-coach at Binghamton, where 17 players on the team's 1994 squad went on to the majors.

After nearly a decade with the Mets, Allison took a job with the Brewers as a cross checker in 1999. There, he was on a staff that built the Brewers into a playoff team by bringing in guys like Rickie Weeks and Prince Fielder.

Later, Allison took his talents to the Diamondbacks as a scouting director and in 2009 drafted roster mainstays A.J. Pollock and and Anchorage Bucs infielder Paul Goldschmidt.

He also had a brief stint with the Boston Red Sox before finally ending up with the Mariners in 2012 as the pro scouting director.

Now, as vice president of player personnel, Allison is in charge of international scouting, professional scouting and amateur scouting.

He's helped bring in guys like Robinson Cano and — more recently — first baseman Dae-Ho Lee from South Korea.

Instead of playing in the MLB himself, Allison gets to watch guys he's drafted or selected make the rise to primetime.

Of course it doesn't work that way every time. Allison said his first pick of the 2009 Goldschmidt-Pollock draft didn't even make the major leagues.

But that is part of the ups and downs of having a career in professional sports — a career that has had more ups than downs for Allison.

"I love backstories of why this guy was signed, or why he was drafted, why he was traded," Allison said. "That's the really cool part — that I get to now get up every day and I don't ever think I have a job."

Robinson reconnected with Allison last spring and went down to Arizona to attend a spring training game with his old buddy.

Robinson said Allison appreciates the Mariners' Alaska fans and offered two "fan experience packages" that will be auctioned off during next weekend's 10-year celebration for the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame.

"I'm really proud of the guy," Robinson said. "I think to get where he is right now is really an improbable journey.

"It says a lot about his makeup that he was able to climb as far as he has in the front office. There aren't a whole lot of baseball players and there certainly aren't a whole lot of baseball executives that come out of Alaska to get to where he has."