Garrett To Join Reds Farm Club

Reds draft pick and St. John's basketball player Amir Garrett will be playing baseball as soon as school is out:

The glove is in his gym bag, untouched since last summer, when the Cincinnati Reds drafted him out of high school based on a left arm they believe is full of potential.

The Reds were undeterred that the 6-foot-6 Garrett had committed to play basketball and baseball at St. John’s. They signed him to a $1 million contract, agreed to let him play forward for the Red Storm this winter and asked him to be ready to report to their player development complex in Goodyear, Ariz., once the academic year ended.

Now a month away from doing just that, Garrett is in a springtime no man’s land. The basketball season is over. N.C.A.A. rules prohibit him from playing baseball for the Red Storm. Classes remain. Eligibility pitfalls abound. And a question lingers.

“Everybody asks me which sport I like more,” Garrett said. “I can’t really pick between the two right now. They’re both the same. I love them both.”

Since Aug. 15, when he signed with the Reds, Garrett has not pitched a baseball. His only diamond-related activity comes as a member of Angelica’s Omelets, a team in a unisex campus softball league he plays in every Sunday.

It never hurts to have an athlete in the system, especially if he's a pitcher:

The Reds discovered him in May at an arranged tryout in front of 22 scouts at the College of Southern Nevada; he had played his senior basketball season in Henderson, Nev. He had not pitched a game in almost a year and had resumed throwing just three weeks before the tryout. Yet his pitches were clocked in the mid-90s.

Wow.  You've got to like that. Now if he could learn a knuckleball....