COLUMN: A tale of three ballplayers

It was more than an hour before the first pitch. The only uniformed men on the Veterans Stadium turf were a few ushers standing in front of the dugouts and the grounds crew members raking around the bases. Out of the visiting team's clubhouse, a man in a Chicago Cubs uniform emerged. The scattered crowd of youngsters seeking autographs converged along the third base line, each kid with a pen in one hand and a baseball in the other. The man in the Cubs uniform signed a few balls before spotting a group of three or four men behind home plate. He excused himself from the autograph seekers and headed toward the backstop. The children didn't seem too upset. 'Doug Glanville #1' sprawled across a baseball doesn't bring in the same kind of cash at the local card shop as a 'Ryne Sandberg #23', a 'Sammy Sosa #21' or a 'Mark Grace #17'. But the men behind home plate were there not for Ryno or Sammy or any of the other Chicago All-Stars. They wanted to see Doug Glanville play. Shannon was the brightest star on the defending Ivy League champion Penn baseball team heading into the 1996 season. A bona fide .400 hitter with above-average power, Shannon was also the Quakers' ace on the mound, sporting the conference's best ERA through the first half of his senior season. But it was with mixed emotions that Shannon bullied his way through the '96 schedule, en route to the Blair Batting Championship and Ivy Player of the Year honors. He had hoped to already be playing in Ogden, Utah, or Idaho Falls, Idaho, or any of the hundreds of minor league cities across America instead of battling the blistering wind of Bower Field. No major league team took a shot on the six-foot-three designated hitter/pitcher after his junior year, leaving Shannon no choice but to play out his senior year. And seniors in college baseball are like doctoral candidates in forestry. Everyone admires their work, but wonders why they're still in school. In baseball, the top players are usually selected right out of high school. The next batch -- players the scouts initially missed and players who chose to postpone pro ball for a few years -- are picked after their junior year of college. Almost no serious baseball prospect plays four years of college ball by choice. But Mike Shannon had no other option. He had to prove the scouts wrong. A late-season hand injury changed that plan. With his right hand bandaged up in a cast, Shannon sat out the last few weeks of his senior season and watched his teammates drop five straight games to Princeton to cough up the Gehrig Division championship. As he watched from the dugout, he saw his career aspirations dwindle. The Gehrig Division title meant a trip to the Ivy championship series against Rolfe Division winner Harvard. A win over Harvard meant a trip to the NCAA regionals, the qualifying rounds to the College World Series. The regionals would have been the perfect stage for Shannon to make one last push before the June amateur draft. And his doctors told him he might have been ready to play. As it turned out, Princeton got the trip to regionals. And all 30 major league organizations (the Phoenix and Tampa Bay expansion franchises participated in the draft) passed on Shannon. As the hundreds of recently drafted ball players are checking into dingy locker rooms in the farthest corners of North America, Shannon watches Doug Glanville. Glanville has accomplished everything Shannon had hoped to. The '91 Penn grad parlayed a .414 batting average as a junior into a $300,000 signing bonus as the first-round draft pick of the Cubs. Glanville steadily worked his way through the minor leagues, finally earning a shot at the bigs by posting a .300-plus average with Chicago's AAA affiliate in Iowa and ranking among the stolen base leaders in the Cubs' system this year. And it wasn't long before Glanville grabbed national attention. In his first major league game, Glanville was featured on ESPN's SportsCenter making a fully-extended diving catch in left field. Shannon has had some talks with the Phillies and Yankees and hopes to catch on with an organization in August or September, when his hand is fully healed. Despite the earlier prognosis that he may have been ready by regionals, Shannon still can't grip a ball. While Shannon tries to shop himself to various organizations, one of his teammates at Penn is embarking on a pro career of his own. Quakers junior shortstop Mark DeRosa was a seventh-round selection of the Atlanta Braves and has given up his final year of college eligibility to begin playing with for Braves' short-season A league affiliate in Eugene, Ore. At first glance, it would appear odd that DeRosa was selected and not Shannon, the injury notwithstanding. Shannon finished in the top five in the nation in batting with a .444 average. He led Penn in runs scored, triples and home runs. He slugged .714 and had an on-base percentage of .623. DeRosa had a strong season, but he was nowhere near as dominating offensively as Shannon. DeRosa's .320 average was impressive, but it was still more than 100 points below Shannon's mark. Figure in five homers, a team-best six stolen bases and a team-leading 36 RBIs, and it is not difficult to see why DeRosa was drafted. But why not Shannon? Mike Shannon does not have a position, that's why. He doesn't have the velocity or repertoire to pitch at the next level. And although he may have the bat to go pro, his only field position is first base. But Shannon lacks the natural power necessary to play first beyond college. And without a home run swing, most teams won't let him DH either. DeRosa, on the other hand, turned many a head with his play at shortstop. He wowed scouts by scooping up balls to the first-base side of second and making the long throw from the hole. Although he may not have the bat of Mike Shannon, the scouts decided that Mark DeRosa had the complete package. The meeting of Glanville and Shannon behind home plate last Tuesday was a brief one. Glanville had a game to play. Shannon had a game to watch.