Guardians Season in Review: Gus Marlowe
– by Mario Crescibene
Seeing as we did a “Guardians Season in Review” series highlighting each player, I wanted to do the same for the reoccurring characters I created. It gives me a chance to show you
what goes into each piece, and gives you the opportunity to tell me what worked, what didn’t, and where these characters should go next. So without further ado, let’s start with Gus Marlow — the very first article I ever published as a Covering the Corner contributor.
To begin, I want to explain what the Gus Marlow articles actually are. While Gus is a fictional character, the work behind each piece is not. Every Gus article is built on analyzing statistics, scouting reports, and news articles about players who have caught my attention. Each one is a meta-analysis presented through Gus’s voice. What you read isn’t just my opinion on a prospect; it’s the pattern that emerged after digging through all the research and letting Gus deliver the verdict.
Behind the Scenes: How the First Gus Marlowe Article Came to Life
When I wrote The Old Scout’s Take, I had already been thinking about a scout character for weeks. I wanted an old-school scout with a vintage Cleveland cap, a battered messenger bag, and a voice that felt carved out of another era. So when I placed myself at Michael’s Diner, a place I genuinely love, Gus walked through the door already carrying every mannerism I’d imagined: the entrance in a flurry, the jackrabbit intensity from too much caffeine, the red flannel shirt and grey handlebar mustache, the way he’d praise a prospect. It was all already there. But beneath the theatrics was the real engine of the article: research.
Before writing a single line of dialogue, I dug through five or six different scouting reports and news pieces on Alfonsin Rosario, a player I was excited about. I wanted to bring all that information together, but in a cohesive voice and a format no one else in sports journalism was using. That’s how Gus became the vessel: a way to fuse statistics, patterns, and scouting language into something that came alive.
The manila folder that Gus forgets behind when he rushes out to catch his train was the final touch. I thought: If Gus left his report behind, what would it look like? So I created those pages exactly as I imagined he would have typed them—dot-matrix perforations, clipped headlines, a hand-drawn Marlowe Metric, the whole old-school aesthetic. The two images in the article came directly from that process.
And even from the very beginning, the constants that define Gus were already there in this first story:
the abrupt entrances,
the blunt phrasing and Marlowe-mannerisms,
the runaway exits.
Even in his debut, Gus Marlowe wasn’t a character I was building.
He was a character I was discovering.
The Evolution of Gus Marlowe
By the time I wrote The Return of Gus Marlowe, the character had already taken on a life of his own. But this second article pushed him into a new kind of story. One grounded not just in Cleveland nostalgia, but in a real minor-league game that fit perfectly for the players I was highlighting.
I wanted this piece to feel different from the diner encounter. So instead of placing us in another classic Ohio landmark, I dug through the Lake County Captains’ schedule. And then I found it — the perfect game in Dayton. A warm Tuesday night, a real box score, and a sequence of events that perfectly featured the players I wanted to analyze: Juan Benjamin and Esteban González. Every moment in the game that appears in the article actually happened in the real-life box score. I just set Gus Marlowe in the empty seat beside me and let him do what he does best: turn a string of stats and scouting reports into a living, breathing narrative. I just happened to find the ideal game that became the perfect stage.
And Gus? He was right there, wearing his usual crooked-C cap, with his red flannel and coffee-fueled intensity. Of course, true to form, he left with the same abrupt chaos that defines him: a foul ball clearing the stadium, hitting a car in the parking lot whose siren begins to play the tune to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame. ” A car like that could belong to no one else other than Gus’s and true to form, he bounds up the stairs of the stadium to check on his beloved Buick.
This article was an important step in not only solidifying those quirks that make Gus who he is, but it also expanded what I could do with the character. He could appear out of nowhere and with no warning, but also with that charm of the old weathered scout. This was also one of the first articles that I felt like readers were truly connecting with.
Robbymcd commented: Good story. He even has a cool name, Gus Marlowe. I’m a Raymond Chandler fan, who doesn’t love Marlowe? The same kind of savvy detective skills go into discovering what elements are necessary to create the crime or create the player.
Little did Robbymcd know, but soon after that I’d be debuting my own detective character for the Crescibene universe: Frankie de la Noche.
ovid5331 commented: Reminiscent of the legendary Hal Lebowitz. Hal introduced readers to a cast of semi-mythical characters who gave life to dry newsprint.
That would be the first time people compared my writing to Hal Lebowitz. And with votes of approval like that, it gave me courage to continue exploring what I could do with Gus.
Gus’s Final Bow (For Now)
The third Gus Marlowe article, Cuts, Clips, and Call-Ups, was the one where everything really snapped into place. By this point in the season, Gus wasn’t just a character I was flushing out — he was a fixture in my writing, someone whose voice came through the moment I started writing the draft. But this article let me take him somewhere personal. I grew up in Chagrin Falls. I know the Popcorn Shop. I know the crisp autumn air as you walk by the falls. And I have many fond memories of Dutch and the Mug & Brush.
That barbershop was a part of my life for over a decade. Dutch really did hang my high-school track photo in his window. The warm shaving cream he puts on your neck before a shave? Completely real. The scent of Clubman? All staples of the ambiance at the Mug & Brush. So when I sat down to write this article, I wanted to honor that place — a chance to blend that same mythic, timeless quality Gus brings with a Chagrin landmark just as enduring.
The Ortiz situation was unfolding in real time, and I wanted a way to sift through the aftermath of that trade, to talk about three prospects: Michael Kennedy, Nick Mitchell, and especially Josh Hartle — players who suddenly mattered more than anyone expected after the Ortiz and Clase scandal. So I once again dug through scouting reports, minor-league stat lines, and development notes. Then I folded all of it into the story the same way I had with the first two articles: let the patterns emerge and let Gus put his unique spin on it.
There was a special kind of joy in writing this one. It let me merge two parts of my world — my hometown nostalgia and the analytical backbone of these prospect pieces. And it let Gus show a new side of himself: familiar enough to belong in a local barbershop, sharp enough to drop a full scouting breakdown without missing a beat, and charming enough to trade puns with Dutch without breaking character.
With this third piece, Gus became something bigger than a device I used to summarize scouting reports. He had become a companion — he was becoming a character people already knew and recognized, someone who could show up anywhere and still make sense of the Guardians system with a scout’s instinct…and of course, disappear before you even realized how much he’d told you.
The Season in Review
Overall, Gus was honestly a surprise. He started as a concept for a character I wanted to use, and then became my first published article as a Covering the Corner writer. With each article, his mythos grew, and I already have a list of new places where I could run into Gus, exciting prospects he wants to give his take on, and creative ways for him to rush off in classic Gus fashion.
So what do you think? Did Gus Marlowe work as a character this season? Would you like to see him come back next season? Got any Cleveland landmarks you’d like to see him at or particular prospects you’d like to get his take on? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
