Welcome to Baseball Week. As http://www.yadeos.com/cam-newton-jersey-c-1_7.html training camp approaches and baseball takes a break for its mid-summer classic, The MMQB presents a week of stories on the crossover between hardball and football.
In the spring of 1995, with the MLB draft just around the corner, the Seattle Mariners invited two dozen or so prospects to work out at the Kingdome. The group included a mix of college and high school players, some big-time prospects and some long shots. Among them was a promising 17-year-old catcher from the Bay Area named Tom Brady.
The Mariners let the prospects change in the home clubhouse before the director of scouting ran them through drills on the field: the 60-yard dash, fielding exercises and batting practice. The prospects used wooden bats, just like the pros, and Brady even hit a few out of the park. “It was an incredible life experience,” Brady told The MMQB in an email interview.
But the real highlight of the day came during http://www.arimtex.com/chris-carter-jersey-c-1_3.html a quiet moment in the clubhouse, where Brady and Greg Millichap, his high school teammate who was also invited to the tryout, came upon Ken Griffey Jr.’s locker. Back then, Griffey was arguably the most popular player on the planet. He was The Kid, 25 years old and already a perennial All-Star. Nintendo had just put him on the cover of a video game. Thousands of kids around the country were turning their hats backward and imitating his sweet swing.
And there, in the locker, hung Ken Griffey Jr.’s jersey.
So Brady and Millichap took turns trying it on and checking themselves out in a mirror. On their flight home, Brady turned to Millichap and said, Can you believe we just did that?
“The jersey was cool,” Brady writes today. “Ken Griffey Jr. was the idol of all of us at that age.”
With the MLB draft fast approaching, Brady had some thinking to do. At Junipero Serra High School, in San Mateo, Calif., he was captain of the baseball team and the star quarterback. He had a scholarship to play football at Michigan Derek Newton Womens Jersey in the fall, and it seemed likely that an MLB team would draft him. But he couldn’t take the baseball signing bonus money and play college football. By the end of the summer he’d have to choose.