Heads Of The '85 Draft Class

The former phenom, after a playing career marked by excellence and injury, relishes teaching the game

As a much-hyped 19-year-old Mets prospect in 1987, Gregg Jefferies was given a reception familiar to many New York City athletes: Perform and we'll canonize you, but falter and we'll burn you at the stake. Frustrated, he wrote an open letter to local sports radio station WFAN in 1991, imploring Mets fans to show more support; when he popped out in his next appearance at Shea, he was met with a typical New York flurry of boos.

Jefferies experienced less strife and more success with the five teams for which he subsequently played, retiring in 2000 with five seasons in which he hit over .300, but with two torn hamstrings that still plague him. Says Jefferies, "One thing I can say is that I did leave it all out on the field. I did try to play hard, and I think in the long run that kind of caught up to me. I wasn't good enough to not dive and slide hard."

But Jefferies has found his peace with baseball as a hitting instructor and coach in Pleasanton, Calif. At the Total Players Center, he works with such professionals as Brandon Crawford, a shortstop in the Giants' system. But it has been with the Foothills High team (he has been on the school's staff since 2007) that he has made his biggest impact. "My first season there we had a player named Troy Channing, a senior who was putting up monster numbers. But the year before, no one knew who he was. We tweaked his swing and showed him how to pull the ball, and he went from being an unknown to getting drafted," says Jefferies. Channing chose the college route, where, in his first year at St. Mary's in Moraga, Calif., he set school records for home runs and RBIs and was named a freshman All-America. "The phone call I got from him where he said, 'Coach, I cannot thank you enough. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I'd ever get drafted [he went in the 40th round],' meant the world to me."

NFL: Class of '85

1. Bruce Smith, DE Buffalo Bills

2. Bill Fralic, G Atlanta Falcons

3. Ray Childress, DE/DT Houston Oilers

4. Chris Doleman, DE Minnesota Vikings

5. Duane Bickett, LB Indianapolis Colts