Story Photos
 For Trevor May (third from the right with the Mariners cap) draft day had its ups and downs before the Phillies selected him in the fourth round. Bill Wagner / The Daily News
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Phillies draft Kelso's Trevor May in the fourth round
Friday, June 6, 2008 7:09 PM PDT
By Ben Zimmerman
Printable version
E-mail this articleThe news came like a gush of wind, and blew away the thin shadows still clouding Trevor May’s beautiful baseball future.
At around 4:50 p.m. Thursday, the phone rang in the May house tucked inside a cozy cul-de-sac in East Kelso. Trevor’s mother, Terri, read the caller ID as she reached to answer.
“OK,” she said. “This is the guy we want to hear from.”
Terri listened to Trevor’s baseball adviser on the other end.
“Trevor,” she called.
Moments later, as May and a dozen of his closest friends huddled around his grandmother Lorraine Wheatley’s laptop in the kitchen, waiting for an online confirmation of a life-long dream, it was Terri who spoke.
Make that shrieked.
“Yes!” she yelled from a back bedroom.
Terri heard the announcement on the radio, seconds before it was made online: May, a Kelso senior, had been drafted in the fourth round by the Philadelphia Phillies (136th overall pick) in the 2008 Major League Baseball draft.
After a joyous pummelling from his friends, and hugs from his mom, his grandma and his dad, Ron, May and his posse mobbed out of the house and to the Three Rivers Mall — so he could buy a Phillies cap.
“Anyone who gets close to him, we shoot,” joked one of May’s pals.
“We should put his arm in a big protective brace,” another said.
The front door closed behind the last of the friends, and peace and quiet was restored to the May home.
Party time in the a.m.
“It was a little bit nuts around here today,” Terri told a friend on the phone, after her son and his cohort bolted to the mall. “I had a house full of young men.”
They started showing up around 11 a.m.
Most stayed all day.
They devoured the pizza May himself procured at around 11:30. They watched the first round of the draft on television, cracked jokes, told stories, watched half of “Superbad” — and simply enjoyed each other’s company, with their graduation looming.
They huddled in the kitchen like a rugby scrum when, in Round 3, the Cubs picked at No. 97 and the Phillies at 102, the two spots that May expected to be his career-launchers.
They stayed when the third round ended with May undrafted, when the excited build-up fizzled to a numb lull, when May retreated to his bedroom for a moment of private reflection.
They roared when, nearly seven hours into the party, the good news came.
“It was just really cool to share this day,” said May, wearing a bright-red Phillies cap. “We’re getting down to our last days of high school and this is the best way to go out. Nothing could be better. On top of graduating with these guys, I get to share a moment like this.”
May was the last player drafted in the fourth round on Thursday, and the first high school player selected from the state of Washington. He became the first Kelso player drafted since Seth Johnson was picked in the 11th round of the 2000 draft by the Montreal Expos, and the highest Hilander selection since the Florida Marlins grabbed Jeff Bailey in the second round (64th overall) in the 1997 draft.
May has until Aug. 15 to sign with the Phillies, and will begin contract discussions after he graduates. If he signs with Philadelphia, May will likely start his career in Clearwater, Fla., with the Phillies’ Gulf Coast League Rookie team.
But the real waiting game, which began at the end of a promising junior year and crescendoed through a phenomenal senior season, is over.
“I’m just really happy for him and very proud,” said Terri. “I think he’s kept a great approach to all of this.”
“I think he can be in the big leagues in three or four years,” added Ron, who was sleeping off a prior night’s graveyard shift during much of the draft. “He’s a smart kid and he works hard.”
May, a 4.0 student who went 11-1 and helped lead the Hilanders to the Class 3A state championship game this spring, signed a letter of intent with the University of Washington in November. But professional scouts were a conspicuous audience at nearly all of his starts for Kelso this year, and although he was unnerved by their presence at first, May quickly assimilated to the radar-gun glare.
True to his humble, understated nature, May said that being drafted felt “pretty good.”
