Joe Mauer has been compared to Drew Henson. Roscoe Crosby has been compared to Ken Griffey Jr. As projected top-10 picks in Tuesday's baseball draft and as top-10 rated players in this year's class of college football recruits, Mauer and Crosby are two of the most high-profile, dual-sport athletes that scouts and recruiting analysts have ever seen.
Mauer is a 6-foot-4, left-handed hitting catcher who played for nationally-ranked baseball and football teams at Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul -- the same school that produced quarterbacks Steve Walsh and Chris Weinke as well as seven-time All-Star Paul Molitor. In February, Mauer signed with Florida State as the top-rated high school quarterback in the country.
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Dollar signs
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Cost is always a concern for the frugal-minded Twins, whose last first overall draft pick was Tim Belcher in 1983. However, last year the Twins dished out $4.59 million in draft bonuses, which ranked 12th in baseball, according to Baseball America. They ranked 13th in 1999.
"Look at the bonuses we've given to early picks for the last seven years," said Twins scouting director Mike Radcliff. "Sure we have budget constraints and our resources are less, but it's totally unfair to say that we haven't given out bonuses."
Because Mauer is a two-sport star, the Twins can spread his bonus over five years. The rule was created in 1995 in order to protect teams from players who signed their contracts and promptly ditched baseball. Mauer, who figures to get a signing bonus in the $4 million to $5 million range, will be one of the most expensive players in the draft because he does have Florida State football/baseball leverage.
But he will cost less than USC pitcher Mark Prior -- who is judged by most to be the best overall prospect in the draft and might be able to pitch with a major-league club this year -- because Prior is looking for a combination of a large signing bonus and major-league contract. Mauer is being advised by Ron Shapiro, an agent who has represented Cal Ripken, Eddie Murray and Kirby Puckett and has advised over 100 amateurs in the draft throughout the years.
Critics do point to the fact that the Twins have not signed a record six first-round picks through the years, including Belcher and Travis Lee. "We'll pay a fair amount and we aren't afraid to say 'No,'" Radcliff said. "We have and we will. Too many teams just give away higher bonuses because its easy to do. We think we can work with lower numbers, so that's the way we've approached it."
--Darren Rovell
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Crosby, who stands 6-foot-2, is a quick and powerful center fielder from Union (South Carolina) High School. But he is also a Parade All-America wide receiver who is so good -- ranked as the eighth-best recruit in the country by recruiting expert Tom Lemming -- that Clemson has already penciled him in as a starter on the gridiron this season.
Since September, Mauer and Crosby have had to deal with a daily ritual: questions from recruiters, scouts and others about whether they will play professional baseball, college football or both.
"It's been pretty crazy this year," said Mauer, who may go as the top pick in the draft to the Minnesota Twins. "In the fall, I had all the schools calling me -- 10 to 15 calls a night from them -- and after I was done I thought I was going to be on easy street. I had a month of being a regular kid and then the scouts, the agents and the sportswriters started calling."
But as draft day approaches, Mauer -- unlike other dual-sports stars such as Chad Hutchinson and Todd Helton, who played quarterback at Stanford and Tennessee, respectively, before committing to baseball -- appears ready to play hardball and give up the pigskin.
"The bottom line is that baseball has always been my first love," Mauer said. "Football, I sort of fell into and I enjoy playing, but the higher I go in the draft, the more likely it will be that I will give it up."
While Mauer seems willing to do that, Crosby apparently is not. On Friday, he was still talking about Clemson and why he loves both sports. "In football, I go up and get the ball and try to make people miss," Crosby said. "And in baseball I go all out -- hitting, running and playing good defense in the field."
Baseball has always been the top priority for Mauer. Anyone can tell just by walking into his living room. "I have 15 pictures," Mauer said. "About 11 or 12 of them have me in baseball uniforms."
"I started playing football in the fifth grade, but I was playing baseball as soon as I could walk," said Mauer, who hit .602 with 14 home runs during his high school regular season. "I was two years old, but it was pretty hard to get that bat away from me." And then comes the family history. Joe's grandfather, Jake, and his three brothers all signed professional baseball contracts.
Because his hometown Twins have the No. 1 overall pick on Tuesday, the odds of Mauer to be picked first are more likely.
"We can chronicle his progress in any sport," said Twins scouting director Mike Radcliff, who has seen Mauer play baseball 50 times this year and more than 100 times since his sophomore year in high school. "We've watched him in a lot of baseball games, but we've also seen him rebound, play the point and score critical points (yes, Mauer could also be counted on for 20 points a game as a guard/forward for Cretin-Derham's basketball team that made the state playoffs) and throw the football 45 yards down the field on the nose on a tough third-down play."
One scouting director called him "simply the best player available at a premium position. He's got that left-handed stroke with the bat, he's got power and he does things easy in the field."
Although the Twins have drafted two-sport stars before like Keith LeGree -- who played in the Twins organization while playing basketball at Cincinnati and Louisville -- and Ricky Manning Jr., who is a junior cornerback at UCLA, Radcliff said that a first-rounder has to give up football.
That's Crosby's dilemma. As a top-10 pick, he would command a bonus of more than $2 million, as all of last year's top 10 selections did. While he has tremendous baseball ability, he apparently still has football in his blood.
"(Crosby) is definitely the best combination of speed and power in this draft," said one scouting director. "His athleticism goes without mentioning. You can see it in the way he walks. He's a fast bat guy with home run power." The scouting director did mention that Crosby had elbow tendinitis, "which could get worse and might require surgery," although that wouldn't necessarily affect his draft position.
But Radcliff says Crosby's non-committal to baseball could cost him a place in the first round. "Roscoe is limited to a number of teams now because there's only a couple of them that will be willing to deal with him," Radcliff said. "If Roscoe is going football, we've made it clear that we're out of the equation, since we don't believe you can be successful in both sports."
"This is the baseball draft and we want to draft baseball players not part-time baseball players," said one scouting director, who agreed that Crosby could drop out of the first-round, but still sign for first-round money.
A player's signing bonus isn't necessarily correlated to draft position. Last year, Stanford quarterback Joe Borchard was picked 12th overall, but received the highest signing bonus of the draft -- $5.3 million from the White Sox.
"Because I am a two-sport athlete, I think teams know what the figures are and what they are going to have to spend on me," said Crosby, who is being advised by Jeff Moorad, agent for Manny Ramirez and Shawn Green.
But playing college football in the fall and minor-league baseball during the summers hasn't proved successful for the many that have tried it.
For every Drew Henson, who was a successful college quarterback at Michigan and did well enough playing baseball part-time to sign a lucrative six-year, $17 million contract in late March with the Yankees, there are a slew of other two-sport stars that haven't made the grade in the minors. Other college quarterbacks, including Weinke, Josh Booty, Quincy Carter and Kenny Kelly struggled to make it in baseball.
Both Mauer and Crosby have spoken to Henson about playing both sports, but the two-sport stars appear to have reached different decisions about their future.
"Drew Henson was the one that mentioned to Joe that there is nothing that tops playing in front of a crowd of 100,000 on a Saturday afternoon," said John Lilly, Florida State's recruiting coordinator, who does not expect Mauer to show up at the school for a good while. "I guess Drew now feels that baseball is better than that."
Apparently, Mauer would agree.
Darren Rovell covers sports business for ESPN.com. He can be reached at darren.rovell@espn.com.
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