Friday, June 1, 2012
NY Post: Jeter’s Yankees legacy began 20 years ago today with a series of stunning breaks
Twenty years ago today, a roar went through the Harbor View Room, a large conference room next to the kitchen at George Steinbrenner’s Radisson Bay Harbor Hotel in Tampa.
A group of stunned and euphoric executives rejoiced at a baseball miracle, the Red Seas of the draft had parted in just such a way that the youngster every person in the Yankees’ draft war room was in unanimity must be taken was outrageously there with the sixth pick.
Kevin Elfering, the Yankees’ director of minor league operations, leaned toward the speaker phone connected to the Commissioners Office and read off an identification number: 19921292, a name and a high school.
20 years? Man.
Comments
I did a Baseball Urban Legends Revealed on how the Astros came to decide NOT to draft Jeter #1. Here it is. Interesting (and for Astro fans, I presume depressing) debate at the time.
It’s pretty interesting that it wasn’t only the Astros passing on Jeter. Cleveland going for Paul Shuey #2, Les Expos going for B.J. Wallace #3, the Orioles going for Jeffrey Hammonds #4 and the Reds going for Chad Mottola fifth. I remember Shuey was really highly touted as a closer, and Hammonds was drawing comparisons to Rickey Henderson at the time, but in hindsight it all looks pretty bad.
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