http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseba...9_felix31.html
"Surely, parallel dialogue began scorching the phone lines of other organizations. Sports agencies, too. But as the boy's 16th birthday neared, only a handful of the 20 or 25 fawning scouts had cemented the necessary inroads to be true contenders. The Yankees offered first. The Braves offered most.
Still, somehow, the Mariners offered best."
Still, the Braves made a spirited bid to sign Hernandez. Their man in Venezuela, Rolando Petit, is highly regarded and grew close to the Hernandez family. Atlanta dispatched scouts and high-level baseball operations officials to view Hernandez, a thorough vetting found only in "special, high-dollar" cases, one Braves official said.
Ultimately, they came in second.
"Very few days pass without that crossing my mind," said Dayton Moore, the Braves' director of player personnel. "That's the toughest loss we've had. I knew he was special the moment I laid eyes on him.
"It hurts my gut (that) we didn't get him. But that's the competitive part of what we do."