Abridged Version

My story begins in June 1997 when I was drafted as a pitcher out of Clemens High School in Schertz, Texas by the Chicago Cubs in the 47th round in the 1997 “First-Year Player Draft” conducted by Major League Baseball clubs.  Several days after the draft the Cubs scout, Buzzy Keller, brought by a contract and stated; “We don’t want to sign you, we just want the rights to you.”   Given this statement, I accepted a baseball scholarship to play for Manatee Community College in Bradenton, Florida which is coached by Tim Hill who has built one of the premier community college baseball programs in the country.

Under coach Hill’s outstanding instruction my fastball was consistently clocked in the 90-95 mph range combined with a devastating curve ball.  As the 1998 baseball season progressed, more and more professional and college scouts began to show up at the games with radar guns in-hand.  Based on this performance, the Cubs sent their Regional Scout, Joe Housey, to track my progress and he would occasionally take my father and I to dinner to talk baseball and undoubtedly to evaluate my personality.

Playing college baseball was fun, but this is where the journey with professional baseball took a dark turn.  Since the draft in 1997, the Cubs owned the rights to signing me unless I went back into the draft. Two weeks before the end of the 1998 season, Joe Housey visited my parents and I and, much to our surprise, told us he was instructed by the Chicago Cubs to offer me contract worth $250,000 and I had learned as much as I could from Coach Hill.  Since the college baseball season was not completed, the Chicago Cubs engaged in tampering which is a serious violation of college and professional baseball rules.  We were shocked and refused to discuss any contract issues prior to the end of the season. 

More to come...

(Originally Posted on Facebook - June 23rd at 1:29pm)