A career goes awry
There are those few who get the opportunity in pro sports that countless others only can covet.
Chalk some of that up to good genes. You either have ’em or you don’t.
Then there are those few who get that opportunity only to blow it, leaving those countless others shaking their heads in disbelief.
Chalk that up to, well, misguided behavior.
All of which brings us to the sad saga of the incredibly talented but supremely foolish Brien Taylor, the left-hander who 31 years ago is the best pitching prospect in baseball but also one who quickly becomes a cautionary tale.
Taylor makes his Class AA debut on Opening Night 1993 for the Albany-Colonie Yankees against the Harrisburg Senators on historic City Island. He finishes that season going 13-7 for the New York Yankees’ prized AA affiliate and fueling speculation that he will reach the majors within a year.
Then comes a fight 31 years ago today in a dispute involving his family and a neighbor near their home in Beaufort, N.C.
The melee ends with the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Taylor injuring his prized pitching shoulder.
Both Taylor’s shoulder capsule and labrum suffer significant tears.
Not even the great Frank Jobe — the visionary surgeon who in the mid-1970s saves the career of Tommy John — can fix Taylor.
“I can remember (Jobe) sitting me down,” Scott Boras, Taylor’s agent, later says. “He said, ‘This is one of the worst shoulder injuries I’ve ever seen,’ and I believe it. The way he tore it was unnatural.”
Taylor, the onetime natural, undergoes surgery and misses the 1994 season.
He also loses his radar-popping fastball.
Upon his return, Taylor misses few bats as the onetime top pitching prospect becomes little more than a BP-caliber pitcher.
He struggles to go 3-15 with a 10.85 earned-run average in 41 appearances over the next four seasons before the Yankees finally give up on him.
Scott Boras
The scouts who once envision a Hall of Fame career for Taylor also give up on him, moving on to the next phenom who lights up their radar guns.
By then, Taylor’s record signing bonus of $1.55 million from 1991 is a memory.
Life somehow then gets even worse for Taylor, whom police arrest numerous times for child neglect before he finally receives a 38-month prison sentence after pleading guilty in August 2012 for cocaine trafficking.
“I remember Brien threw a pitch in a high school game,” Boras later tells Sports Illustrated. “It started in and moved out and it still stayed in the strike zone. The catcher completely missed it and the umpire called it strike three, and appropriately so.
“He was a true phenom. I’ve seen the talent now in 35 drafts. Every year, I watch and I have never seen anyone like him.”