Good Ball Player Skips High School for a Chance at JUCO
I didn't see this posted anywhere. It will be interesting to see what happens with this kid.
over 2 years ago
RD74
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I can’t help think what a bad idea this is and also wonder how much of it is propogated by the media, as in, would he think he was really this good without the SI cover story and everything else?
Shin-Soo Choo, future U.S. Citizen.
My thoughts as well. What’s he going to do with his life at 25 when he’s out of baseball, which is what, how likely to happen? 80%? 90%?
I’m sure the ten million dollar bonus will console him just fine. I can’t understand why people are against this idea. If he was a violin virtuoso, he’d be going to Julliard and only practicing violin, and no one would complain.
But his odds of success! They don’t exist! What are the odds he’s actually drafted high enough to get a bonus that will last him through this phase of his life?
Through this phase of his life?
How much cash did you make from ages 17 to 21?
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
Well, then, this guy will probably out-earn you over those years.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
But he’s going to cost himself in the long run if baseball doesn’t work out.
2010.
by Gradyforpresident on Jun 16, 2009 3:34 PM EDT up reply actions
His signing bonus alone could outearn a huge amount of the population for their entire lives. Again, he is actually reducing his financial risk significantly with this move. The only thing he is losing out on is a college education at a 4 year undergraduate university.
Yeah, take back what I said. My actual feelings are way below.
2010.
by Gradyforpresident on Jun 16, 2009 4:31 PM EDT up reply actions
Cost himself how?
Are incomes determined by high school diplomas? I think not.
He can still go to college if things don’t work out.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
In one sense they are. Stopping at a high school diploma, or not even getting one, is a strong predictor of lower income, particularly for men. Going to college (and getting a degree) USED TO BE a strong predictor of a higher income, again, particularly for men. But, it’s become more complicated: now there are real uncertainties associated with getting a college degree, in part because so many more people go to college than was true in previous generations.
This is correlation, not causation. Skipping the end of high school isn’t a predictor of lower income if you have a year-early acceptance to MIT.
Bottom line … this kid shouldn’t have any more trouble going to college than anyone else, should he need to or choose to in the future.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
That’s a different point. Whether he can go on to college later is pretty independent of whether he goes the conventional route of 4 years of high school and straight to college. I have a feeling that completion rates are higher among people who go straight to college, but I’d have to look that up. I’m not sure.
On the correlation vs. causation point, you’re right. But, the fact remains that your chances of having a high income decrease significantly if you drop out of high school or stop at a high school education. This has become more, not less true over time. It’s true, as well, if you control for various other factors that correlate with income – there’s an independent effect associated with income, in other words. Economists devoted to human capital theory theorize that this is because more educated people are “more productive.” I’m not sure I buy that, but if I were making choice, based on evidence about the probabilities, I would choose to get more education to decrease my chances of having a low income.
The kid in this story is another matter. He may or may not be making a rational choice since he has an unusual form of “human capital” that may make him able to achieve a high income by other means.
The point is that the correlation between graduating high school and income doesn’t really matter at all in special cases like a prodigious baseball talent
Geez, Peter, what can I say but “get a clue” … “chances of a high income decrease” because most dropouts are dropping out to flip burgers, sell drugs, or watch more Springer. It has nothing to do with this situation at all.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
I was responding to your sentences: “are incomes determined by high school diplomas. I think not.”
I did in fact acknowledge that this kid is in an unusual situation because his income may be determined by his baseball talent. If you had said “is this kid’s income determined by a high school diploma,” we’d be in agreement.
None of this alters the fact that, in general, over the population as a whole, the relationship between education and income exists. And it’s not just about drop outs. It’s about high school graduates, whose incomes lag behind those with higher education. They are not “dropping out to flip burgers, sell drugs, or watch more Springer.”
Keith Law has said he will most likely be picked first in either draft. He also said he would have been picked second this year. That would be a comfortable signing bonus
What if he gets hurt? I’m not entirely against it because he is getting a GED and going to college even if it is a community college so he isn’t completely ruining his options. Plus some of those community college degrees will get you more money than some degrees at regular college.
I’m just saying there is a lot of risk involved which I’m sure they know.
All that said, I would never let my kid do this. I would probably even be wary of him not going to college. This of course is assuming I have a kid who’s a talented sports player. Not likely.
