At age 52, Scales received votes listing him on the 1952 Pittsburgh Courier player-voted poll of the Negro leagues' best players ever.[4]
After retiring from baseball in 1958, he became a stockbroker.[5] He died at age 75 in Compton, California.[2]
Scales was among 39 final candidates considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame's Class of 2006 by the Committee on African-American Baseball, however he was not among the 17 elected.[6][7]
On November 5, 2021, he was selected to the final ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame's Early Days Committee for consideration in the Class of 2022. He received four of the necessary twelve votes.[8]
Notes
^On December 16, 2020, Major League Baseball declared certain Negro leagues, from the span of 1920–1948, to be "major" leagues.[1] Scales' statistics reflect his time in the Negro leagues from 1921–1929, 1935–1936, and from 1938 until the end of his career.