J.D Drew looks forward to baseball the way it used to be at NBC World Series
J.D. Drew played in the National Baseball Congress World Series for Kenai (Alaska) in 1995 while attending Florida State, before baseball became a business.
The business side of the game lasted 14 years. When Drew returns to the NBC World Series for the Kansas Stars next month, there will be no worries. Not about his performance, his contract or about meeting expectations from fans or the media.
Drew is one of 25 former major leaguers, many former All-Stars, playing for the Stars, whose first NBC game is on Aug. 6 at 9:30 p.m. at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.
“I still love the game of baseball,” said Drew, a 40-year-old outfielder who hit 242 home runs and earned $108 million while playing for the Cardinals, Braves, Dodgers and Red Sox from 1998-2011. “But the more I played at that level, the more demanding the stress level and the expectations from media and fans and the front office.
“In college, it was just about you and your buddies going out there and playing the game and trying to pick each other up. You wanted to have the most successful year you could …but it was still for the fun and the love of the game.”
Drew won the Golden Spikes Award, given to the top college baseball player, in 1997. Later that spring he was drafted No. 2 overall by the Philadelphia Phillies, but he refused to sign when the team didn’t meet the contract demands laid out by Drew’s agent, Scott Boras.
Instead, Drew played 44 games for the St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League while awaiting the 1998 draft. His holdout gave Drew a break from playing baseball non-stop and the rigors of trying to reach the major leagues, as well as some clarity on how much he appreciated the game.
Drew was drafted by the Cardinals at No. 5 in 1998 and reached the big leagues later that season. His first game in the minor leagues was in Wichita, when he played for the Arkansas Travelers.
“It really clarified there’s nothing that I’m missing in south Georgia in the middle of the summer when it’s a thousand degrees outside and humid as heck,” said Drew, a Valdosta, Ga. native. “But there was always that in the back in my mind, ‘What am I missing?’
“I always loved to come home in the offseason because it was deer-hunting season and I like going fishing, and then you’ve got Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then you start the repetition of getting ready to play again and you’re like, ‘Man, I don’t want to leave.’ ”
Drew was one of the recipients of the first text message from Adam LaRoche, his former Braves teammate, to gauge interest on playing in Wichita. LaRoche organized the team with Nate Robertson, a former Detroit Tigers pitcher from Wichita and Wingnuts co-owner.
He was intrigued, but Drew reminded LaRoche of all the amenities major-leaugers are used to – pregame and postgame meals, hotels, travel, family accommodations – and didn’t fully commit until those were addressed and confirmed.
A workout plan that began in February “for no reason but health reasons and energy” is coming in handy as Drew prepares to play again, five years after retirement.
He won two World Series championships with the Red Sox and was a 2008 All-Star. Those attributes don’t necessarily give Drew assurance about his upcoming performance, though.
“Depending on how many bunt singles we can get down, we might have a chance to win,” Drew said. “I can leg them out, I don’t know if I can hit them out anymore.… There ain’t no guarantee that anyone on this team is going to be able to hit, so we’ve got to use pitching and defense to try and win a game.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2016 at 2:06 PM with the headline "J.D Drew looks forward to baseball the way it used to be at NBC World Series."