Baseball's May just might

Chris May shares the anxieties of many other second-semester seniors who, like him, have no definite post-graduation plans. Unlike his classmates, though, May isn't seeking a position in Boston, New York or San Francisco -- at least not right away. No, if all goes according to plan, May will be working in Burlington, Iowa, next year. Or perhaps Johnson City, Tenn. Or Lansing, Mich. Other acceptable locales would most likely include Spokane, Wash., and Geneva, Ill. That's because May's career hopes hinge on the outcome of Major League Baseball's amateur draft, and he'll take a paycheck in any little American backwater, as long as he's playing baseball. "[The draft is] my main focus right now," May said. "I didn't do any of the on-campus interviewing or anything, and I didn't send out too many resumes. I just focused on passing all my classes and getting a bunch of workouts in, trying to get myself ready for the draft." May -- Penn's 6'4" 230-pound right fielder -- has emerged this season as the Quakers' main offensive threat and a potential late-round draft pick. "That's my goal, just to get into an organization somewhere," May said. "I don't really care for how much money or any of that. I just think that if I get my foot in the door, I'll do well." May has done very well this season for the Red and Blue. He leads the Quakers in almost every offensive category, and he's 17th in the nation with a .442 batting average. "Without the year that he's had, we wouldn't have won 18 games," Penn coach Bob Seddon said. "He's had a good year in every category. He's a good player, it's his best year and the biggest thing I can say is that he's earned it." The one thing that becomes apparent in talking to May, his coaches and his teammates is this: He's a baseball junkie. May plays baseball almost year-round, even if he's just hitting in batting cages during the winter. "He's down here for extra practice all the time," Seddon said. On a day off, you'll see him in the locker room. On a rainy day, he's here. He works day and night at it. If every player worked like he did, we'd have that kind of success [as a team]." But will May's work ethic translate into success in the pro ranks? "He's not going to go in the first two rounds or anything like that, but hopefully he'll get a chance," Seddon said. "He runs like a deer and he's got a good upside. He's big and he's strong and he's tall, and that's what [the pro scouts] look for." And the scouts have been looking. "I worked out for the Cardinals and the Phillies last summer," May said. "There've been a few [scouts] hanging around the games, but they're secretive, they don't want to tell you too much about what's going on, so it's hard to tell who is here when." May -- who originally came to Penn to play football and baseball but dropped the pigskin after his freshman year -- has attracted big-time scrutiny before. As a high school star in Biglerville, Pa., May drew the attention of several scholarship schools. "I was a really good football player in high school, so I had a lot of options open as far as schools to go to -- West Virginia, Syracuse," said May, who was also offered a football scholarship at Maryland. But then May broke his collarbone the summer before his senior year of high school, and many of the larger schools lost interest. He finally chose Penn, a good school where he would be allowed to play both sports. Although May had planned to compete in two sports collegiately, he was a four-sport star in high school, playing football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball and track in the spring. To juggle his two spring sports, May would practice with the baseball team in the afternoons before doing track workouts in the evening. "It was pretty demanding in the spring, but it worked out," said May, who "thought" that he earned around 12 varsity letters in high school. "It was just a lot of hours spent after school, maybe three, four hours a day." While May never took any Deion Sanders-like helicopter rides between events, he did occasionally have a track meet and baseball game on the same day. "One time, I had a pretty big area meet in a nearby town and a ballgame on the same day," May said. "[The meet] started at 12:30, so I went down and ran the 100 in the afternoon, came back to school, pitched a complete game, then went back to the meet and threw the discus and ran the 200 at night." It is that same dedication, talent -- and juggling ability -- that May hopes to parlay into a pro career next year. In whatever small town will have him.

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