As far as I can determine, two of this year's Super Bowl participants were
former baseball draft picks—and both were multiposition college stars who
now play wide receiver for the Steelers. The Marlins took Hines Ward as a
Georgia high school outfielder in the 73rd round in 1994, the same draft in
which they blew their top pick on future NFLer Josh Booty. In 1997, the Cubs
spent their 14th rounder on Illinois prep outfielder Antwaan Randle El.

That's also my Super Bowl prediction: Pittsburgh by two.




         Andy Marte has been the key piece in two major deals this winter.
         How does a top talent like that get dealt not once, but twice in an
         offseason? He's clearly a major prospect, but it just seems strange
         that he’d get shipped out twice. Is there something that the Braves
         and Red Sox see that may indicate he may not live up to the hype?

         Alan Florjancic
         Kenosha, Wis.


The two Marte trades, for Edgar Renteria in December and a six-player deal
that sent Coco Crisp to Boston in January, were more about filling needs for
the Braves and the Red Sox than those clubs giving up on him.

Chipper Jones is entrenched at third base for Atlanta, which desperately
needed a shortstop after losing Rafael Furcal to the Dodgers via free agency.
The only possible opening in the Braves lineup is in left field, and Marte
has yet to play the outfield in five years as a pro.

Similarly, the Red Sox needed a center fielder and targeted Crisp. They would
have preferred to deal a starting pitcher to get a center fielder, and they
reportedly discussed sending Matt Clement or Bronson Arroyo to the Mariners
for Jeremy Reed, and Clement to the Reds in what would have been a three-way
deal with Cleveland. But that didn't work, and they have Mike Lowell and
Kevin Youkilis, so dealing Marte meant they could upgrade their 2006 club.

A couple of years ago, Marte was on a very similar development track as
Miguel Cabrera. I wouldn't put him in Cabrera's class now, but he still has
the chance to be at least a star with his bat, power potential, plate
discipline and defensive skills. We've begun working on our annual Top 100
Prospects list, and I put Marte at No. 14 on my personal rankings.





         How does Jairo Garcia's recent admission that he's really Santiago
         Casilla and nearly three years older than originally thought affect
         his status on BA's upcoming Oakland prospect list?

         Daniel Thompson
         Bristol, England



It actually didn't affect his ranking at all, as we decided to leave him at
No. 7 after the news came out that he's 25 and not 22 as previously believed.
The main reason behind our thinking is that he's nearly big league ready and
almost a finished product, and that makes a difference in evaluating him. His
status would take a huge hit if he only had conquered high Class A, but
Garcia/Casilla has pitched in the majors the last two years and spent most of
2005 in Triple-A. That's good progress, even for a player of his revised age.

The bottom line is that Casilla has two pitches that have a chance to be well
above-average in his upper-90s fastball and his slider. He needs to improve
the control of his pitches and his emotions, and once he does he'll be in
Oakland to stay. He has closer stuff, though he may have to settle for
setting up Huston Street with the Athletics.

One question that hasn't been answered is when Casilla will be allowed to
enter the United States. He'll have to get his paperwork back in order, and
there's supposed to be a tougher crackdown on players who didn't come forward
when visagate first broke four years ago.





         I was paging through Baseball America's 1990 draft book and there
         was mention that during the Ben McDonald negotiations, he considered
         signing with a new baseball league. Do you recollect the circumstances
         around this league that was never formed? Was this to be a USFL-type
         league?

         Michael Haddock
         Chandler, Ariz.



Though 1989 was my rookie year at Baseball America, I had forgotten all about
this until Michael brought it up. The Orioles and McDonald, the No. 1 overall
pick in the 1989 draft, came to a standstill in negotiations during the
summer. Baltimore was offering a contract worth $750,000, which would have
been the second-highest in draft history to that point, but McDonald wanted a
$1.1 million deal. As you might imagine, with Larry Lucchino bargaining for
the Orioles and Scott Boras representing McDonald, there was no shortage of
rhetoric.

A proposed new league, for which few details were available but supposedly
had the financial backing of Donald Trump, reportedly offered McDonald a
package worth a guaranteed $1.2 million and as much as $2 million. In the
end, McDonald signed with Baltimore for an $824,000 contract that included a
$350,000 bonus.

How real was the league? We may never know. It had no television contract,
and many of the cities that were frontrunners in the race for Major League
Baseball expansion franchises declined interest in getting teams in the
upstart circuit. Agent Dick Moss' name was attached to the new league, and
there was speculation that it was just a bargaining ploy with baseball's
collective bargaining agreement getting ready to expire.

In his autobiography, "Stranger To The Game," Hall of Famer Bob Gibson says
it would have been known as the Baseball League and that he might have been
named commissioner. Gibson says the league was short-circuited when CBS paid
MLB a record $1.06 billion for its television rights, giving the owners more
than enough money to bleed any new competitor to death.