Glavine and Drury follow different paths in picking between baseball and hockey

NEW YORK (AP) - Chris Drury savored his World Series moment long before he ever considered becoming a pro athlete.

Tom Glavine enjoyed hockey stardom as a high school kid in Massachusetts, finding greater success then on the ice than on the pitching mound.

Somehow both New Englanders became household names in sports circles on opposite fields of play.

Years before turning into a Stanley Cup champion and a prized free agent acquisition of the New York Rangers, Drury helped pitch his Trumbull, Conn., baseball team to the 1989 Little League World Series championship.

He pursued his love of the game until a broken wrist during his junior year of high school changed his fate. Unable to get out on the diamond, Drury found a greater pull to the rink.

"It basically shut down me playing baseball for a year, but let me play hockey with a cast," said the 31-year-old Drury, one month into a five-year, $35.25 million contract with the Rangers. "That's a big year recruiting-wise, scholarship-wise. That was basically it.

"That summer prior to my senior year, the writing was on the wall which was great, because I obviously love hockey. I loved it then, and I love it now."

Glavine is 10 years older and a product of a deeper part of New England. Up in the higher reaches of the Northeast, hockey is king in some places, and the Boston Red Sox are a religion.

Coming out of high school in Billerica, Mass., Glavine had choices. He wasn't set to pick between baseball and hockey just yet.

Glavine's hockey talent, by his estimation, exceeded his baseball ability at the time, but experts in both sports saw something special.

In a whirlwind month of June 1984, the left-handed pitcher who guided his team to the Eastern Massachusetts Championship was nabbed by the Atlanta Braves in the second round - pick No. 47, the very number that has become as linked to him as his tantalizing change up. But the star center and MVP of Merrimack Valley also got picked by the NHL's Los Angeles Kings.

He was so highly regarded on skates that the Kings chose him in the fourth round (pick No. 69), five rounds and 102 selections before they took Luc Robitaille - a likely Hockey Hall of Famer with 668 goals - and two rounds before 741-goal scorer Brett Hull was snapped up by the Calgary Flames.

"I never really went down the road of how I am assessed in terms of the NHL because I never really thought beyond playing college hockey," Glavine said. "Right after I got drafted by both sports I really had to sit down and assess where I was at talent-wise and figure out where I had a better chance of playing or making it to the major leagues and staying for a while. When you throw in the determining factor being a left-handed pitcher, I had an advantage in this sport that I didn't possess in hockey.