Peterson: Sweet tweets to baseball for higher-profile draft

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jun 9, 2009 | by Gary Peterson

Quite a coincidence, wouldn't you say? Just the other day you were slouched in your couch, drooling through another classic presentation of "Wild World of Sports" and thinking, "If only there were more professional drafts televised in infinite and excruciating detail."

How do you like baseball now?

The national pastime collided with technological overkill Tuesday when the first three rounds of the Major League draft were televised by the MLB network and MLB.com, reported on a drop-in basis by ESPN, blogged and Twittered to a fine powder.

"Ray Fosse just walked in," came the tweet from inside the A's situation room. And then: "Geren is here."

Yes, you could cut the excitement with a thumb drive.

We kid because we care. Truth is, it was time for baseball to take its cue from the NFL and NBA and fully mainstream its draft. And by mainstream, we mean:

The obligatory panel of experts, in this case seated in front of a faux outfield wall; prospective draftees on scene in the green room (or in this case, a faux dugout); a sprinkling of tables manned by serious-looking insurance-agent types with phones to their ears; a bona fide commissioner (or in this case, Bud Selig) to announce the picks with Bob Sheppard-ian reverence; and on-site fans to react to their favorite team's selections.

It only made sense that the NFL and NBA blazed this trail. Their picks were more compelling, given that they appeared on the following season's rosters. Their impact was immediate and, in some cases, dramatic. Too, the NFL and NBA draft out of season, and what better way to incite discussion in a vacuum than to take a modest event and overinflate it by a factor of 10?

Baseball drafts, by comparison, seemed so abstract, full of teenagers and unheralded college players. Unless Charlie Finley was plucking kids off high school campuses and throwing them up against seasoned major leaguers (which he did twice in 1978), you were never sure who these picks were or when you might see them in a big league uniform.

That changed a long time ago. How long? We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of Will Clark's lightning-quick ascent from first- round draft pick (1985) to Opening Day starter (1986) to clinching- night F-bomber (1987).

Now we're to the point where teams actually draft for need at the major league level. Witness the A's first-round pick Tuesday -- USC shortstop Grant Green, selected to polite applause in the MLB studios.

"Billy and team are all smiles," came the tweet. "Everybody gets up to congratulate the scout who found Green."

Found him? Was he lost? The guy played three seasons for a baseball program that has won 12 national titles. But we digress.

You may be aware that the A's could use a long-term solution at shortstop, having turned Bobby Crosby into a Swiss Army knife when they signed Orlando Cabrera to a one-year contract last offseason.

Some think Green projects to a major league third baseman. Nine out of Eric Chavez's 10 doctors agree the A's could use help there.

That big enough for prime time for you? It seems to have been for Green.

"I was extremely stoked," he said in a conference call with reporters. "It's a great organization with a rich tradition. I know they've had some 'SC Trojans there like Mark McGwire."

With due respect to the A's director of Twitter, the team's tweets were full of informational nuggets on almost every draft pick. MLB.com had comprehensive highlights and no shortage of opinion.

Together, they helped do what should have been done long ago -- they held your interest at a time when you might otherwise have been drooling through "NFL Full Access."

Which means it's about time we took back half the nasty things we ever said about Bud Selig, wouldn't you agree?

Contact Gary Peterson at gpeterson@bayareanewsgroup.com.