The fun's over

Rays' No. 1 pick faces a hard road to the big leagues

Tuesday was the easy part for Delmon Young. Tuesday was all about backslaps and huge smiles. It was about dreams and unlimited potential.

Well, now comes everything else. Now comes the microscope.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays made Young, a 17-year-old stud from California, the No. 1 pick in baseball's amateur draft Tuesday. It was a decision that will mean millions of dollars for Young. Possibly tens of millions over the course of his career.

But the signing comes at a cost. From now on, starting this moment, Young will be expected to make good on those millions invested in him. He will be expected to be like Chipper Jones and Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr. , former Nos. 1. He will be expected to be better than former Nos. 1 Phil Nevin and B.J. Surhoff.

He is expected to be nothing like Bill Almon or Al Chambers or David Clyde.

"Any first player in the draft," says Jones, the No. 1 pick of the Atlanta Braves in the 1990 draft, "I would not wish that upon my worst enemy."

By everybody's accounts, Young is a great young talent. He hit .544 his senior season. He's 6-foot-3. He has power and speed.

SI Flashbacks Overall No. 1 picks 1987 B.J. Surhoff 1989 Ben McDonald 1991 Brien Taylor 1993 Alex Rodriguez 1995 Darin Erstad 1999 Josh Hamilton 2001 Joe Mauer

But a lot of these draftees have that. The position players chosen No. 1 all have uncommon power and speed. The pitchers all are unhittable. Until they start playing baseball for a living, that is.

Then the grind of playing every day, the grind of travel, starts to wear on them. Then comes the constant push of getting ready for the big leagues, of being graded every single day, every single pitch, every single at-bat.

The weight of expectations -- from family, from friends, from teammates, from the media, from the bosses signing the checks -- becomes enormous. It's downright crippling sometimes.

"I think he just has to go out and play," says Rodriguez, the Texas Rangers' shortstop, the No. 1 pick of the Seattle Mariners in 1993. "There's going to be a lot of speculation, a lot of apprehension on his part. He just has to go out and play."

The chances of picking a No. 1 who turns out to be a Jones or a Rodriguez are not good. More often, teams end up with -- if they're lucky -- OK players who will have decent, but not Hall of Fame, careers.

The problems is, when teams are paying millions of dollars for these kids, just OK is not OK. Young, for instance, is expected to get $4 million just to sign his first contract. OK simply won't do. So the pressure gets poured on.

"The major league experience is a tough one. What it is, it's a working-out process," says Jones. "The guys who come in really hungry for the game, those are the ones who will continue on. But sometimes it's the guys who don't have the heart, the guys who think they deserve to be there, that end up getting all the [signing] money."

The money is always a factor for a first-rounder. If it's not a factor in getting him signed -- and it always is -- it's a factor in how well he performs after he signs.

Yeah, you know. Young kids. Lots of money. Lots of things to do with it. It's not a good formula.

"Money has a funny way of changing people," says Jones.

But not all people. Rodriguez got $1 million to sign with the Mariners in 1993, zipped through the minors and has become the premier shortstop in baseball.

He looks back on his first couple of years under the microscope with a lot less pain than Jones does.

"I didn't think it was that bad," he says. "I had a great ride out in Seattle. I didn't think it was a hard road. But I played well (.319 in his first stop) from the start, so that helped."

Jones, too, was hardly bowled over by the money. But he remembers all the pressures, all the scrutiny, all the outside ... junk ... that he had to put up with as a No. 1. If a young player isn't ready for that, Jones says, it can be awfully difficult.

"I'd just tell [him], don't read your press clippings. Positive or negative," Jones says. "Just realize that you're never as good, or never as bad, as you think. You gotta get in the mind ... you have to stay tunneled on what you want to do."

Whether Young will be able to handle everything remains to be seen. He has the skills, it seems. The fact that he comes from a baseball family -- his brother, Dmitri, plays for the Tigers -- can only help.

But, starting right now, he has to prove he can play. Every day.

That's the hard part.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.

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