And he could, of course, afford to coddle himself: He was a millionaire weeks away from debuting in Yankee Stadium. He had dealt with back issues as a teenager - after he had grown 9 inches in 12 months - and she worried the mattress wouldn't be good for his body. ![]() His mom, Kim, a nurse, pestered him to find a better place to sleep. The closet got no light, so his roommates would rustle him awake to keep him from sleeping through an afternoon. Miller's clothes hung above him while he slept. It was exactly big enough to hold a queen-sized blow-up mattress, which a previous tenant had left behind in the house. The club suggested he could live in a room that had recently been vacated, but Miller soon discovered that the room was actually a closet in teammate Kevin Whelan's bedroom. Detroit gave him $5.45 million to sign - the most of any first-round pick that year - and promised to let him join the major league roster in September.įirst, though, he would spend the summer in Lakeland, Florida, just a two-hour drive from his hometown of Gainesville, pitching for the Tigers' High-A affiliate. The baby-faced lefty was a consensus future star, a 6-foot-7 starter who touched 98 mph with his fastball and snapped off major league sliders from a steep, angular delivery. ![]() IN JUNE 2006, the Tigers drafted Andrew Miller out of North Carolina with the sixth overall pick. This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's April 10 MLB Preview Issue.
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