June 6, 2004, members of the Cavalier baseball team walked into the locker room for the last time that season after just having suffered a defeat from Vanderbilt, eliminating them from the regional competition. For some players, however, this was hardly the end. The very next day the Major League Baseball draft began.
At the end of the draft, four players from Virginia had been picked: Left-handed pitcher Andrew Dobies in the third round for the Boston Red Sox, left handed pitcher Joe Koshansky in the seventh round for the Colorado Rockies, infielder Mark Reynolds in the 16th round for the Arizona Diamondbacks and right-handed pitcher Jeff Kamrath in the 37th round for the Colorado Rockies. Of the four, Dobies, Reynolds and Kamrath were still juniors and, thus, had the option of going pro or staying with Virginia for an extra year and then re-entering the draft. Kamrath chose to stay, but both Dobies and Reynolds signed on with their respective teams.
"I just wanted to get my career started as early as possible," Reynolds said. "If you're ready, it's important to get your career started as early as you can. I felt I was ready, and I'm happy with my decision."
Reynolds currently is playing for the South Bend Silver Hawks, a single-A farm team for the Diamondbacks. He said prior to being drafted, he hadn't thought much about the draft.
"During the season I didn't think about it that much because we had a really good year, but, after we lost that last game, O'Connor told me about the possibility, and then it happened, and he just supported me 100 percent," Reynolds said.
One of the factors players have to consider when deciding whether or not to go pro a year early is whether they are ready for the rigorous schedule professional baseball demands.
"The biggest difference between college baseball and here is that here it's baseball all the time," Reynolds said. "It's your job -- you have to stay out there every day."
While college teams generally have one weekend series and one midweek game, minor league teams get one or two days off a month in a season that lasts from early April to early September.
"It's a different way to play," Koshansky said. "We only get about 12 days off every year."
Koshansky, who was drafted as a senior, had quite a different experience from Reynolds.
"It lasted most of the spring really -- pretty much every single team sent me a questionnaire," Koshansky said "I had to fill out all this information, did I want to get drafted, stuff like that. Some teams sent out personality tests, to try to gage your personality. I talked to scouts, but they pretty much just wanted to make sure you wanted to go."
Both Koshansky and Reynolds, however, said the pressure of the impending draft didn't really affect their playing throughout the season. Virginia had had an amazing season during which it had tied its own record for most number of wins and hosted its first regional.
"The season was over a week before the draft," Koshansky said. "So I was going out there just trying to play as hard as I could and as well as I could to help our team out. I knew if I had a good year, I'd get drafted high enough up."
The level of the draft may be a deciding factor for many juniors when they are contemplating going pro or not. Kamrath, who was injured his junior year, stayed with Virginia largely to have the opportunity to have a strong season and improve his draft prospects the following year. For Dobies, the opposite may have happened. Dobies was drafted in the third round of the MLB draft. This made him the highest picked player in the draft from Virginia since 1997.
Stay or go though, the final objective remains the same.
"I've wanted to play professional baseball all my life," Koshansky said.
Although the schedule is grueling, and the work is hard, most of the Cavalier baseball team would agree that a shot at the majors is worth it.
"It's not really a glamorous life," Reynolds said. "Right now we're sitting on a bus driving for four hours down to our next game, but it's a dream not a lot of people get to live."
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