The Greatest Draft Pick Ever

He went to college hoping to become an architect. He left school, 50 years ago Tuesday, as the best draft pick in the history of Major League Baseball.

Mike Schmidt did not see this coming. He picked Ohio University largely because of a drafting class he had taken as a senior at Fairview High School in Dayton. He liked the T-squares and triangles, the pencils and possibilities. It seemed like a dream career.

“It was a long shot, obviously, but they had a great school of architecture at Ohio,” Schmidt said last month. “That kind of struck me as something that was a lot of fun.”

If an architect’s life seemed fanciful, it was more likely than the path Schmidt took instead. Of the 74,774…