First Overall Pick Plays

0

Major League Games

In 1976, the Mets came under fire for not outbidding the Yankees for the services of free agent superstar Reggie Jackson. It wasn't the first time they blew an opportunity to get the home run-hitting outfielder. Years earlier, the Mets passed on Jackson to use the first overall pick in the 1966 draft to select Steve Chilcott, a lefty-hitting catcher who would never play baseball in the major leagues.

Jackson, for his part, alleged in his 2013 autobiography Becoming Mr. October that he was told the Mets didn't draft him because he was a black man dating a Mexican woman and the team didn't want to deal with the potential backlash. It's not a completely outrageous assertion, given the ultra-conservative state of baseball at the time.

Scouted by Casey Stengel, Chilcott was envisioned by the Mets to be their catcher for the next decade. But first, they dispatched the 17-year-old to the minor leagues, where he played with future Mets like Tug McGraw and Ron Swoboda.

In 1967, Chilcott was leading Winter Haven of the Florida State League in virtually every offensive category — he was also leading the league with 20 doubles — before suffering the freak shoulder injury on July 23 that would eventually derail his baseball career.

Chilcott was on first when there was a force at second. He slid into the bag and, believing he'd been called out, got up and started to jog off the field. Once he realized he had actually been called safe, he dove awkwardly back to the base. The infielder fell onto Chilcott's right shoulder — his throwing shoulder. It was never the same.

Over the next three seasons, Chilcott suffered over a dozen semi-dislocations. He often took cortisone shots to reduce inflammation before finally going under the knife to repair the shoulder permanently. Sports medicine wasn't what it is today, and Chilcott never regained his throwing and hitting strength.

Sometime later, he suffered a split kneecap when he fell on a sprinkler head.

Despite a series of heartbreaking setbacks, Chilcott refused to give up his dream of playing major league baseball. Eventually, he was traded to the Yankees, but his injury woes continued. In 1972, a broken right hand in spring training ruined his chances of making the team as Thurman Munson's backup.

Steve Chilcott is one of three first overall picks who never played in the majors.

Matt Bush San Diego Padres 2004
Brien Taylor New York Yankees 1991
Steve Chilcott New York Mets 1966

It wasn't easy to walk away from baseball, which Chilcott did at age 24. But he used a portion of his signing bonus to invest in real estate, worked as a carpenter, and built a new life for himself in relative anonymity.

Reggie, as is his fashion, took the opposite approach. In his brutally candid memoir, he referenced all the teams he wished he'd played for throughout his career and how much better off those teams would have been with him in the lineup. That included the Mets, who he believed would have won the 1973 World Series with him on their side instead of Oakland's.

"I think about that sometimes," he wrote. "I would've been coming up just as that team was finally improving. They had all those great arms: Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Jon Matlack, Nolan Ryan, Tug McGraw. Oh boy!"

Patient Olerud Bats

.354

In his prime, John Olerud was one of the best line-drive hitters in the game. In 1998, his second year with the Mets, Olerud hit a club-record .354 in 160 games.

Olerud won back-to-back World Series championships with the Blue Jays in 1992 and 1993. Despite putting up solid numbers over the next several years, he failed to replicate the gaudy statistics of his breakout performance in 1993 when he led the league with a .363 batting average, a .473 on-base percentage that was tops in the majors, and career-highs in hits (200), runs (109), home runs (24), doubles (54), and RBI (107).

After the 1996 season, Olerud was battling veteran Joe Carter and up-and-comer Carlos Delgado for a spot at either first base or designated hitter. Delgado was younger and less expensive, making the veteran Olerud expendable. In a deal that set a baseball record for cash changing hands, the Blue Jays traded Olerud to the Mets for pitcher Robert Person and gave the Mets $5 million of the first baseman's $6.5 million salary. Toronto fans are still crying over that one. Person went 8–13 with a...