Who needs affection when you can have blind hatred?
by ClemsonGirl on Jun 16, 2009 10:11 AM EDT up reply actions
If he gets hurt. Simple. He goes back to school. Unless there is a rule I don’t know of that doesn’t allow it
If your son had an opportunity to make a 20 million dollar signing bonus within a year, you wouldn’t do it? That’s the real bad parenting, not what the Harper’s are doing
I don’t know. I don’t think it’s bad parenting. I think it’s teaching them different things. I never said the Harpers were bad parents either. Just different. I said I don’t completely disagree with it. I just wouldn’t do it.
Who needs affection when you can have blind hatred?
by ClemsonGirl on Jun 16, 2009 11:08 AM EDT up reply actions
I am also basing this on how me and my brother were at 16. It would not have been the right choice for either of us to skip the rest of high school. Obviously this kid’s parents know him better than anyone else and know whether or not he’s ready for this and you have to trust them when they say he is. I just don’t think that I would feel comfortable doing this to my kid at 16 when he could make $20 million in two years when he could be more prepared. I said I would be wary about them not going to college but I would let them especially since at 18 they are supposed to be in control of their lives by then. Maybe I would let them do it if I thought they were ready but that has to be incredibly more rare than professional athlete talent.
Who needs affection when you can have blind hatred?
by ClemsonGirl on Jun 16, 2009 11:29 AM EDT up reply actions
I’m not sure I’m seeing the “what if he gets hurt” angle. Doesn’t going to JUCU now allow him to enter the pros a year early? Doesn’t that limit his risk?
Steel Nick
He could get hurt in college. That’s what I meant. The more I think about it the more I’m okay with this. It’s the first shock I had to get over. Obviously his parents trust him enough to do this so everyone else should too.
Who needs affection when you can have blind hatred?
by ClemsonGirl on Jun 16, 2009 11:28 PM EDT up reply actions
Todd Van Poppel (6/4/90)?
Corey Snyder and Joe Carter (1987)?
Just two off the top of my head. My attitude about skipping college for the pros and a whole lot of $$$ is usually: “Well college will always be there.” But skipping two years of high school for junior college sounds…Kind of weird, like perhaps something that Todd Marinovich’s fatherwould encourage.
I was against this, but then I read someone saying that if this was some 16 year old kid out of the Dominican nobody would bat an eye at it. One imagines that he’ll be drafted high enough to be pretty financially secure for a while no matter what happens, so I don’t really see why he shouldn’t do it.
*sigh*
The point of HS and College is to get a good job. A $5-$10m signing bonus sounds like a pretty good start.
I disagree with your first sentence. The point of high school or college for many people, but not everyone, is to get a good job. There are people (like me, admittedly in the minority) who have less practical outlooks on the purposes of these institutions. I went to college because I can’t not learn stuff. It’s who I am. Thankfully, most schools are accommodating of those of us who attend for reasons both practical and not.
That said, I should not impose my reasons for going to school on you or Bryce Harper. If it suits him, and his parents (who probably know him better than I do) feel it’s appropriate for him, who am I to judge?
There are people for whom this is would be a terrible decision and people for whom it’s exactly the right decision. Not knowing him or his family, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
There are many, vastly more efficient ways to “learn stuff” than going to college.
If learning for its own sake is truly your goal, any rational person would do it another way. Reading, traveling and apprenticing come to mind.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
This is a gross oversimplification. It depends very much on what one intends to learn and the nature of the learner. To say that apprenticing is a better way to learn than college is to assume that everybody’s the same, just as much as the knee-jerk reaction of people who say Harper needs to stay in high school.
by jds16 on Jun 17, 2009 4:02 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
This is an awfully categorical statement. This is assuredly true for some kinds of learning, and for some kinds of learners, but for others, being in a group-learning environment such as that in a classroom likely works the best.
Now, if you’re measuring efficiency in terms of learning per dollar, then you’re probably right, given the exorbitant cost of college these days. But if you can get all or a large portion of your tuition paid for by someone else, then… measured purely in terms of time spent, it’s got to depend on what is being learned and the style of the person learning it.
by Logodaedalus on Jun 17, 2009 5:03 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Oh, but we aren’t talking about “some kinds of learners.” We’re talking about “I went to college because I can’t not learn stuff. It’s who I am.”
