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By Jon Paul Hoornstra
Contributing Sports Writer
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Mike Bates set a record by being selected three times in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft. Remarkably, he never played an inning as a major or minor league baseball player.
Rather, he used two sports he was arguably more accomplished in — darts and billiards — to build a business and give back to the Arizona community that launched his brief baseball career.
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Bates died Tuesday at 67, two years after being diagnosed with leukemia. The owner of Bull Shooters Billiards and Sports Bar in West Phoenix was remembered more for his post-baseball career than the burst of high school stardom that led him to the top of three different drafts.
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Born in Cleveland, Bates' family moved to Arizona when he was a child. He would lead Apollo High School in Glendale to the 1976 state baseball championship as both a pitcher and a hitter during his senior season.
The San Francisco Giants selected Bates in the 34th round of that year’s MLB June Amateur Draft. They reportedly offered too little money to convince Bates to turn pro, so he elected to pitch across town at Phoenix College and improve his draft stock.
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That he did, getting a call from the Giants again in the January phase of the 1977 amateur draft, this time as the 24th overall pick of the first round. (MLB has since eliminated the January portion of the draft for early high school and college graduates.)
However, an arm injury that Bates traced to overuse stunted his velocity. He returned to college and continued pitching well enough to earn a call from the Royals in the June 1977 draft — this time with the 21st overall pick.
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Bates told the Daily Independent in 2021 that his velocity was down from 96 mph to 90 by then, so he told the Royals that he would continue working out without signing to try to get back to 100 percent.
The velocity never came back, even after the Indians selected Bates with the 17th overall pick in the January 1978 draft.
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Although Bates never pitched an inning professionally, he accomplished plenty in sports. A banner at Bull Shooters boasted of his induction into the Darts Hall of Fame. He used the venue to fundraise for local athletes in need via darts and billiards tournaments. A 2021 article in the Peoria Times claimed Bates' tournaments had raised $250,000.
"One of the reasons I got this place is because it can help the community," Bates told the Arizona Republic in 2025. "A lot of (high school athletes) don't have gloves, cleats, things like that. It's great to help out. It gives back to the community. It gives back to baseball, football, all the sports."
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