There is a nice article on mlb.com today on the Dodgers’ 1968 draft. (”The greatest Draft in baseball history“) It really was a remarkable haul of talent: Bill Buckner, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Bobby Valentine, Geoff Zahn, Joe Ferguson and Tom Paciorek, all in one draft. All of these guys reached the majors and had long, productive careers. A few (Buckner, Garvey, Lopes, and Cey) were truly outstanding players, even if none of them quite rose to the Hall of Fame level.
Most significantly for me, several of those guys formed the nucleus of the teams that made me into a Dodgers fan while I was living in the Los Angeles area in the 70s and 80s. I can still hear Vin Scully now, setting the Dodger defense in the top of the first: “The Dodgers have Dusty Baker in left, Billy North in center, Reggie Smith in right. And the infield: Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey…”
Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey. The longest running infield in baseball history, and great players all. What a please it was to watch them play. And 3/4 of that historic infield came out of that one draft. Billy Buck was a great one, too, but while he put in some good years with the Dodgers, he spent the majority of his superb career outside the Dodger organization, as did Paciorek and Valentine. But, wow, that may very well have been the greatest draft in baseball history.
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