June 6, 2006

By Adam Lucas

Carolina was playing Wake Forest on March 10, 2006. The ACC basketball tournament was taking place 30 minutes away in Greensboro, so the small assembled press contingent could easily cram into the tiny media area at Wake's Gene Hooks Stadium.

In the middle innings, the Wake Forest sports information director turned to his Tar Heel counterpart. "Hey," he said, "who's the advisor for Bard and Miller?"

He was referencing Daniel Bard and Andrew Miller, of course. From the moment they made their first 2006 start, they've been preparing for two things: pitching the Tar Heels to the College World Series and draft day.

The former is still a best two-out-of-three series in Tuscaloosa away. The latter happened Tuesday.

The Wake representative's question went unanswered for a very simple reason--no one knew the answer. The highly touted duo simply hasn't talked about pro ball much this season. They've been too busy doing things typical college juniors do. Like the time Miller pitched eight innings of two-hit baseball against Boston College on May 18. A national media outlet was in town to conduct a pre-draft television interview.

After the game, Miller sat down in front of the camera, which was positioned in front of the Carolina dugout. Just as the interview began, a sneaky perpetrator (rumored to be Jonathan Hovis, but dusting for fingerprints turned up no conclusive evidence) delivered a shaving cream pie directly in the face of the most highly touted pitcher in college baseball.

That wasn't the only interference the pitchers had to deal with this year. Scouts were regulars at every start. Some teams wanted the players to complete lengthy psychological profiles, including one team that delivered a pile of exhaustive paperwork to Miller just days before Carolina opened play in the NCAA Tournament--seven days before the draft.

"It wasn't intrusive for our program," head coach Mike Fox said. "We tried to serve as a buffer as much as we could. But there's no telling how many times they were called, emailed, or stopped in a parking lot. The great thing is that those two kids and their families did a great job of keeping it about the team the entire time."

The baseball draft is fickle. In most other professional sports, selections go approximately in order of sheer talent. In baseball, though, a player in the bottom half of the first round can have a much higher ceiling than a player in the top 10. Players understand the situation. One of Miller's first answers to media queries included the word "signability," which is essentially a politically correct substitute for cheapness. Some players are willing to discount their price just for the prestige of a higher draft slot. Others believe they should be paid what the market has indicated they are worth, and those are the ones who endure the greatest scrutiny.

It's a high stakes game.

The great irony is that despite all the preparation, despite the reports and the scouting and the interviews and everything else, the players woke up on draft day with very little idea of the identity of their next employer. Miller knew Monday night that despite recent indications to the contrary, the Kansas City Royals were likely to select Luke Hochevar. But he didn't know exactly where he'd land; one Tuesday morning mock draft had him going 12th, another had him falling all the way to the Yankees at pick 21.

"Detroit completely shocked us," Miller said of the Tigers, the team that selected him with the sixth overall pick. "We didn't really talk to them before the draft too much. It wasn't like they had told us no but we just hadn't had much communication with them." His main introduction to the team came when his parents suggested he go to the mall to buy a Tigers hat; both Miller and his father, David, arrived at the draft day press conference wearing fitted Detroit caps.

There you have it: after hours of filling out surveys, after endless in-person interviews, the team in charge of getting you to the big leagues is one you never considered until you heard your name called on the MLB.com webcast.

Bard was in a similar situation. One team in the top 10 had virtually guaranteed him he wouldn't fall below their slot; that same team sent a bevy of personnel to watch his impressive start Sunday against Winthrop.

The thought of falling all the way to the Boston Red Sox never seemed like a real possibility. He simply knew he'd go somewhere that would enable him to be, as he put it Tuesday, "financially secure."

After eating lunch at Chapel Hill institution Sutton's with a group of teammates on Monday, an acquaintance at another table tried to stick Bard with his tab. When the waiter informed Bard he'd been requested to pay the extra check, the Charlotte native just shook his head.

"Talk to me tomorrow," he said with perfect timing and just the right amount of self-confidence about the impending events of the next day.

After being picked 28th, Bard was immediately dubbed a steal by ESPN.com writer Keith Law of Scouts, Inc. He landed with his childhood favorite team, a wealthy organization that is renown among players for the elite way it treats its players.

If this is "slipping," there are a lot of pitchers who ended draft day wishing they had slipped.

Bard and Miller spent about 20 minutes discussing their professional future with the media Tuesday afternoon. It was the most anyone had heard them talking about the major leagues all year.

And still no one knows the identity of their advisor.

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and his book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about Going Home Again, click here.