Minor Leagues and Trade To Atlanta
John Smoltz was an All-State baseball and basketball player at Waverly High School in Lansing, Michigan before the Detroit Tigers drafted him in the 22nd round of the 1985 amateur draft. He was the 574th selection of the draft.
Smoltz played initially for the Lakeland Tigers minor league team and then moved on to the Glens Falls Tigers in 1987. On August 12, 1987, he was traded to the Atlanta Braves. The 1987 Tigers were in a three-team race, chasing the Toronto Blue Jays for the AL East division lead. In need of pitching help, Detroit sent their 20-year-old prospect to the Braves for the 36-year-old veteran Doyle Alexander.
Read more about this topic: John Smoltz
Famous quotes containing the words minor, leagues and/or trade:
“For a country to have a great writer ... is like having another government. That’s why no régime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I doubt if men ever made a trade of heroism. In the days of Achilles, even, they delighted in big barns, and perchance in pressed hay, and he who possessed the most valuable team was the best fellow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)