If learning is that important to a person, surely they don’t need a formal classroom to do it in. I can’t think of anyone worth having a conversation with who would say they learned more in a classroom than out of one.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
There are many ways I could have worded that, most of them better than what I wrote. You would have found fault with each of them. It’s who you are.
by jds16 on Jun 17, 2009 6:18 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
I found no fault with the wording that was worth mentioning, and indeed, I mentioned none.
We’re just talking about the idea here. I think it’s great that you’re committed to learning and passionate about it. But I think if you’re going to put a statement like that out there, you ought to be backing it up with a whole lot more substance than: “Therefore, I will consume $35,000 in Higher Education Products and Services every year, forever — because that’s who I am.”
That particular expression of self isn’t a passion for learning, it’s merely a predilection for being a career student. Those two things are very much not the same.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
That particular expression of self isn’t a passion for learning, it’s merely a predilection for being a career student. Those two things are very much not the same.
I agree completely. I was initially trying to express that academic environments are often ideal for me (yet not necessarily others, and that I went to college for the purpose of learning, not to put myself in position to get a good job), without giving some long-winded expose on what makes me tick. My attempt to be concise apparently failed to convey what I meant, and I felt you were twisting that to make some other point about the relative uselessness of college.
I’m glad someone said this. That was (and is) my feeling about a going to college. Jay’s right that you can learn a lot by reading, travelling and apprenticing. But, you can also learn a lot from being in a place where there are other people trying to learn, doing research and creative work, and trying to share their knowledge with others. And you’re absolutely right that this is not relevant to Bryce Harper’s situation; he wants to be a baseball player, may very well have the ability to do so, so focusing on education doesn’t make a lot of sense for him at this point.
by peter m on Jun 17, 2009 10:21 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Oh, but we aren’t talking about “a place where there are other people trying to learn, doing research and creative work, and trying to share their knowledge with others.”
We’re talking about college.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
This is about conflating.
College is not academics. College encompasses a lot of things other than academics, and most people who go to college don’t come out with a significant academic background.
Having said that, the only place to do serious academics is at a university.
Having said that … academics is not learning. Learning encompasses a lot of things other than academics.
And finally, while many people who love learning may choose the life of an academic, a predilection for that lifestyle (and the ability to afford it) are certainly not the same thing as a love for learning.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
As one of those dreaded “academics” – I pretty much agree with you completely. The one thing I’m not sure about is this line:
Having said that, the only place to do serious academics is at a university.
and just because I’m not sure if you are making the distinction between College and University here, or pointing out that it is hard to do academics outside of an academic setting. In either case I’d quibble, just because there is quite a bit of good academic work that gets done in various non-academic (not training students as a primary mission) research institutions.
To give one example, Exxon uses the pipeline as a metaphor for their activities. At one end of the pipeline there are people in the business of procuring and selling oil. At the other end is there research division, where many activities are not directly related to the oil business. My sister, a geologist, tells me that the work done at their research end is “20 years” ahead of the academies. Evidently people within Exxon have developed entire branches of the discipline. If you want to truly master geology, that’s where the most serious learning takes place (but of course one must prove his/her commitment by first going to school).
In my opinion, nothing beats the apprenticeship or vocational training as a vehicle learning and total mastery. In many areas the schools have become a proving ground of personal commitment.
Harper has a vocation—a calling. He has been discovered and he’ll be supported in the pursuit of his dream. I think it obviates the need for further schooling, but as young as he is that’s not a closed door either.
I actually heard an NPR interview with a local sports reporter (my guess is that it was the guy who wrote article quoted in this blog entry). He said that this kid and his parents really have their heads on straight and the kid isn’t the young prima donna that most people think of when they think of high school athletes who are fast tracking to the pros.
oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Boras is his agent.
Also forgot to mention a potential hometown hero bias from this reporter
What?! Boras is his agent?! I would have never guessed.
Who needs affection when you can have blind hatred?
by ClemsonGirl on Jun 16, 2009 10:16 AM EDT up reply actions
If Lebron James had left SVSM after his junior year of high school to enter the NBA draft, I think he would have still worked out just fine and earned plenty of money. I don’t know if this Harper kid is the Lebron-type, “can’t miss” talent, but it’s disingenuous to assume he is your typical high schooler who needs a degree.
