The Kid Nobody Would Have Argued With

Steve Chilcott was 17 years old and he hit .500 with 11 home runs in 25 games his senior year at Antelope Valley High.

Mets scout Nelson Burbrink watched him get hits in 15 of 16 at-bats and called him the best high school hitter he had ever seen. Bing Devine came out. Casey Stengel came out, watched exactly one game, and told the Daily News the boy had all the tools. The Mets had the first pick in June 1966 because they had lost 112 games, they had pitching coming and nobody to catch it, and Whitey Herzog said later that the twenty clubs were split just about down the middle on whether Chilcott or the kid from Arizona State was the better prospect. This was not a room full of fools. It was a defensible pick that history flattened.

A year later Chilcott was hitting .290 at Single-A Winter Haven when he dove back into second base headfirst and dislocated his throwing shoulder. That was essentially it. Surgery, a comeback that never took, a broken hand, a wrecked kneecap. The Mets sent him to the Yankees after 1971 and the Yankees let him go a year later. He was 23 and out of the game, and he had never played a major league inning.

He is one of two men ever taken first overall who never got there, and the only reason most people know his name is as the answer to a question about somebody else. He put his signing bonus into real estate and it worked out. Somewhere in a filing cabinet there is a scouting report on a kid nobody would have argued with.