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.
