ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Now, one more sports question: What did Willie Mays, Mickey Mantel and Jackie Robinson have in common? The answer? Well, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantel and Jackie Robinson were all giants of the game of baseball, and Mays was a capital G Giant, too, and all three men stood 5-foot-11-inches. Henry Aaron, soon to be eclipsed as the career homerun leader, didn't exactly tower over those three. Aaron's records give his height as 6-feet-even. And he, of course, broke homerun record of Babe Ruth, who stood 6-foot-2.
I went back to check those heights after looking over the young players picked in yesterday's Major League Baseball draft.
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Unidentified Man: In the first round of the 2007 first year player draft, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays select David Price, a left-handed pitcher in…
SIEGEL: Price is 6-foot-6. Of the top 30 draft picks, only one stands less than six feet tall - he's 5'9. Of the others, three are exactly six feet, although some of these draftees are high school kids and they could still do some growing. Six are 6-foot-1 and four of them stand a Ruthean 6-foot-2. That leaves the other 17 top draft picks, who include three at 6-foot-6, two at 6-foot-7 and one who stands 6'11. That 6'11 prospect is a pitcher as are most of the top 30 picks.
Now, American men have only gotten about an inch taller since the 1960s. Perhaps, with basketball stars like 6-foot-7 LeBron James, 7-foot Dirk Nowitski, playing positions that men the size of Willie Mays and Hank Aaron used to play, perhaps, yesterday's power forwards have become today's power pitchers. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.