When the Minnesota Twins selected left-hander Eddie Bane with the 11th pick in the 1973 draft, the contract negotiations lasted only slightly longer than it took Bane to say "yes."
And three weeks after his last college game he was living his dream, pitching in the major leagues in front of a sellout crowd of nearly 46,000 at Metropolitan Stadium.
It's been nearly three months since Stephen Strasburg, the top pick in the June draft, pitched his last game for San Diego State. Yet it's anyone's guess when he'll make his big league debut. Just as it's anyone's guess who he'll be pitching for when -- or even if -- that happens.
And he's not alone. Teams have until 9 p.m. Monday to reach terms with their June draft picks, yet as of late Saturday 14 of the 32 first-round picks and nearly five dozen players selected in the first 10 rounds were unsigned.
At issue, not surprisingly, is money. Bane, now director of scouting for the Angels, is old-school enough to remember when kids said they'd play for free for a shot at the majors. And they meant it.
But those days have gone the way of high stirrups, Sunday doubleheaders and day games during the World Series.
"The day you draft them, they're the most excited kid in the world," says Bane, the man responsible for signing his team's draft picks. "To me, the agents put a stop sign on it. They take some of the fun out of it.
"But you know why the kids have them and you deal with it."
No one expects the old days to return. And with good reason -- just look at what it cost Bane. In three years at Arizona State, he was 40-4 with a 1.64 earned-run average, a school-record 505 strikeouts and the only perfect game in school history.
Those numbers are superior to those of Strasburg, who was 22-7 with a 1.59 ERA and 375 strikeouts in three years at San Diego State.
The Twins offered Bane $65,000 and he said yes.
The Washington Nationals' offer to Strasburg, according to team President Stan Kasten, exceeds $10.5 million. Strasburg said he'll get back to them.
Bane, however, went straight to the majors. And though he made only 25 big league starts, he says it's hard to put a price on the experience. Today's players are little different, he suspects, until their agents get involved and the conversation stops being about dreams and starts being about dollars.
