Brien Taylor Autographed Baseball

WHY YOU NEED IT: The Major League Baseball first-year amateur player draft began on Monday and Bryce Harper was selected No. 1 by the Washington Nationals. Though there's always a chance of failure, only two times in the draft's 45 year history has the first overall pick retired from professional baseball without making the major leagues. The first one, Steve Chilcott, was a high school catcher selected by the New York Mets one pick before Reggie Jackson, and though he was a decent minor league hitter, he had low batting averages and topped out in Triple-A. The second one was Brien Taylor, a fireballing lefthander selected by the New York Yankees in 1991. He seemed destined to be an Oliver Perez or Daniel Cabrera type -- lots of strikeouts, and lots of walks -- but major league baseball was definitely in his future, until he suffered a catastrophic shoulder injury in a fistfight and never regained his form. Taylor has become something of a Yankees anti-legend, a kind of ...