The 2014 Major League Baseball draft begins Thursday and hundreds of high school and college ballplayers are counting the hours before the Houston Astros go on the clock with the first pick.

One year ago, Kohl Stewart was an 18-year-old pitcher anxiously awaiting the draft. Stewart was selected by the Minnesota Twins with the fourth overall pick of the first round and is a couple of months into his first full year of professional baseball.

Stewart has vivid memories of the 2013 draft and the days leading up to it.

“I think that this time last year, we had just lost in the state finals in baseball,” he recalled. “Then I was graduating from school and the draft was coming up.

"I was spending hours with my agent talking about what I wanted to do.

There were a million different scenarios playing over in my head. I remember thinking, ‘If this happens, if this guy goes here and if this guy goes here.’”

While all of the high school ballplayers likely to be selected near the top of the draft have the option of postponing their professional careers in favor of playing college baseball, Stewart had an additional option. He had a scholarship offer from Texas A&M football coach Kevin Sumlin to play quarterback for the Aggies.

Stewart and his agent certainly knew he'd be selected early on draft night. But that doesn't mean he had made up his mind weeks before the draft that he'd be signing with whatever team chose him.

As draft day neared, however, things seemed to come more into focus.

“I expected to go to A&M,” said Stewart. “A couple of days before the draft, I think, my agent I guess had kind of talked to some people and he kind of had an idea of what was going to happen and I even talked to Coach Sumlin a couple of days before it happened and he gave me his blessing.

"He wanted me to do what was best for me and that was another dynamic that I had to deal with, too. I kind of felt like I  was letting him down. Having guys like that ... He's a really good coach for a reason. He had gone through that before. He definitely made the situation easier on me.”

Even having pretty much come to grips with the likelihood that he'd be signing a professional baseball contract rather than pursuing a major college football career didn't make waiting any less stressful for Stewart.

“You kind of have that situation made up in your mind, but everything’s still got to happen. You’ve still got to sit there and the decision’s still got to be made,” he said.

The anxiety of the wait didn't mean Stewart and those closest to him didn't enjoy the moment, however.

“I  definitely enjoyed it. It was definitely a fun time for my family,” he said. “I have a lot of friends that are really good baseball players that are playing in college right now.

"I got to experience what a lot of guys that I grew up playing ball with will probably be going through the same thing in a couple of years and to kind of share it with them was really special.

“But it was definitely really stressful. I would go to bed knowing I was going to have to make a really big choice and that was kind of hard.

"Every day it got closer to the draft, it was very apparent that I was going to have a very good opportunity with the Twins and I didn’t want to pass it up.”

Players do a lot of different things to relax on draft day. Some go hunting or fishing. Some play golf to take their minds off the draft and hope it passes the time more quickly.

Stewart enjoys hunting and fishing in the offseason and also really enjoys golfing. But on draft day, he chose to pass the hours leading up to the draft with friends and family.

“I remember waking up. I slept in late,” Stewart recollected, smiling a bit. “I told myself I don’t want to get up and have to worry about it all day long.

"I wanted to sleep in as long as I could. I think that lasted until about 6:30 that morning."

After breakfast, Stewart spent time with one of his Select Team coaches (“He was blowing it up, having a good time with it, kind of looking forward to the night”) and with an older brother.

“We went to a place called Mel’s Diner. It’s a small little burger place. I went there, had a good meal with him. I remember he went and bought a bunch of champagne and put it in a cooler. Then we went back to my house and a bunch of people showed up and we turned on the TV.

“It was good. It was definitely a day I’ll never forget.”