Background
The San Diego Padres stayed close to home with the first overall pick of the 2004 First-Year Player Draft, tabbing high school shortstop Matt Bush from Mission Bay (CA) High School. Bush, the first high school shortstop taken first overall since the Seattle Mariners chose Alex Rodriguez in 1993, batted .450 with 11 home runs, 35 RBI and 12 stolen bases during his senior year. The 18-year-old helped lead the Buccaneers to two San Diego Section Division III championships in three years, setting state records for career hits (211) and runs scored (188) in the process.
Huston Street, drafted in the supplemental first round, was the first 2004 draftee to make the major leagues. Justin Verlander was the first 2004 draftee to be selected to an All-Star Game in 2007. Dustin Pedroia, drafted in the second round, was the first 2004 draftee to be selected to start an All-Star Game and the first to win a World Series championship and the first to win a League MVP Award. Current Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Matt Cassel was selected in the 36th round by the Oakland Athletics.
Three members of the 2003 NCAA Champions Rice Owls pitching staff were selected within the first eight picks. The Baltimore Orioles could not reach an agreement with Wade Townsend leading to Tampa Bay drafting him in 2005.
Nick Adenhart, who was selected in the 14th round by the Anaheim Angels, was killed in a car accident a day after his only start of the 2009 season.
During the 2012 season, first round picks Philip Humber, Homer Bailey, and Jered Weaver threw no hitters (Humber's was a perfect game).
Read more about this topic: 2004 Major League Baseball Draft
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)