Brien Taylor
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Brien Taylor (born December 26, 1971) is a former pitcher in Minor League Baseball best known for being just the second amateur player to be picked first overall in the Major League Baseball Draft and never reach the major leagues. The first was Steve Chilcott, in 1966.
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[edit] Early life & baseball draft
Taylor was born in Beaufort, North Carolina, to parents Willie Ray, who worked as a mason, and Bettie, who was a crab picker at the local seafood plant. He was the second of four children, named for the lead character in the movie, Brian's Song. Taylor attended East Carteret High School. In his senior season, Taylor threw 88 innings, striking out 213 hitters while walking 28. His fastball often hit 98 and 99 mph. In 2006, Scott Boras claimed that Taylor was the best high school pitcher he had seen in his life. [1]
In 1991 Taylor was drafted by the New York Yankees first overall. He was offered about $350,000 to sign a minor league contract, the typical amount given to # 1 draft choices at that time. However, agent Boras (acting as an "advisor," because unsigned players were not allowed to have an agent at that time) advised the Taylor family that the previous year's top-rated high school pitcher, Todd Van Poppel, was given more than $1.2 million to sign with the Oakland Athletics, giving up a scholarship to Miami (Fla.) in the process. The Taylors held out for "Van Poppel money," even though they had less leverage because Brien's poor grades in high school prevented him from getting a major college scholarship offer. They then used a local junior college as leverage to get the Yankees to agree to their terms. The Yankees were without the official services of owner George Steinbrenner, who was serving a suspension at the time, but through the media, Steinbrenner said that if the Yankees let Taylor get away, they should be "shot."
Taylor was signed for $1.55 million the day before his classes were set to begin. Further delay would have meant the deal could not be signed until after the school year ended, which coincided with the following year's draft.
[edit] Minor leagues and fist fight
Initially, the Yankees had hoped that like Dwight Gooden, Taylor would be ready for the big leagues at the age of 19. However they found he needed a better move to first base to hold base runners. In 1992 he was 6-8 for Fort Lauderdale, but with a 2.57 ERA and with 187 strikeouts in 161 innings. The next year as a 21-year-old at Double-A Albany-Colonie, Taylor went 13-7 with a 3.48 ERA and ith 150 strikeouts in 163 innings. He also lead the Eastern League with 102 walks. Nonetheless, Baseball America named him the game's best prospect and he was expected to pitch for the Columbus Clippers of the International League in 1994, and start for the Yankees in 1995. The Yankees had asked Taylor to report to an instructional league so he could spend the winter of 1993-94 working on fundamentals. However Taylor declined the Yankees' request, claiming he was tired from the pressure of the season. He said he needed the rest and chose to remain near his North Carolina home.
On December 18, 1993 the normally mild-mannered Taylor suffered a dislocated left shoulder and torn labrum while defending his brother Brenden in a fistfight. The New York Times reported that Taylor confronted a man named Ron Wilson, who had fought with in Harlowe, North Carolina. Brenden suffered head lacerations in his fight with Wilson. Once Taylor found out his brother had been hurt, he and a cousin went to Wilson's trailer home to confront him. There, Taylor got into an altercation with Jamie Morris, Wilson's friend, and Taylor fell on his shoulder.[2] According to Wilson, Taylor attempted to throw a haymaker at Morris, and missed, which caused the injury (similar to how Sonny Liston dislocated his shoulder by missing a number of hard punches in his first fight with Muhammad Ali).
In the hours following the altercation Boras told reporters the injury was a bruise. However when the Yankees had Taylor visit Dr. Frank Jobe, he called the injury one of the worst he'd seen. Jobe, a well-known orthopedic surgeon, repaired a torn capsule and a torn labrum in Taylor's shoulder in a one-hour procedure at the Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood, California on December 28, 1993. Initially Jobe told Taylor that he would throw again with similar velocity and that his shoulder might even be more durable.[3] However he was never the same pitcher again. When he returned after surgery, he had lost 8 mph off his fastball and was unable to throw a curveball for a strike. He was at Double-A before the incident but spent the bulk of the remainder of his professional baseball career struggling at Single-A. Taylor was able to get his fastball back into the low to mid 90's, and he had also filled out, gaining 35 pounds from when he first signed, however he had control problems.
In 1995 he pitched for the Yankees Gulf Coast team, and walked 54 batters in 40 innings. In 1996 he pitched for Greensboro, and walked 43 batters in 16.1 innings, going 0-5 with an 18.73 ERA. At Greensboro again in 1997, he walked 52 batters in 27 innings, going 1-4 with a 14.33 ERA.
He was released by the Yankees at the end of the 1998 season, and pitched for minor league affiliates of the Seattle Mariners and Cleveland Indians until retiring in 2000. In his final stint with the Indians' Columbus affiliate in 2000, in 2.2 innings he gave up 5 hits, 9 walks, 8 earned runs, and 11 runs.
[edit] After baseball
After retiring, Taylor moved to Raleigh and worked as a UPS package handler and later a beer distributor. He had a brush with the law in January 2005, in Wake Forest where police charged Taylor with misdemeanor child abuse for allegedly leaving four of his children (ages from 2 to 11) alone for more than eight hours. He didn't show up for his court date and at one point there were four outstanding warrants for his arrest. By 2006 he had moved back home and was working as a bricklayer with his father. According to financial records filed in a child support application, he makes $909 per month. He is the father of five daughters. Taylor still lives with his parents, at the end of a street named after him, in a two-story brick and frame house that he built using his signing bonus.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ The arm that changed the Major League draft Yahoo! Sports, Jeff Passan. Retrieved June 5, 2006
- ^ No Regrets as Taylor Rebuilds His Fastball New York Times. Retrieved September 29, 1994
- ^ Surgery Finishes Yankees' Taylor for 1994 Season New York Times. Retrieved December 29, 1993
- ^ "Tracking Down Brien Taylor by Wayne Coffey". New York Daily News. http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/jul/14/tracking_down_brien_taylor/. Retrieved 2006-07-14.
[edit] External links
- Career statistics and player information from The Baseball Cube, or Baseball-Reference (Minors)
- The arm that changed the Major League draft, retrieved June 6, 2006
- A New Standard (Sports Illustrated, September 9, 1991), retrieved June 7, 2006
- Tracking Down Brien Taylor by Wayne Coffey - New York Daily News
| Preceded by Chipper Jones |
First overall pick in the MLB Entry Draft 1991 |
Succeeded by Phil Nevin |
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