LINCOLN, Neb. -- It has been a wild week for Alex Gordon's likely future employers.
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| Alex Gordon is hoping his college successes culminate in a trip down the road to Omaha. (AP) |
A reported rift in the clubhouse between American-born and Latin players greeted Bell on the newsstands when he got to town Tuesday.
"I won't be like that," said Gordon, college baseball's best player.
And if the baseball gods are charitable, the Royals really won't be Alex Gordon's future employers. It just seems inevitable with the amateur draft less than a week away. The Royals have the No. 2 overall pick, and Kansas City looks like a likely sentence, er, destination for Gordon, Nebraska's marvelous junior third baseman.
He deserves better. This is a kid so humble, he makes the pope look cocky. By this time next week, he'll at least be on his way to being a multimillionaire (average signing bonus for a top-five pick the past six years is $3 million). All Gordon wants to do is replace a beat-up 1994 Chevy Blazer.
Last summer, Alex's dad, Mike, suggested a way to earn extra spending money. So Gordon hauled and loaded beer kegs around the local Miller distributorship Mike Gordon works for.
"His mother and I tried to instill a Midwest work ethic in him," Mike said.
"That's why he wanted me to do it," Alex said.
Darin Erstad is pretty much the standard for Nebraska baseball. The Huskers' former No. 1 pick in 1995 established himself with the Angels with a style that Gordon has resurrected.
"The edge, the work habits, really that's it," Nebraska coach Mike Anderson said. "It's not something Darin and I ever talked about, but there's that understanding that Darin had it."
So when Erstad blew through town last fall, he was curious. The Standard had heard of Gordon coming off a sophomore season in which he hit .365.
"Does he have it?" Erstad asked Nebraska's coach.
