Tom Seaver was drafted by the Braves 50 years ago today. Yes, the Braves. - MLB

Andy at HighHeatStats.com tweeted an anniversary fact a few minutes ago: 50 years ago today, the Atlanta Braves drafted Tom Seaver. Did you know that? Most people don’t know that, but it’s one of my favorite historical baseball oddities.

The Braves weren’t even the first team to draft Seaver. The Dodgers drafted him in the 10th round the previous June, in baseball’s first-ever amateur draft. Seaver had just completed his sophomore year at the University of Southern California then and, probably realizing he was better than a 10th round pick, he did not come to an agreement with Los Angeles. There were two drafts back then — January and June — and the Braves took him on January 29, 1966.

It took close to a month for Seaver and the Braves to agree to a bonus, but they got to one on February 24, 1966, with Seaver signing a $40,000 contract. There was a slight problem, however: Seaver’s junior year season at USC was still in progress and baseball had a rule then that you could not sign a deal with a player whose season was still going on. Why? I dunno. It was just that part of the 1960s when people still followed rules. In any event, Baseball Commissioner William “Spike” Eckert ruled that the Braves’ contract with Seaver was void.

Let’s talk about Eckert for a second. Baseball’s Commissioner from 1965-1968 had perhaps the least distinguished tenure of any baseball Commissioner ever. Maybe there were reasons to be suspicious before he was even given the job in 1965. His nickname, “Spike,” came from his football-playing days, and who hires a football guy to run baseball? Virtually his entire professional career consisted of his military service — he was an Air Force general — and military consulting. He wasn’t even considered a candidate to replace Ford Frick in 1965, but was recommended to baseball owners by the legendary general Curtis LeMay. This was, literally, the only time baseball chose its Commissioner the way a lot of people think they should do so today: by throwing out a name of a smart guy you know who likes baseball and thinking he’d be OK at the gig. In this way Eckert’s supporters were the 1960s version of people who think George W. Bush or Bob Costas should be Commissioner now.

But there he was in office in 1966 when the Seaver mess went down. And, true to form, he not only was presented with a problem, but he had made it worse. Yes, he decisively voided Seaver’s deal with the Braves, but given that Seaver had signed a professional deal, voided or not, he was declared ineligible at USC. That meant that he couldn’t play anyplace. As Seaver said looking back at that time a few years ago, “so now to the professionals I’m an amateur and to the amateurs I’m a pro, and I’m stuck.” There were rumblings that Seaver’s dad was going to sue someone, probably Eckert. What to do?

Eckert held a lottery. He invited all the other big league clubs to the party, and invited them to match the Braves’ $40,000 offer to Seaver. All teams who were willing to do so would have their names tossed into a hat. Literally. The Phillies, Indians and Mets all got involved, Eckert literally put their names into that hat and he pulled out the slip of paper wth “Mets” on it. The rest — 311 wins, three Cy Young Awards and a place on the short list for “Greatest Pitcher of All Time” — was history.

Eckert would soon be history too. Not because of the Seaver business, but because of other stuff. Eckert simply wasn’t popular in office. The fans were mad at him in 1968 when he didn’t cancel games following the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. More dangerously for Eckert’s job security, the owners were mad at him because he didn’t seem to have much of a plan to counter the Players Union which, by then, had Marvin Miller at the helm and was beginning to assert itself for the first time. Eckert was eventually canned by the owners with three years left on his contract.

And he was replaced by Bowie Kuhn, who it could be argued was way, way worse.

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The first thing that Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman thinks about when he wakes up each morning is how the club, stuck in what seems like an interminable rebuild, will play on that particular day.

Not where they will play four or five years down the road.

Yet given the modest expectations for a team that lost nearly 100 games a year ago, it makes sense many Royals fans are just as interested – quite possibly more so – in the plans for a downtown ballpark than whether infielder Bobby Witt Jr. can double down on his brilliant rookie season or pitcher Brady Singer can truly become a staff ace.

That’s why Sherman’s second thought probably moves to the downtown ballpark, too.

“This is a huge decision, and I look at it as maybe the most important decision we’ll make as long as we have the privilege of stewarding this team,” Sherman said before the Royals held a final workout Wednesday ahead of opening day. “I’m probably as anxious as you to get moving on that, but it’s a complicated process.”

The Royals have called Kauffman Stadium home since the sister to Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, opened 50 years ago next month.

And while most stadiums are replaced because they have become outdated, the unique, space-aged look of Kauffman Stadium – built during an era in which teams trended toward impersonal, multisport concrete donuts for their homes – remains beloved by Royals fans and visitors alike.

The problem is that despite numerous renovations over the years, the very concrete holding the ballpark together has begun to crumble in places. The cost simply to repair and maintain the ballpark has become prohibitive.

So with the decision essentially made for them to build an entirely new stadium, the Royals revealed plans to build an entire development in the same mold of The Battery Atlanta, where the Braves built Truist Park, and the Ballpark Village in St. Louis, where the new Busch Stadium is merely the centerpiece of a whole entertainment district.

No site has been secured, but several of the most promising are in downtown Kansas City, where the Power & Light District along with T-Mobile Center have spearheaded a successful era of urban renewal.

Sherman has said that private funds would cover the majority of the stadium cost and the entire village, each carrying a price tag of about $1 billion.

But if any public funding will be used, as it was to build and maintain Kauffman Stadium, then it would need to be voted upon, and the earliest that it could show up on a ballot would be August.

“You look at Atlanta, they took some raw ground – they started with 85 acres – and that has been a complete home run,” said Sherman, who purchased the Royals in August 2019, shortly before the pandemic wreaked havoc on team finances.

“This is one of the reasons we want to do this: That’s helped the Braves become more competitive,” Sherman said of the vast potential for increased revenue for one of the smallest-market teams in baseball. “They have locked up and extended the core of their future, and the Braves are in a great position from a baseball standpoint.”

So perhaps the first two thoughts Sherman has each day – about performance and the future – are one and the same.

When it comes to the team itself, the Royals were largely quiet throughout the winter, though that was by design.

Rather than spending heavily on free agents that might help them win a few more games, they decided to stay the course with a promising young roster in the hopes that the development of those players would yield better results.

In fact, Sherman said, the club has been discussing extensions for some of the Royals’ foundational pieces – presumably Witt, who was fourth in voting for AL rookie of the year, and Singer, who was 10-5 with a 3.23 ERA last season.

“We’re having conversations about that as we speak,” Sherman said. “We have a number of young players that we’re trying to evaluate and we’re talking to their representatives about what might work.”

Just because the Royals’ roster largely looks the same, that doesn’t mean nothing has changed. The Royals fired longtime general manager Dayton Moore in September and moved J.J. Picollo to the role, then fired manager Mike Matheny in October and replaced him with longtime Indians and Rays coach Matt Quatraro.

Sherman said the new voices created a palpable energy in spring training that he hopes carries into the regular season.

“When we acquired the team, we had three primary objectives,” Sherman said. “One was to win more games; we’re working on that. The second was to secure the future; that’s what (the stadium) is. And the third was to do good in the community.

“But the first priority,” he said, “is really the on-field product. That’s what really lifts everything else up.”