This weekend, ESPN and ESPN 2 will feature 16 hours of live coverage of the 2005 NFL Draft. A parade of NFL and college football analysts will break down the draft to its smallest minutiae.
In early June, however, there will be no such round-the-clock coverage of the professional baseball draft. College baseball stars experience relative anonymity compared to their counterparts on the hardwood and the gridiron. The top picks in the draft, scheduled for June 7-8, will not walk across a stage to shake hands with baseball commissioner Bud Selig on live television. Rather, they will be spending the day at home with their families and friends, following the draft on the internet and waiting for the phone call that will change their lives forever.
"Our sport is so unique in college athletics," Virginia head coach Brian O'Connor said. "In basketball and football, players can leave early, but it doesn't happen as often as it does in baseball. In basketball, there may be five or six guys who go pro after high school, while in our sport there are 600. The draft and the money at stake put a lot of pressure on players."
The baseball draft has several unique characteristics. Projecting future baseball talent is much more unpredictable than is spotting basketball or football potential. Players who decide to attend college must stay until the end of their junior year or their 21st birthday. Those drafted following their junior year have the option of signing with the team that drafted them or staying in school for another year and re-entering the draft. Teams retain exclusive signing rights on a player that they draft until just before the next year's draft. When recruiting star prospects, O'Connor is well aware of the inherent risks of potentially losing those players to the pros.
"I've lost many recruits to the pros," O'Connor said. "The decisions made by players of whether to go pro or not are something that every program deals with. We had to deal with it last summer when Patrick McAnaney and Sean Doolittle were drafted. This year we're probably going to have to deal with it even more. David Adams is a shortstop from Florida and is ranked as one of the top high school players in the country."
Luckily for O'Connor, both McAnaney and Doolittle honored their commitments to Virginia and have been productive players in their freshman campaigns.
McAnaney, drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 28th round (832nd pick overall), did not want to miss out on the college experience.
"I was set on going to school all through last spring," McAnaney said. "After I got drafted, that's when I really started to gather information about the differences between the two options from both the Pirates and Coach O'Connor. I went down to Florida and visited where the Pirates work out. I decided that college was just too much to pass up on."
Senior right-hander Jeff Kamrath, who leads Virginia's pitching staff with six victories and a 2.45 ERA this season, was drafted last year, following his junior season. Kamrath was not sure if he was going to get drafted or not, due to an arm injury which kept him sidelined for the 2004 season.
Kamrath, drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the 36th round (1,067th pick overall), was not even paying close attention to the draft when he found out that he had been selected.
"I wasn't listening to the draft," Kamrath said. "I was in the other room and my friends were listening to it. They were like, 'Hey, you just got drafted by the Indians.' I thought they were playing a joke on me, but we looked it up online and I had gotten drafted. About 10 minutes later, I got a call from the scout who had drafted me."
Kamrath never wavered in his decision to stay at Virginia.
"I had talked to Coach O'Connor about it before the beginning of the season," Kamrath said. "I only would have left if some absurd amount of money had got thrown at me and that was very unrealistic because of my injury."
For McAnaney and Doolittle, playing in a Virginia uniform made the most sense at this point in their careers. Yet, both always have pro ball in the back of their minds.
"Being a pro baseball player has been my dream since I was a little kid," Kamrath said. "You can't worry about the draft, however. You just have to play your best and things will hopefully fall into place."
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