By John McCallum
Managing Editor 

If you're a baseball player, then college is for you

Crunch Time

 

Last updated 6/13/2019 at 5:31pm



The College World Series is scheduled to get underway this Saturday with Texas Tech taking on Michigan in the opener in Omaha, Neb.

I can hear the overwhelming chorus of “Who cares?” now. It’s true that when it comes to NCAA sports and their respective post-seasons, baseball doesn’t have quite the same luster that March Madness has with basketball, or the College Football Playoffs does for Division I football.

Part of that might be the fact that it’s played after all of the participating schools have adjourned for the summer. Most of the student bodies are gone, and hence there’s a reduction in that collegiate sports atmosphere.

Another part might be the relation of college baseball to professional baseball. It seems there’s more of an association with college sports as an avenue to the pros with football or basketball than there is with baseball. After all, Major League Baseball has something those sports don’t — a minor league system.

True, college players drafted by MLB teams usually end up in the minors to begin their careers, but they are often playing alongside players fresh out of high school who were also picked by the pro clubs. That doesn’t happen in football and basketball, and indeed it’s rare for a high school player to advance directly to an NFL or NBA career.

According to the NCAA, about 0.03 percent of high school players get drafted by an NBA team, while in football, it’s 0.09 percent who make an NFL squad. By comparison, 0.5 percent of high school players have a better shot of making an MLB team, at least a minor league franchise. Not great, but not as rare, and these are just the chances of being drafted by a team, let alone playing, which is even smaller.

But what about college players getting drafted? In football, that’s about one onein 50, or 2 percent, while basketball sees 1.3 percent of NCAA seniors selected to an NBA franchise.

But in baseball, a whopping 10.5 percent (yes, whopping) of NCAA seniors are drafted by a MLB club — 11 in 100 players. So Blackhawks and Cardinal baseball players, stay in school and work hard.

That didn’t use to be the case in baseball prior to the 1980s. Most MLB career paths emanated from high school, but in the 1980s, along came guys like Roger Clemens (University of Texas), Robin Ventura (Oklahoma State) and Will Clark (Mississippi State) who helped elevate the college game.

Since then, a lot of today’s MLB players went through the college ranks first, and the game is better for it.

I admit that I didn’t start dialing into college baseball until the early 1990s, and that came about because I was bored sitting in my hotel room while attending a week of motor control training at a factory in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. It was then I came across the College World Series, and I’ve been a fan ever since.

So give this year’s series a watch this coming week. Having watched the regionals and the recently complete super regionals, I can guarantee there will be some really good and exciting baseball, for those who love the game.

And you’ll catch some future MLB greats, some already drafted, others yet to be. On that latter note, two words: Kumar Rocker.

Just watch and find out.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.

Author Bio

John McCallum, Retired editor

John McCallum is an award-winning journalist who retired from Cheney Free Press after more than 20 years. He received 10 Washington Newspaper Publisher Association awards for journalism and photography, including first place awards for Best Investigative, Best News and back-to-back awards in Best Breaking News categories.

 

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