Matthew S. Poindexter
Suzanne Bolch Award
Project Proposal
In the most recent Major League Baseball amateur draft, pitcher Stephen Strasburg, a
young and promising player, was chosen first overall by the Washington Nationals, who
eventually signed him to a 16 million dollar contract. In the past year, Aroldis Chapman, a 22year-old Cuban baseball player who has never faced professional American competition, signed
a 30 million dollar contract with the Cincinnati Reds. For both of these pitchers, the expectations
are extremely high, possibly too high for them to meet. For my project, I want to take a look at
the crushing pressure of being a top prospect in professional baseball, using interviews with
current and former top draft picks, the scouts who evaluated them, their managers, and their
teammates. My goal is to put my writing together as a poetry chapbook, tentatively titled Bust,
that I can submit to and publish through first book and chapbook competitions.
I find the situation of the top draft choice very intriguing. Major League teams are
investing millions of dollars in 18-year-old boys. While this financial stability is definitely a
positive for these athletes, they are also given the intense pressure of becoming a top level
professional baseball player. Some top draft choices go on to have spectacular careers. Others
fold under this scrutiny, and are forever labeled as failures. I am less interested in those who
succeed—their story is well-known and often predictable. Instead, I want to use the funding from
the Suzanne Bolch Award to interview former top prospects like Brien Taylor. Taylor was
drafted first overall in 1991, and was considered by many to be the best amateur pitcher ever.
However, after inking a luxurious contract with the New York Yankees, Taylor got into a bar
fight and tore a muscle in his shoulder. His career was ruined, and he became only the second top
draft choice to never reach the Major Leagues. Today, Taylor lives with his parents on Brien
Taylor Road, a street named for him before he was hurt.
In 2004, top draft pick Matt Bush had a similar fate. After signing with the San Diego
Padres, Bush performed poorly in the lowest levels of the minor leagues. Distraught with his
play and unable to handle the increasingly negative stress of trying to meet the expectations
placed upon him, Bush developed substance abuse problems and had multiple run-ins with the
law. His organization released him in 2009, a 3.5 million dollar investment that never
materialized.
I plan to interview both Bush and Taylor for my project, and also have many other
subjects who I will talk to and include in Bust. Dustin Ackley, who starred at the University of
North Carolina for the past three years, was a top draft pick last year, signing with the Seattle
Mariners for 8 million dollars. I have been friends with Dustin since elementary school, and he
has agreed to talk to me about the pressures surrounding his situation—being a star prospect with
an undecided future. I will meet with Doug Brown, a former scout for the Texas Rangers, and
speak with him about the players he evaluated, and who he was right or wrong about. I would
also like to have the University of North Carolina support me for press credentials so that I can
have better access to current baseball players and personnel.
In order to provide a more varied manuscript, I also plan to include observations from an
omniscient narrator who provides details of professional games. I have experience with writing
long, sequential sets of poems, and I feel that this will help make Bust unique. Two anthologies
of baseball-centric poetry exists right now—Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems
(SIU Press), and Hummers, Knucklers, and Slow Curves (University of Illinois Press), but both
over-romanticize baseball, and fail to take an in-depth look at the psychological turmoil forced
upon these young men. I believe I can deliver a focused manuscript for the Suzanne Bolch
Award committee, one that will have appeal to more than just a poetry audience, but a popular
audience that has made professional baseball the top sport in this nation.
Matthew S. Poindexter
Suzanne Bolch Award
Project Proposal