Wild Thing
New York, NY
Male, 28
I played Division I college baseball and was a highly-touted prospect before blowing out my shoulder. Many of my teammates were just stopping by college on their way to the minor leagues. Others were just using baseball to get an education. At the end of the day, though athletic competition at the high collegiate level is more of a job than a sport.
Yes. It happens. I would only ever do it as retribution for my teammate being beaned though. I never hit a guy out of frustration or to send a message. It's not necessarily a moral stance, I was just way too competitive to give a guy a free base, no matter how angry I was.
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Tough question. No one ever admits to themselves they can't make it. If you do that, you lose your edge. And at high levels of college baseball, trust me, the competition is fierce. I tore my labrum and rotator cuff in literally the last game I pitched (State American Legion Semifinals) in the Summer before I started my college career. I was a huge recruiting disappointment and couldn't break a sheet of toilet paper with my fastball after that. I still never gave up hope that I would come back and get my fastball back, although by that time I wasn't thinking about playing in the majors. I just wanted to feel normal. Still, I always dreamed that I would magically gain a fastball and be able to play at the next level. I'd say as a population, athletes have a tough time letting it go.
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Yeah, plenty of guys. Anyone who played college baseball in a fairly big conference is going to have played with plenty of future major leaguers. On my team, we typically had 3 or 4 players drafted a year (which isn't a whole lot). I'm fairly certain no one on my team actually played a day in the majors, but plenty of guys we played against did. Some of them were top prospects when we played them and you knew they were on their way to the majors. Those guys stood out. There were also guys that weren't all that impressive that blossomed and made the majors as well. Of course, the best player I ever saw was widely believed to be the top pick in the draft when we played him... and then he blew out his arm. I don't think he ever made it. Anyway, at top schools (think ACC, PAC-10, SEC, Big 12), there are major leaguers from just about every team. At the next level down (think of schools in the top 16 conferences http://www.boydsworld.com/baseball/isr/confisr.html , just about every decent team has multiple players drafted every year. Factoring in that you play a LOT of games in baseball and that there is a decent amount of interleague play, and everyone has played with their share of major leaguers.
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My college career was a disappointment. Winning two conference tournaments while I was there would have to be the team highlight, but my personal ones mostly have to do with my career outside of college.
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Waitress
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A few major conference teams and mostly lesser schools. I went to the best baseball program I could, where I thought I liked the coach, but I'd say it didn't really work out. Scouting services do much of the player evaluation for colleges these days. They rank players, generally on a scale of 1-5. They then send lists to schools accordingly, along with specific evaluations and video tapes. Level 5 players can play at any major college and are the types that might be drafted out of high school. Level 4 means you generally can't play at the highest levels of college ball, but could contribute anywhere else. Level 3 is the type of player who could play at the lesser Division 1 schools. Levels 1 and 2 are for guys that probably can't play at the D1 level but could play college baseball somewhere. I was a level 4 guy. After my arm injury Id probably have been a level 3 guy, but I was stuck at a level 4 school and was stuck in scrub duty.
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This is a tough question to answer. Let’s be clear though... scholarship players are absolutely paid. Guys who get free rides to private schools are getting $50k a year educations for free. How many 18 year olds do you know that are getting paid $80k a year (very rough estimate of what you’d have to make to pay $50k a year)? Not many. Those Duke basketball players are making bank for 18-21 year olds. The average college baseball player on a full scholarship, by that standard, is being paid more than the average minor league player. Beyond that, players get some living expenses paid for and get per diems and meals paid for on road trips. So there is some pay. Generally, I don't think it’s a travesty that players don't get "paid" the way we think of them earning contracts. I think for sports like basketball and football (sports that earn money), it would be nice if some of the money earned by the teams went back to the players and their families. At the same time, once you start paying players, schools are going to start cutting other athletic programs, the rich schools will get richer (be more able to pay athletes), and it would be harder and harder to regulate agents, boosters and the like. Basically, paying players would exacerbate a lot of the ills of college sports as they are. My half-baked solution is to allow college players to do endorsements. Limit how much time they can spend doing them, how many products they can endorse and how much money they can receive. The players that are good enough will get endorsement offers and the money won't come out of the schools, it will come out of commerce. Everyone wins. Except Jim Tressel.
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I never saw steroids nor seriously suspected them at the high school level. That doesn't mean they didn't exist, but I never saw it if they did (and I played on enough club and traveling teams to have seen a lot). The college level, I think, is a whole different story. My school did drug testing regularly and very strictly (the strictest testing I ever heard of), and there was still tons of steroids. Most of the time guys would just do a cycle over the Summer, when there was no school testing. There were also ways around testing in case someone ever thought they might test positive (these were not the kind of methods you could rely on, but something you might do just in case... using masking agents was fairly common for instance, hyper-hydrating was a safety measure). At many other schools, players didn’t have to worry about testing until tournament time (the only NCAA mandatory testing time) and could cycle pretty much year round. At my school, where everyone dreamed of playing at the next level yet no one was a sure thing to play in the majors, lots of guys took steroids hoping to gain even the slightest advantage. We had a guy on the team who had a connection and it was readily available. I myself even considered it. But as someone who could have ballooned to Barry Bonds/Roger Clemens cartoonish-like levels and still not have been worth anything as a prospect, it wouldn't have made sense. Plus, I'm scared of needles. And I like my testicles. Anyway, when I played, users were still way ahead of testers and steroids were rampant.
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