ESPNMAG.com - Airing It Out

You knew the NFL draft had arrived as a legitimate TV property when Colts GM Bill Tobin bashed Mel Kiper Jr. on the air in 1994. Mel (and our show) had enough credibility and popularity with NFL fans that Tobin was irked when his choice of Trev Alberts was poorly received. "Who in the hell is Mel Kiper?" roared Tobin -- to an audience that knew exactly who Kiper was.

Whether a professional baseball draft could become a major event like the NFL draft depends solely on the cooperation of Major League Baseball. This project would represent a significant departure from baseball's normal way of doing business. Televising this draft would benefit all of MLB, but baseball teams do not think that way, certainly not to the extent that NFL teams do.

The first thing I would ask of MLB is to consider holding a draft-position lottery for the weaker teams, like the NBA does. It would add excitement and intrigue to the process. Last year, the Twins passed on Mark Prior with the No. 1 pick, reportedly because they didn't want to pay the $10.5M he was seeking. The Twins would be looking good now with Prior in their rotation -- instead of in the Cubs'. A lottery might have shifted that pick to a team that would have taken Prior first. And if more emphasis were placed on the draft, maybe Twins fans would have demanded his selection.

Not surprisingly, I would do some things on an MLB draft telecast that are similar to what ESPN does on the NFL draft:

The show would be broadcast live from New York, and the top 10 prospects would be present.

We'd find, or create, Kiper's counterpart. Maybe Peter Gammons (with a new hairdo, perhaps), or an expert from Baseball America. Someone who could quickly and authoritatively tell viewers about a player, why his team needed him and when he might make it to the majors.

Until a truly global draft is instituted, we'd produce features from the Dominican Republic or Japan to give viewers a taste of the next big international players coming onto the scene.

We would also need to do something striking to corral viewers who don't happen to be baseball fans. To host the show, we would use Karl Ravech and Brooke Burke or Jules Asner.

We'd go inside the war room of a club to show it treats the draft just as seriously as NFL teams.

We'd intersperse the telecast with excerpts from surprising scouting reports of years past: raves that flamed out or lukewarm reports on future Hall of Famers.

A challenge to this broadcast is that MLB draft prospects are not nationally known, unlike the college or high school stars who come into the NBA or NFL each year. We'd prepare features on the top 15 or so players, hoping we'd then have a profile on each of the first 10 picks. And we'd have to be every bit as prepared as ESPN's NFL experts are -- if it looked like the Orioles might take a shortstop in the first round, we'd get Cal Ripken Jr. to comment.

Televising the baseball draft would complement a lot of baseball programming we already air, such as the College World Series, the Triple-A All-Star Game and the All-Stars Futures Game, an exhibition featuring top prospects during All-Star Week. The Astros' rising star outfielder Lance Berkman has been on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball this year, but he was relatively unknown when we had him on as a Rice junior in the College World Series (1997) and in the 1999 Futures Game.

Adding the draft would complete our stated mission when we first signed on with MLB in 1989: to become the "daily electronic voice of baseball."

And one other thing: Mel Kiper is still analyzing the draft. And Trev Alberts now works for ESPN.

Tim Scanlan is the coordinating producer for ESPN MLB Live Broadcasts. This article appears in the June 10 issue of ESPN The Magazine.