Bill Almon, tall and lanky at 6-foot-3, 165 pounds, was a basketball talent at Veterans’ Memorial High School in Warwick, R.I. There was no one taller, so Almon got to play center and forward.
Almon led the league in scoring and made all-state. “I enjoyed basketball very much,” he says. “I could score from 15 feet in. I had short jump shot.” He went on to play basketball at Brown, the Providence-based Ivy League school. That would’ve made for a nice little athletic career in itself. But there was more to it. Much more.
Almon was all-state in baseball, too. He could hit and field, and by his sophomore year big-league scouts were keeping an eye on him. “There were a lot of teams pursuing me. I had the dream to be a major-league player. It started to take some weight at the end of my sophomore year of high school. More and more scouts were coming to the games. They’d talk to you and give you their business card.
“At least half of the (big-league) teams were consistently at my games. They wanted to know if I’d sign. I didn’t want to string them along. I’d made up my mind I was going to Brown. I was 18 years old. There were a lot of things I didn’t understand.”
Not that there wasn’t temptation. The San Diego Padres drafted Almon when he was a senior, in 1971. Almon didn’t jump at the offer. He discussed his future — sign or go to Brown — with his parents. They decided college was the way to go. Down the road, it would prove to be a prudent move.
At Brown, Almon played hoops for two years, but he was getting better and better at baseball. In his junior year, he was named national college player of the year. He starred in the Cape League with the Falmouth Commodores. Every big-league club knew who he was.
The Padres’ interest in Almon never waned. So 40 years ago this month, in 1974, with the first pick in the amateur draft, San Diego selected Almon. He had heard that he might be a first-round pick. But being the first overall pick was too good to turn down. Almon signed a year before graduating. He went back to get his bachelor’s degree in sociology during the offseason.
“Signing (with the Padres) was very exciting, but the draft didn’t have quite the hype that it has now,” says the 61-year-old Almon. In fact, a half-hour before the Padres contacted Almon, he’d received a call from the Providence Journal sports department telling him he was going to be the top pick. There was no ESPN back then. No MLB Network. No bobblehead nights.
“Still, it was very flattering,” Almon says. “I never looked at being the top pick as pressure. I just went out and played the game.”
OK, how about being the first New England player ever drafted No. 1? “There was a little pressure,” Almon concedes, “but I didn’t feel it so much because I just loved playing the game.”
Brown coach Woody Wordsworth would later say that Almon had “the best range and arm of any college shortstop I’d even seen.”
After Almon signed, the Padres flew him up to Jarry Park in Montreal, where the Padres were playing the Expos. “They introduced me to the San Diego media. I was on the field and watched batting practice. Willie McCovey came over to meet me. I was very impressed.” McCovey’s best years had been with the San Francisco Giants, and having been a teammate of Willie Mays, Almon wanted to hear everything about the all-time great. Mays was his favorite player.
After a short stint in the minors, the Padres, who weren’t in a pennant race, called up Almon on Sept. 1. The team was in Atlanta. The next day, Almon played his first game He went 0-4 against Phil Niekro. In the next game, facing 18-game winner Buzz Capra, Almon got his first big-league hit. “A single to left. It felt good. I still have the ball.”
Almon played six years with the Padres. In 1977, he led all major-league shortstops with 303 assists. “Randy Jones, a sinkerball pitcher, was on that team. I had a lot of chances,” says Almon, who also led the National League that year with 20 sacrifice hits.
In 1979, he was traded to the Expos. That began a nomadic baseball life for Almon, who kept using his free agency years to move on to what he believed were better opportunities.
He played for the Mets, White Sox, A’s, Pirates, the Mets for a second time. Almon’s last season was a short stay — 20 games — with the Phillies in 1988.
He played 15 years in The Show, hitting .254 with 846 hits. His best year was in 1981 with the White Sox when he hit .301 and finished 19th in the MVP voting.
Almon had made some good friends in Pittsburgh. When the Pirates honored Ozzie Smith the year the brilliant Cardinals shortstop was retiring, they asked Almon, who’d been a teammate of Smith’s at San Diego, to present him with a gift.
Almon still lives in Warwick. He’s worked at Claflin, a medical supply company, for 35 years. Ever the athlete, Almon and his wife, Katie, golf, ski, are active church members and since 1981 have been involved in Rhode Island’s Special Olympics.
“I’m very blessed,” Almon said. “Looking back, I wouldn’t change anything.”
Source: http://www.baseballjournal.com/news/players/features/Bill_Almon_MLB_Draft_first_overall
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