By Mike Kays
Phoenix Sports Editor
June 11, 2007 01:04 pm
—
Londell Taylor was just hoping for things to slow down Sunday after a scurried signing ceremony that made him a professional baseball player.
Right. And we can hope for gas to go below $2 a gallon too. Ain’t gonna happen on either count.
Taylor made official on Sunday what he declared on Friday when the Detroit Tigers made him a 13th-round pick. Baseball and not Oklahoma Sooner football is his future.
The pitcher/shortstop and Phoenix Player of the Year who also was selected as our Male Athlete of the Year had about 48 hours of slow time before heading on Tuesday to Lakeland, Fla., and a rookie mini-camp where the Tigers will transform him into an outfielder and ticket him with an eventual assignment to the Tigers' Gulf Coast League team.
It is the kind of weekend that most of us would want to freeze-frame and savor. After all, what Taylor won’t do is something even only a few months ago was the stuff of many dreams, back when Central Arkansas was the focus of Taylor’s recruiting visits and even after Butch Davis’ invitation to visit the University of North Carolina. It was in Chapel Hill, N.C., that Bob Stoops made that phone call of a football player’s fantasies. A few days later, Taylor signed with OU in what by comparison was a much more celebrated moment in school history, played out before a full gym, band and cheerleaders.
On Saturday, he broke the news to Sooners defensive coordinator Brent Venables. For all their late rallying, all Stoops and Venables have from the association with the Vian standout is an unused scholarship.
“He wished me luck,” Taylor said, noting there was no going back no matter what Coach V said. Taylor said his mind was made up when he got the call from the Tigers organization, but my hunch in a series of conversations with him over the last month and change is that his heart was already on the diamond.
On down the line, Taylor could turn to football. Some have, and he’ll have five years of college eligibility. But don't count on it.
“That door is pretty much closed,” Taylor said. “The Tigers will pay for my college (as part of his contract. Baseball has always been my favorite sport and it’s now my total focus.”
Steve Taylor was the Tigers scout who finalized the contract in Vian on Sunday. The Shawnee resident was also the scout who saw Taylor for the first time at the Henryetta Festival in March, a week or so after Londell and the Vian basketball team wrapped up its season in the state quarterfinals. That visit was repeated multiple times through the Wolverines' matching run of the basketball team to the state quarterfinals. Londell, recall, was also a key part of the state finalist football squad.
“Special athletes make special players,” Steve Taylor said in a cell phone conversation Sunday afternoon.
While the national trend has seen a dwindling number of black baseball players who opt for football or basketball careers, two of the most recent area high school players faced with that choice have instead opted for baseball. Recall that four years ago, another three-sport standout, Tyler Johnson of Haskell, returned a scholarship to play football at Tulsa for a minor league contract with the California Angels organization.
Johnson, now playing right field for the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Kernels of the Class A Midwest League, has six home runs in 82 at-bats (.232 average).
The latest of those to buck that trend hadn’t given much thought about it by midafternoon Sunday. He hadn’t even reflected as to what his first significant purchase was going to be with the money he just got, terms of which he nor Steve Taylor would specify.
“I hadn't really thought about it,” Londell said. “I’m just ready to slow down.”
I wouldn’t call your impending journey slow, Londell. But you won’t be dealing with the strain of a decision of a lifetime anymore.
— Mike Kays is Phoenix Sports Editor.
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