Gavin Newsom was not drafted

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom recently announced that he’s running for governor, which prompted a quickie bio in Time Magazine which included the following:

He’s a 42-year-old San Francisco native and the youngest mayor of the city in more than 100 years. He is dyslexic and was reportedly drafted by the Texas Rangers in high school, but decided to attend Santa Clara University on a partial baseball scholarship.

Except, as the San Francisco Chronicle’s City Insider notes, he wasn’t drafted:

Over at the Insider, we pride ourselves at being Gavin Newsom experts. So you can imagine our surprise when we read this Time article about our city’s leader, which says that he was “reportedly drafted by the Texas Rangers in high school.”

Really?!

Well, no. We couldn’t find any mention of Newsom on Major League Baseball’s exhaustive draft list. His spokesman, Nathan Ballard, confirmed that the mayor was scouted, but not drafted, as a teenager. And according to this 2008 Men’s Journal story, the Rangers, as well as Los Angeles Dodgers expressed some interest in young Newsom.

It would appear that the mistake is Time’s, as opposed to being one of those fun instances in which a politician tries to enhance his resume with faux MLB glory.

But . . . Time said “reportedly,” and writers tend not to say “reportedly” unless they themselves feel like they may be being fed baloney. I wonder if someone close to Newsom was peddling this, unaware that such matters are 100% checkable.


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Rally
14 years ago

I too was scouted in high school.  And informed that I best find another career path.

APBA Guy
14 years ago

It wouldn’t surprise me if there were some resume “enhancement”, as one of the campaign’s official lines is that SF as a city is fiscally sound. As the Chron (Heather Knight & Erin Allday) reports:

“Critics say that’s especially problematic because San Francisco faces a $576 million budget deficit for the coming fiscal year, representing the worst fiscal crisis in the city since the Great Depression.”

Of course, “sound” as I’ve used it (to mean on solid footing, responsible, well managed, etc) is probably taken out of context by me. I’m sure to the campign it means “a problem to be inherited by someone else”.

Richard in Dallas
14 years ago

Would not an organization be wise to make a clandestine phone call to the young prospect to see if signing was or wasn’t a probability if drafted?  Draft picks are, after all, a precious commodity not to be wasted on a young man who has stated something to the effect that he would sign out of high school, but only with certain organizations (of which the Rangers likely would not be one).  Of course I’m giving the mayor the benefit of the doubt…..

Don
14 years ago

Is it too late? Won’t some team draft him now, before the coo coo voters elect him governor?