On second thought, and after a day that was the emotional equivalent of a bungee jump, it was more like “pretty great.”
“I feel fantastic. Elated. Relieved,” said May. “I can’t even really explain it.”
Killing time
By the time May returned from a pizza, soda and candy run, his living room was filling up with friends and teammates. As the first round of the draft unfolded, there were numerous jokes from non-players — and non-athletes — about they themselves being (miraculously) selected.
“I would do the Truffle Shuffle, tape it and send it to everyone,” someone said, provoking volcanic laughter.
At one point, Ron shuffled into the living room and said, in wry monotone: “Trev ... Trev ... you get picked yet?”
There was a long discussion of the “World of Warcraft” video game. Senior Taylor Mustion sought input as he fine-tuned the introductory speech he will deliver at Kelso’s graduation. May signed a bag of baseballs for kids at a local elementary school.
Of course, May’s pals were already spending his bonus money — on a new car, new iPod, even “a 10-year supply of socks,” one suggested.
Terri peeked in sometime around pick No. 29 and announced that the Kelso High attendance office had called.
“They want to know who is here,” she deadpanned.
A supplemental compensation round followed the official first round of the draft, and Ron appeared again, asking the same question as before, in exactly the same words.
“It could be tomorrow, guys,” warned Terri. “We hope it’s today, but ...”
“Superbad” was slapped in the DVD player, beating “Semi-Pro” in an impromptu vote.
Ron announced that he was going to sleep.
“If I hear you screaming,” he said, “I’ll get up.”
The waiting game
Friends flit in and out of the house throughout the day.
Down to school or home, and back.
Over to R.A. Long for a Legion game that will be rained out.
But there is always a crowd, and when the second round of the draft begins, they migrate to the kitchen and ring the table.
“Did we tell the Cubs? Yes? For sure?” May asks his mom.
For the first time all day, he seems nervous. For the first time all day, May looks nervous.
Senior Derrick Deen, who has kept the gang in stitches all day with accents, impersonations and a sharp, R-rated wit, startles Mrs. May when he announces: “Terri, the Phillies are here.”
It’s the Schwann’s ice cream dude at the front door. But for one priceless moment, Terri is very excited.
At approximately 3:53, May estimates that there are “35 more picks” before he might be drafted. In profoundly optimistic defiance of this assessment, his friends pack more tightly around the laptop.
“You could buy 100,000 of these,” Deen tells May, unwrapping a Schwann’s bar. “I’d be your friend forever.”
Wheatley can tell that her grandson is nervous.
“He can’t stand still,” she says.
It is the Cubs’ turn to make their third-round pick. The hush in the kitchen is deafening.
But Chicago takes a guy named Chris Carpenter, and the wait switches to the Phillies, who are five picks away.
May’s friends squeeze closer around the laptop, threatening to engulf the entire kitchen table. Newborn infants are doted upon with less fervor.
“See how he is tugging at his hat?” Wheatley says.
She has commandeered a chair from the living room and is sitting back in the nook of the kitchen. She is cosmically tuned to her grandson’s mood.
“You see him do that on the mound sometimes. He’s so nervous,” she said.
When the Phillies draft Vance Worley, there are groans and expressions of disbelief — “What?!” — as the room deflates.
But no one leaves.
“It was an up-and-down day, for sure,” May says later. “I was kind of disappointed for a bit. But it was worth it.”
Before he is drafted, May steps away from his friends for some time alone, then with just his family.
“I don’t think my happiness level was on level with the rest of the group,” he explains. “But then we got a call.”
The call.
HILANDER LEGACY
The former Kelso High School stars who were taken in the Major League Baseball draft (does not include free-agent signees):
Year Round Team
Jason Schmidt, RHP 1991 8th Braves
Jason Mackey, LHP 1992 11th Indians
Jeff Bailey, C 1997 2nd Marlins
Jess Turner, RHP 1999 27th Twins
Seth Johnson, INF 2000 11th Expos
Brian Graham, RHP 2000 16th ChiSox
Trevor May, RHP 2008 4th Phillies
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