TAMPA – He will be going across the street soon, not to Raymond James Stadium, home of the Super Bowl champs, but to the Yankees’ minor league complex next door.
He will follow that by going to Columbus, Ohio, to play baseball in the home of the national college football champion.
He will be hitting fourth against the Indians April 26-27, but since it is the Indianapolis Indians, not Cleveland Indians, the most interesting thing that could happen to him that weekend is his selection in the NFL draft.
Drew Henson hates this. He hates that he cannot get you off the subject of his name and the possibility of being an NFL draft pick. He is a baseball player. He swears. He pleads. He insists. “I’ll say, ‘great, I was drafted in two sports,’ then I will go on with this,” Henson said. “I told everyone two years ago, I told everyone last year and I will tell everyone again now, I’m doing this [baseball].”
Henson sells this hard. He looks you straight in the eyes. Speaks intelligently. Earnestly. He sounds neither affected that some in the organization now question his baseball future nor damaged by his 2002 struggles: 151 strikeouts, 35 errors at Triple-A, and .211 and 11 errors in the Arizona Fall League.
“I’m going to figure things out,” Henson said. “When I am playing every day at third base [for the Yanks], football won’t be an issue. I’m at peace with myself on everything.”
But what if he struggles again and an NFL team provides a more obvious, quicker avenue toward stardom? Giants GM Ernie Accorsi said Henson “was projected as a very high pick while a Michigan underclassman” and former Cowboys VP Gil Brandt, now an NFL.com columnist, said he couldn’t imagine Henson surviving 32 teams picking more than 250 players.
Accorsi knows this subject, having taken a quarterback named John Elway with the first pick in 1983 while Colts’ GM, though Elway was threatening to further pursue his career as a Yankee prospect rather than play for Frank Kush. Accorsi thought all the minor league bus trips would push Elway into Colts’ camp by August. But his owner, Bob Irsay, never gave the plan a chance, trading Elway to Denver.
Henson said no amount of bus trips would dissuade him. Still, his fifth-year class is up and he cannot stop an NFL team from drafting him, even if it would only hold his rights for one year and even if both Accorsi and Brandt said all current intelligence is Henson still wants to be Troy Glaus, not Troy Aikman. Yet even Henson said, “I hope I am not drafted so the Yankees don’t have a reason to question my desire. But it is like baseball searching the world for talent, the NFL will search anywhere for a quarterback.”
Strangely, after a calendar year of full-time baseball, Henson looked like a beat-up quarterback in Arizona last November, exhausted by information overload. He could not hit the ball, but he sure had hit a wall. So, he took two months off and seems to have taken 12 steps toward the majors, sounding renewed about his love of the game.
“I forgot at times that this is supposed to be fun,” Henson said. “I almost overworked myself last season. I was thinking too hard instead of letting things come to me. The Yankees signed me because of athleticism. I don’t want to let my mind get in the way of my body.”
Henson has looked more relaxed, more skilled and more, as team VP Rob Thomson said, on “auto-pilot” this spring. He did just turn 23 this month and his power is an overt tool. He worked on lateral movement in the offseason and, in an intra-squad game yesterday, made fine plays moving both left and right. He also went 1-for-2 with an RBI.
He badly needs such results. Third base coach Willie Randolph said, “It’s a big year for him. He has to step up.” Indeed. The Yanks bought a year more of development for Henson by re-signing Robin Ventura. But with a six-year, $17 million investment, their patience is dimming. Henson vows he will not follow the Josh Booty, Chad Hutchinson, Chris Weinke train from failed baseball prospect to NFL quarterback.
But just how long before George Steinbrenner’s Yankees give him a push onto that train?