You know Selig? Ombudsman.
I don’t see anything wrong with this. Players in other sports do this all the time, especially outside the U.S. How old were Victor and Jhonny when the Indians signed them? He’s going to get picked #1 in next year’s draft, sign for millions of dollars, and be set for life — what’s wrong with that? I’m all for education (I’m a teacher) but this kid doesn’t need one any more than LeBron or Kobe or KG needed one (as long as he has his head on straight and good family to help him make smart decisions, which he seems to have).
Why do people (not here) seem to imply that colleges don’t allow older students in response to stuff like this?
The kid can go to college any time he wants: when he is done playing, if he gets injured, whatever. Its not like that door is closed to him after a certain age. I went and got my BA at age 24 and my MA at 26. And in my experience you are a much better student at an older age anyway. A ton of kids learn nothing in their first couple years of college due to partying anyway.
Baseball is a very realistic career choice for him and I am fine with him making that the focus over any particular education option. Those education options will still be there if baseball does not work out for him.
Len Barker perfect game attendee
Should say started my BA at 24 and MA at 26. Not got those degrees.
Len Barker perfect game attendee
by SeattleVinny on Jun 16, 2009 3:36 PM EDT up reply actions
The one thing that’s perturbed me about this whole thing is that the sports media has made him out to be a sure thing, which is clearly not true.
2010.
by Gradyforpresident on Jun 16, 2009 3:40 PM EDT reply actions
That fact that he is launching 570 foot homers and can throw 94 mph is pretty darn impressive though at his age
Well, yeah, but come on, the guy is 16. He’s so far from the majors as to be totally unworthy of media attention.
2010.
by Gradyforpresident on Jun 16, 2009 4:31 PM EDT up reply actions
His distance from the majors is not the issue. His distance from the $10m Signing Bonus is the driving factor here.
I’m not talking about the money here, anymore. I’m talking about the media attention he has gotten (Sports Illustrated cover, right?).
2010.
by Gradyforpresident on Jun 16, 2009 6:29 PM EDT up reply actions
Bob Feller was 16 when he debuted in the majors
Ride on ye fearsome Horsemen of the Basketball Apocalypse. We got this.
by Turkmenbashi on Jun 16, 2009 5:25 PM EDT up reply actions
He only debuted because Steve O’Neill paid him $15 dollars.
by afh4 on Jun 16, 2009 5:30 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Is the 570 foot homer hyperbole, or did you actually read that somewhere? I seem to recall Robert Adair’s The Physics Of Baseball suggesting that there’s a limit to how far a HR could theoretically go, and it’s less than 570 feet. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, please.
According to the 3rd edition (2002) of the book I mentioned above (p. 104), on a 100 degree day with a 10 mph wind blowing out, the maximum distance of a batted ball is about 530 feet, assuming a pitch speed of 95 mph. (This excludes high-altitude considerations, which wouldn’t be necessary in Tampa.) Aluminum bats will add approximately 35 feet to a 400-ft fly ball, so let’s scale that up to 45 feet. That puts the limit at 575 feet.
So, if he was hitting an extremely fast pitch (given the competition) and using an aluminum bat, then this would have been pretty much the single greatest home run stroke in the history (and future) of baseball. Alternately, he was playing in a hurricane, or the measurement was a bit generous. I’ll stick with being incredulous.
by jds16 on Jun 17, 2009 4:29 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
A lot of this discussion seems to assume the alternative is him going to a 4-year undergraduate college and graduating. Very few guys drafted in baseball spend four years in college. Most are juniors or draft eligible sophomores. They might go back and finish at a later date, but this kid can do that too.
i would like to have a discussion that makes me feel better about my decision to own real estate. it has to be good. it just has to.
Except when you live in a depressed market, such as Arizona. Never thought I’d be upside down on real estate. At least I own my car. I may be living in it soon.
You really need to turn your sarcasm meter on.
by Buckeye Brad on Jun 17, 2009 5:48 PM EDT up reply actions
This guy told me a few years ago, the real estate market never, ever goes down. He was real confident, and I believed him.
Fortunately, at the time I had no money.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
This guy just told me he’d love to refinance my place, rates are low, etc. Then I gave him my zip code and he told me I was in a depressed market and he couldn’t help me. I think he was a mortgage broker or one of those types of guys.
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