All five are legitimate ¬first-¬round picks, among the thirty or so most promising prospects in the country.

No one outside their hometowns would ever have heard of them, but to the scouts they already feel like household names. They're still boys, really all of them have had to produce letters from their mothers saying that it is okay for them to be here. Five young men stretch and canter on the outfield crabgrass: Darnell Coles. But what used to be a ¬thousand-¬dollar mistake was rapidly becoming a ¬million-¬dollar one.Īnyway, the first thing they always did was run you. A few years ago no one thought twice about bad calls on prospects. The new owner of the New York Yankees, George Steinbrenner, had paid $10 million for the entire team in 1973 in 1975, he paid $3.75 million for baseball's first modern free agent, Catfish Hunter. Inside of four years, the average big league salary had nearly tripled, from about $52,000 to almost $150,000 a year. A few years earlier, professional baseball players had been granted free agency by a court of law, and, after about two seconds of ¬foot-¬shuffling, baseball owners put prices on players that defied the old commonsensical notions of what a baseball player should be paid. The risks in drafting baseball players had just risen. If the feeling in the air was a bit more tense than it used to be, that was because it was 1980.

On this late spring day in San Diego several big league teams were putting a group of prospects through their paces. You could be forgiven, if you listened to them, for thinking they were discussing sports cars and not young men. A guy who could run had 'wheels' a guy with a strong arm had 'a hose.' Scouts spoke the language of auto mechanics. There were five tools: the abilities to run, throw, field, hit, and hit with power. 'Tools' is what they called the talents they were checking for in a kid. The scouts actually carried around checklists. When big league scouts ¬road-¬tested a group of elite amateur prospects, foot speed was the first item they checked off their lists.

THE FIRST THING they always did was run you.

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.- Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise Mellody Hobson has picked this book as one of the six you need to read if you want to make money. J— - In 'Moneyball, the Art of Winning an Unfair Game,' Michael Lewis looks at how the 2002 Oakland Athletics baseball team achieved an awesome winning record while having the smallest player payroll of any Major League team.

Moneyball art