The most important day of the 1980 baseball season may very well have taken place in June of 1971.
June 8th was draft day. The Chicago White Sox held the #1 pick and chose a high school catcher named Danny Goodwin from Peoria Central High School. Goodwin was the consensus #1 choice, a 6′-2″ 195 lb schoolboy star. But the White Sox couldn’t sign him and he ended up going to college. He holds the distinction of being the first overall #1 choice not to sign AND the only player to be selected #1 overall twice. The Angels chose him at the top of the first round in 1975.
The first round was heavy on pitching and shortstops. Nineteen of the 24 first round picks fit into that category. One team bucking the trend was the Boston Red Sox who took an outfielder at #15 overall. His name was Jim Rice.
The Kansas City Royals held the 5th pick in the first round and chose a pitcher named Roy Brance who eventually appeared in two games with Seattle in 1979. The Philadelphia Phillies picked one spot behind the Royals and selected pitcher Roy Thomas from Lompoc, CA.
Having gotten their pitcher in the first round, the Royals were on the prowl for a shortstop and chose George Brett, a high schooler from El Segundo, CA, who had impressed scouts by, among other things, playing all nine positions in a high-school all-star game including pitching both right and left-handed in the 9th inning. Yet despite this, he was overshadowed by his older brother, Ken, who had always been the one destined for stardom and was pitching for the Red Sox when George was drafted.
With Brett off the board, the Phillies chose an All-American shortstop from Ohio University named Mike Schmidt with the next pick.
The Major League Baseball draft is an inexact science, to say the least, but eight different shortstops were selected ahead of two of the best players ever to play the game. The most accomplished of them was Craig Reynolds. Three of them never played in the big leagues and the eight combined to hit 59 career, home runs, or eleven more than Schmidt alone hit in 1980. Hindsight is obviously a distinct advantage, but it does seem curious that the Cincinnati Reds would choose Mike Miley, a high school shortstop from Louisiana, over Mike Schmidt a Dayton native who played his college ball just a few hours away in Athens, OH.
Schmidt later recounted a story of a Phillies scout arriving at his house to negotiate a contract. He pulled a typewriter out of his trunk and offered a deal worth $25,000. Schmidt’s father, acting as his agent, said they wanted $40,000. A contract of $37,500 was eventually agreed upon and Schmidt immediately went out and purchased himself a Corvette.
There was one other shortstop of note selected on that day in 1971. In the 39th round, the Minnesota Twins selected a kid from Notre Dame named Joe Theisman.
How would the 1980 season have played out had the Royals taken Schmidt instead of Brett? What if the Reds had taken Schmidt in the first round instead of Miley? Can you imagine the Big Red Machine with another Hall-of-Famer in the lineup? How did every team in baseball pass on these two in the first round?
Thank Goodness, my Phillies ended up with Schmidtty! Great story….it is crazy how many kids don’t make it…the draft is such a crapshoot!
Agreed. I remember Schmitty was considering signing with the Reds to finish his career, too. I’m glad he stayed. Thanks for reading!
Very interesting read! As an Ohio native and a lifelong Reds fan, I always thought Schmidt should have “stayed home.” Learning that we selected Mike Miley when he was still available is painful!
That’s a tough one to swallow looking back on it! Imagine plugging Schmidt into the middle of the Big Red Machine lineup. That would have been scary.
So guys…….I’m glad your boys had their run. I must tell you, however, that while I lost track of Miley in the midst of my own young adult years (I was a senior when he was a sophomore) he was so very worthy of the #1 draft position that he also re-acquired a second time after leaving LSU. He was the New Orleans high school athlete of the decade (70’s). We played together in junior high and high school. You would have enjoyed watching his athleticism and enthusiasm in all four sports. I only regret that he did not get to live out his life to fulfill his career potential. He was a stud….a really good guy. I still think about him, the life he might have had, and I miss him. My reprieve was some fun bull pen catching with AAA N.O. in the 90’s with his former Angel’s team mate and N.O. hitting coach Ron Jackson. It gave me a connection and a sense of Mike’s memory living on. Like all of these guys selected number one, Mike was simply great!
Hi Paul and thanks for your comments. I’d heard Mike was certainly a very talented guy and certainly, revisionist history is pretty easy. It’s a shame Mike wasn’t able to prove what he could do.