Well, this morning I found a great website called retroseasons.com and you can look up each team's list of draft picks for a particular year. So I looked up the list of players drafted in the 1981 June MLB draft by the Mets, and it's also a doozy.

That year, the Mets drafted Terry Blocker, an outfielder from Tennessee State University with the 4th pick, John Christensen, an outfielder from Cal State Fullerton with the 38th pick, Dave Cochrane, a pitcher-3B from Troy HS in Fullerton CA with the 81st pick (4th round), Mark Carreon, a outfielder from Salpointe HS in Tucson, AZ with the 185th pick, Roger Clemens, a pitcher from San Jacinto College with the 289th pick, and Len Dykstra in the 13th round with the 315th pick (from Garden Grove HS, near Fullerton). Lou Thornton was drafted after Dykstra, rounding out their draft that year.

It's odd that the Mets thought that Terry Blocker, John Christensen, Dave Cochrane, and Mark Carreon were better prospects than Clemens in June 1981. I've already commented on Blocker and Christensen's pages, so that leaves me with Cochrane and Carreon, and Carreon is worthy of a separate post.

Dave Cochrane was drafted as a pitcher-third baseman, which begs the question: he was so good at both he couldn't decide? Better at pitching than Roger Clemens? I know for a fact that Mets scouting director Joe McIlvaine regretted the Mets not signing Clemens that year, because Vin Scully talked about it on a broadcast once, I think during Game 2 of the 1986 World Series.

The only "memory" I have of Cochrane is that I once owned one of his baseball cards, and I'd have to think real hard about which card it was. He was definitely on the White Sox. His name was Dave... I want to say it was a 1990 Upper Deck card. I just looked it up and I was thinking of Dave Gallagher. This guy (Dave Cochrane) came up with the Mariners.

Someone here aptly mentioned that the Mets might have won more championships in the '80's if they had kept Jeff Reardon. Well, imagine if they had signed Clemens in '81, or at least picked him with the 81st pick and Cochrane with the 289th pick? Then they certainly would have signed him, instead of giving him a lowball offer and letting him bounce to the University of Texas.

But no, instead of Gooden and Clemens, I got a mashed up memory of a "Dave" on a White Sox card who turns out to be Dave Gallagher, not Dave Cochrane. And since he's not Dave Gallagher, who actually played for the Mets, of course I have no memory of Dave Cochrane.

A Google search triggers a memory that I had Dave Cochrane's 1992 Fleer Ultra card as a Mariner and it went into the commons bin immediately after I opened that pack (stolen from 7-11) in 1992.

At least Dave Cochrane can tell the neighborhood kids that he was drafted before Roger Clemens, so that's a positive.

Dave Cochrane was traded to the White Sox on July 16, 1985 for Tom Paciorek. If they had traded him for Cesar Cedeno (acquired by the Cardinals on July 19th), then maybe the pain of his "bust" as a 4th round pick in the '81 draft wouldn't hurt so much. But hey, we're talking about the team that drafted Steve Chilcott over Reggie Jackson.