Quote:
Originally Posted by Amazin69
And yes, Chilcott was very highly rated, albeit I don't know how badly we needed a catcher after having stolen Jerry Grote from the Astros the previous winter. And the pre-draft coverage in the Chicago Tribune not only projected the Mets' taking Reggie (I guess they never asked M. Donald Grant what he thought about black athletes who date white women…), but said that the catcher the Athletics were likely to take at #2 was not Chilcott but Tom Grieve (who went third, to Washington). So the Mets not only goofed in taking a catcher, they took the "wrong" one, per the experts.
Ah, well. |
This is the revisionist history I was talking about. While its become a popular thing to say, there's precisely zero evidence that picking Chilcott ahead of Jackson was racially motivated (unless you're counting Jackson's say-so in his self-agrandizing book; and we all know Reggie would never lie to make others look worse and, by extension, himself look better; he'd
never do that). You might even do better to mention George Weiss rather than Grant. At least Weiss had a history. But the fact is that Bing Devine made that call. I've seen it said otherwise (more revisionist history), but the scouts were pretty much evenly split on the two. Red Murff wanted the Mets to take Nolan Ryan with that pick and we got him in the tenth round. Another scout thought southpaw Ken Brett was the guy (he went 4th). And what it came down to was that Chilcott was a lefty hitting catcher--a skill position guy--versus an outfielder. You can always find outfielders. The Mets had a system full of them. Lefty hitting stud catchers are as rare as hen's teeth. Chilcott was also a high school kid while Jackson was a college player. It was felt, then, that their floors were pretty even but, just 17, Chilcott's ceiling was higher. While you had Grote at the major league level (and nobody really knew what he was yet--it wasn't like every other team was asking Houston about him...they weren't), they had no other decent catchers in the organization at the time--especially the lower minors. It was decided that catcher was the priority position going into the draft and Chilcott was, in their estimation, the best catcher in the draft.
The whole thing's a crap shoot. Odds are definitely higher for a first round pick to be a difference maker than a tenth round pick. But nobody
really knows. And between any two consecutive picks? There's rarely a consensus except in retrospect. Jackson wasn't universally seen as "a sure thing" and few scouts (if any) saw Chilcott and pronounced him a future bust.
People make mistakes in judgement. George Weiss didn't want Seaver. Casey Stengel wanted to fire Whitey Herzog. The Mets chose Berra to succeed Hodges instead of Herzog. Absent real evidence and/or a clear pattern, I don't see how you can say (or intimate) passing on Jackson was racially motivated. Like any other team in baseball in 1966, the Mets wanted to win and, to do that, you pick the player that you think is best for your needs. And that's what they did. They were wrong, but, as the saying goes, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Or just plain bad luck.
And that's all I have to say about that.