Hitting a home run in the draft is big
Brewers got Yount, nothing else in 1973
With only five rounds to be conducted in the Major League Baseball draft June 10-11, a cost-cutting measure with the game shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be more important than ever for teams to make astute choices.
Going 0-for-5 in getting players to the majors from the truncated draft would only make the exercise more painful.
If you can acquire even one elite player in a draft, it makes it worthmost while, which was the case for the Milwaukee Brewers in 1973. That year, with the third overall selection, the Brewers chose 17-year-old shortstop Robin Yount, who would go on to a 20year Hall of Fame career for the club after a mere 64 games in the minors.
It was vital that the Brewers hit on Yount that year because the rest of their draft was a disaster. Not only did none of the other 20 selections make it to the majors (three did not sign), many didn’t advance beyond Class A ball, a poor reflection on a team picking third in each round.
Ever hear of Joe Slaymaker? Gary Conn? Mark Plunkett? Michael Gilbert? None of those names ring a bell? Well, they were the next four players taken in that draft by the Brewers. Conn, a right-handed pitcher, was the “successful” of that quartet, making it to Class AA Holyoke in 1977 before calling it a career.
In the Brewers’ defense, the ’73 draft historically has been considered one of the leanest ever, with only 110 players from both June phases (there was a secondary phase at that time) reaching the majors, a record low. The first four selections were notable in many ways, however, beginning with the top pick, 18-year-old high school lefty David Clyde, selected by Texas.
The foundering Rangers were playing with mostly empty stands at home and used Clyde, a native Texan, as a crowd boost by bringing him directly to the majors. The ploy had the desired effect of selling tickets but it
was not fair to Clyde, who understandably struggled (4-8, 5.03) and never fulfilled his star potential (18-33, 4.63 in 84 career games with Texas and Cleveland).
After Philadelphia tabbed University of Colorado catcher John Stearns with the second pick, the Brewers were on the clock with two highly touted players from which to pick – Yount, a star at Taft High School in Woodland Hills, California, and University of Minnesota outfielder/right-hander Dave Winfield, a multisport standout also drafted by the NBA and NFL.
The Brewers, who selected 19 of their 21 players from the high school ranks, went for Yount, leaving Winfield for the San Diego Padres, who also took their pick right to the majors. Stearns would be the last of the first four to get to the majors, but also got there quickly, during the 1974 season. As thin as the rest of the draft was, it remains the only one with two Hall of Famers (Yount and Winfield) among the first four selections. Another Hall of Famer, Eddie Murray, was taken in Round 3 by Baltimore.
Adversity came early
Negotiations between the Brewers and Yount did not go smoothly, with the lanky shortstop having the leverage of a scholarship offer from Arizona State. Finally, on June 27, more than three weeks after he was selected, Yount became one of the last firstrounders to sign, accepting a $60,000 bonus, sixth highest in the regular phase of that draft.
There was no minor-league rookie level in those days, so the Brewers assigned Yount to the lowest rung of their four-team farm system in Newark. But this was not the sizable city of Newark, New Jersey. This was Newark, New York, a tiny upstate village in the short-season Class A New YorkPenn League.
“I don’t think they even had a stoplight,” Yount said. “That’s how small it was. It was about an hour south (east) of Rochester. Not many people have heard of it.”
Yount’s mental toughness was tested immediately as a professional because the Newark Co-Pilots (a name taken because of the original affiliation with the Seattle Pilots), to put it politely, were gosh-awful. That team, stocked with many of the other players from the ’73 draft, won only 15 of 70 games for a dreadful “winning” percentage of .214.
The last-place club finished 31 ⁄2
1 games out of first place, was outscored 475-230, had the highest ERA (6.79) in the eight-team league and led the circuit with 173 errors. In every way, the Co-Pilots were terrible.
“We were the worst team in history,” said Yount, seeing no reason to mince words. “We actually got ‘hot’ in the second half. We only won three games in the first half, but we finally figured some things out and won 12 in the second half.”
Wait a minute. Newark went 3-32 in the first half? How is that possible? Matt Galante, the first-year manager of the Co-Pilots, distinctly remembers how long it took to win the first game.
“I do know we lost our first nine,” Galante recalled. “The reason I remember that is my wife got some champagne for our first win. That was my first manager’s job, so she wanted to celebrate the first win.
“It took 10 games to pop the cork. We had champagne ready, but it took awhile.”
It didn’t take long for Galante to see why the Brewers made Yount the third pick in the draft, however.
“When they sent Robin to me, they said, ‘Do anything you want with his fielding but don’t touch his hitting,’ ” Galante said. “He swung the bat pretty good for a 17-year-old kid coming out of high school.”
Yount played in 64 games – the final number for his minor-league “career” – and batted a respectable .285 with an even more-respectable .370 on-base percentage. He hit three homers, drove in 25 runs and committed 18 errors.
Not that many people in Newark could say they saw Yount play. The CoPilots played in Colburn Park, which had a capacity of 2,000. As it turned out, that was more than enough seats because home games drew an average of 482 fans in ’73, allowing for social distancing far ahead of its time.
That quaint facility had many quirks but one remained emblazoned in Yount’s mind, almost literally.
“The sun set right behind center field,” Yount said. “I got hit right between the eyes on an up-and-in fastball that I was supposed to bunt. I couldn’t see it and it hit me right between the eyes.”
Galante confirmed that playing obstacle from Mother Nature but said Yount forgot one detail.
“He probably forgot but we would start the game, then stop it until the sun went down,” Galante said. “We had to do it. At the beginning, we didn’t know it would be like that. Then, we said, ‘We can’t do this. It’s dangerous.’ If it was cloudy, we could keep playing.”
So, there was Yount, an impressionable teenager 3,000 miles from home, an ultra-competitive player accustomed to winning, playing for a team that rarely won. Which begged the question: Did he ever consider quitting baseball in his very first year as a pro?
“I didn’t think about quitting back then,” Yount said. “A couple of years into the big leagues, I might have thought about it. We were pretty bad there for a few years in Milwaukee, too.”
Ready for the majors
Showing some mercy on Galante, the Brewers promoted him after that season to manage their full-season Class A Danville, Ill., affiliate in the Midwest League. Invited to a banquet there that winter, he gave a preview of coming attractions that never came.
“I went there and was touting this young shortstop named Robin Yount that we’d probably have on our team,” Galante said. “The normal progression would have been there for a highschool kid.”
The Brewers, and in particular, manager Del Crandall, had other ideas. Despite Yount being just 18 with only a short season in the minors, the decision was made the next spring to make him Milwaukee’s starting shortstop. With the team struggling to win, what did it have to lose?
“Robin was having a good spring, and I remember Del saying to me, ‘Is there any reason we shouldn’t take him to the big leagues?’” Galante recalled. “I looked at him and said, ‘I don’t know. He’s only 18. He’s probably going to make a lot of errors but it’s a young team anyway.’
“Del stuck out his neck and took him to the big leagues. It turned out to be a good move, right? We know that now. He was a great player, and by the way, a great kid.”
Many of Yount’s former Newark teammates played for Galante in ’74 in Danville, which captured the secondhalf title in the South Division and went on to win the Midwest League championship.
“Obviously, Robin was holding us back,” Galante said with a huge laugh. “That was the answer – getting rid of him. Make sure you tell him that.”
One thing Yount did not hold back was the Brewers’ 1973 draft. Without him, it would have been a total bust. With him, it was remembered for producing a Hall of Famer.