"I got to the point that, well the way I was raised--both my parents are college-educated--playing ball right out of school was not something I wanted to do," Lentz says.

His first shot at college baseball, however, was disappointing.

"My No. 1 choice, no-holds-barred--meaning I was ready in October of my senior year [1997] to commit--was Stanford on a scholarship," Lentz recounts. "I was out there in October, turned in my application and it was supposed to be a done deal in a week because the admissions officers were looking at all the baseball players then."

Stanford wasn't impressed.

"They wouldn't let me in," Lentz says. "They said they had never admitted a baseball player with under a 3.0 [GPA]...my grades were just too low in high school."

While the rejection hurt, Lentz still wanted to go to college.

In March he was accepted at both Harvard and Yale and thought about his options. Lentz was worried about rejecting a possible offer from a big league team after being drafted in a early round. He consulted with Lennie Merullo, a friend who ran Major League Baseball's scouting department in the Northeast and was a former major league infielder to boot.