Region received unprecedented attention in baseball draft

Southeast Missouri has been known for producing solid if not spectacular baseball players over the years, with very few ever reaching the major leagues.

Professional scouts, however, evidently believe there is something special about two young men who graduated from area high schools.

In what is believed to be an unprecedented development for Southeast Missouri, two local products were selected in the top five rounds of the recent First Year Player Draft.

Sikeston's Blake DeWitt, who graduated just a few weeks ago, became the highest draft pick from the area when he was taken by the Dodgers with the 28th selection of the first round.

The sweet-swinging DeWitt, an infielder who was rated by Baseball America as the top high school hitter in the country, is one of only 11 prep players from Missouri ever to be drafted in the first round.

Advance's Garrett Broshuis, who recently completed a brilliant junior season at the University of Missouri, followed DeWitt's selection by going to the Giants in the fifth round.

Broshuis, a right-handed starting pitcher who was the 160th overall player drafted, went 11-0 with a 2.61 earned-run average to make first-team all-Big 12 Conference.

While DeWitt has already signed with the Dodgers -- for a cool $1.2 million -- and will soon report to one of their rookie league teams, Broshuis still is in negotiations with the Giants, and he told me he probably won't have anything resolved for at least a few more days.

Broshuis has the option of returning to MU for his senior season and could take that route, although more than likely he will ultimately work out a deal that could land him in the vicinity of a $200,000 signing bonus.

I haven't met DeWitt, but I hear he's a classy young man. I did become acquainted fairly well with Broshuis during his days pitching for Cape Girardeau's American Legion team, and I know for a fact that he is about as fine a person as one could imagine. And talk about a brilliant student. Broshuis, who has a near-perfect 3.92 grade point average in psychology, was recently named a first-team Academic All-American.

The baseball draft has always been known as an inexact science, with many first-round picks never advancing very far and numerous late-round selections reaching the big leagues.

But here's hoping we see both DeWitt and Broshuis performing in the majors in the next several years.

Somewhat lost in the shuffle due to the high selections of DeWitt and Broshuis was another local high school product taken in the 50-round draft.

Central graduate John Thies, a left-handed pitcher who recently finished his freshman season at Meramec Community College in St. Louis, went to the Twins in the 36th round.

Thies told me the Twins primarily selected him as a draft-and-follow choice, meaning they want to track his progress this summer and perhaps even for one more year at Meramec before deciding whether to try and sign him. He is currently pitching in the Northwoods League in Wisconsin.

Thies is another really nice kid who I got to know pretty well during his Cape Legion days. Good luck to him as he hopefully also gets a professional shot some day.

Although Southeast Missouri State University -- as expected -- had no baseball players drafted this year for the first time since 1998, the Ohio Valley Conference was fairly well represented with four selections split evenly between Eastern Kentucky and Eastern Illinois.

From Eastern Kentucky, catcher Chris Clark went in the 18th round to the Astros, and infielder Neil Sellers went in the 32nd round, also to the Astros.

From Eastern Illinois, infielders Chris Uhle and Kyle Haines both were taken in the 31st round, by the Astros and Giants, respectively.

The recent announcement that the OVC baseball tournament will remain in Paducah, Ky., for at least the next two years came as no big surprise to most people.

Although it would have been nice for selfish reasons to have the tournament in Cape Girardeau -- our city was the only other one to submit a bid -- the most fair thing for the most parties involved is to have it remain at neutral-site Paducah.

Former Southeast baseball star Steve Bieser, who spent more than a decade in the minor leagues and even had a few brief appearances in the majors, enjoyed an unbelievable rookie season as the head baseball coach at Vianney High School.

Vianney was just 9-15 last year, but Bieser recently directed the St. Louis County squad to the Class 4 state championship. Bieser, from Ste. Genevieve, completed his Southeast eligibility in 1989.

Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian.

The Pistons are evidently a lot better than I -- and many others -- thought as they are giving the heavily favored Lakers quite a battle in the NBA Finals.

In fact, Detroit should probably be up 3-0 right now had they not lost a six-point lead late in regulation of Game 2. But the Pistons showed plenty of resolve by getting over that disheartening setback quickly and routing the Lakers in Game 3 during the first of three straight matchups in Detroit.

Leading 2-1, the Pistons have an opportunity to close out the series without it ever returning to Los Angeles. But I've got to believe the matchup is destined to go at least six games and maybe even the distance, although my prediction of LA in six is not looking very good right now.

Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian.