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chose Casey Close from IMG as the agent. Two guys from Northern California, Steve Reed and Ken Gamble, were the friendliest and most straightforward money guys, and my parents hired them after they’d been in the house for less than an hour.
    My daddy heard their sales pitch, then Ken and Steve spoke to me for a few minutes while my parents discussed it between themselves in the kitchen. When I was finished answering their questions, my daddy looked at Ken and Steve and said, “We’ve decided to go with you guys.” They tried to contain their excitement, but it was clear they were pretty surprised to have been hired that quickly.
    By this time, Boras was already known as the ultimate baseball super-agent. He had already caused some teams to recoil every time they saw a player represented by him, and that was one of the reasons we didn’t choose him. From the beginning, my daddy told the agents and the teams that we weren’t looking to fleece anybody.
    “We don’t want to take anybody to the cleaners,” my daddy said whenever he was asked.
    We knew the signing bonus for the first or second pick was going to be more than enough to last us for a long, long time. The most important thing was to get me signed for a fair amount of money and get me started as quickly as possible on my pro career. That was exactly what the Devil Rays wanted to hear.
    About a week after the draft I received a letter from Boras. In it, he outlined the reasons why I should have signed with him. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but it was probably a good business move for him to keep his name alive in my mind in case something didn’t work out and I found myself shopping for a new agent.
    As we got closer to the June 2 draft, the talk of the number-one pick narrowed to the two Joshes: me, and a hard-throwing right-handed high school pitcher from Houston named Josh Beckett. The Devil Rays would pick one Josh first, and the Marlins would follow by picking the other Josh.
    About a week before the draft, it became clear I would be drafted as an outfielder. There was still some room for me to demand to pitch, if that was my choice, but I wanted to play every day and the two teams decided I was more valuable playing every day than I would be pitching every fifth day. As much as I enjoyed pitching, I agreed completely.
    There hadn’t been a high school position player taken with the number-one pick since Alex Rodriguez was drafted by the Seattle Mariners in 1993. The consensus among scouts who had seen us both was that I was a better high school player. Some of those scouts — again, people not naturally given to hyperbole — openly stated that I was the best high school player anybody had ever seen.
    And three days before the draft, I got a call from Devil Rays’ scout Mark McKnight. As the Devil Rays’ area scout for North Carolina, he had become a fixture around my high school games. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for an area scout to be in position to recommend a player to be the top pick in the draft, and by the time the week of the draft arrived, McKnight probably knew more about me than I did.
    After I came to the phone — with so many people calling, I made it a point not to answer the phone during this stretch — McKnight said, “Josh, I’m calling to let you know we’ve made our decision. We’re going to pick you number one in the draft.”
    This wasn’t completely unexpected, but when he said the words all I could think to say was, “Wow.” I thanked him and hung up, then told my parents the news. There wasn’t a huge celebration, just some hugs and handshakes and congratulations. I didn’t know how I would react if that dream came true, and when it did I wasn’t prepared for how humbling it was. Of all the amateur players in the country, all the high school and junior college and college players, I was going to be the first player taken in the draft.
    I kept lining all those players up in my head, endless