I see the Texas Rangers, who's Pres is Nolan Ryan, just spent crazy money to sign a 16 y/o to a contract. He's from the Domincan Republic so isn't subject to the MLB draft. Yikes, esp after reading that he strikes out a lot! I wonder how many phenoms JO'Co and Corey have seen at 16 who were finished by 18! Crazy Money
Too many to count, that's for sure. - Stan Musial was signed as a pitcher...so was Roberto Clemente...so was Babe Ruth. - Johnny Unitas was cut from his high school JV football team at 16... - David Robinson had never played a game of basketball at 16. He didn't even try out for the team until he was a senior... - Walter Payton was still playing in his high school band at 16. He didn't try out for the football team until the following year... - At 16, Stalin was a choir boy, studying to be a priest... - A local guy that I know was the greatest player in the local Little League at age 12, but he was cut from the high school freshman team just two years later. Another kid in that same age group was never even picked to play on any Little League team. He had to play Little League minors even as a 12 year-old, but two years later he made the same frosh team that the former star had been cut from, and four years after that, he was a starter on the varsity... I could give endless examples to make the same point. There's no way that anybody can look at a 16 year-old boy and project his career forward, except in the most general way. Giving a kid that age $5 million is a crap shoot. They could have purchased the whole island for less than that.
:wink: So was Clemente. He could throw a baseball over 90mph and his arm was legendary. The greatest play I ever saw by a rightfielder was one that I saw Clemente make a long time ago at Dodger Stadium. With a runner on third and one out, a long drive one-hopped the rightfield fence. The runner was tagging, because he didn't know if the ball would be caught or not. Clemente looked like a Jai Alai player as he grabbed the ball off the fence with his bare hand, turned in one motion, and fired a strike to home plate, 365 feet away. The throw never bounced and the catcher's mitt never moved. It was a strike. The crowd went nuts, even though it was a play against us, because we knew that we had just seen the impossible. I've never seen another play quite like it in all these years...
Same here, Jim. Nice story about Clemente. I think it was Terry who said he loves to see a throw from right field to nail a runner at 3b. ANY throw from the OF to nail a runner at home is a beauty, but the play you described is beyond belief....except for theose who saw it that day.
What was most incredible about the play was Clemente's anticipation of what he was going to do. Every time there's a ball hit against the wall, the fielder always faces the wall to either scale it for a catch or face it to get the bounce off of it. Clemente was facing home plate, with his back to the wall, as he reached up and slightly behind himself...like a Jai Alai player...and grabbed the ball high in the air to fired home in one motion. I would never have thought of that and I've never seen anyone else even attempt it, so it's safe to say that nobody coaches it. It was pure Clemente...