Griffin — This is what it's like for a high school celebrity.

Tim Beckham says people come up to him every day and suggest — many joking, perhaps some not — that he please not forget them when he gets paid.

Johnny Crawford / AJC (ENLARGE)

'I'm not trying to put me above anybody,' top baseball prospect Tim Beckham says. 'But I really can't think like all of my friends do. I try not to think about money, but I've got to think ahead about the right crowd to hang out with.'

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Classmates, teachers, players on other teams, everybody, it seems, sees dollar signs flashing from his forehead.

"It's probably 30 times a day," said Beckham, whom Baseball America has rated as the top high school prospect in the country. "I really try to avoid the question. I laugh it off or whatever, or I might say I've got to take care of myself or take care of my family, or something like that."

A shortstop at Griffin who is hitting .500 with five homers and 31 RBIs, Beckham could be the No. 1 pick in next months' Major League Baseball first-year player draft. All indications that Beckham and Griffin coach Jamie Cassady are receiving suggest that Beckham won't last past the 10th pick.

This means that while his classmates are heading to the beach or working summer jobs before heading to college, Beckham could become an instant millionaire. All of the top 10 picks last year got signing bonuses of $2 million or more.

And what then? Beckham will have choices that most people dream about their entire lives.

He already has made some decisions.

"I'm not trying to put me above anybody," he said. "But I really can't think like all of my friends do. I try not to think about money, but I've got to think ahead about the right crowd to hang out with."

Coming back to it

Jimmy Beckham always urged his sons to stay with baseball, no matter what other sports they wanted to try. Given the declining number of African-American players in Major League Baseball — a USA Today article about Beckham said just 8.2 percent of players on major league rosters are black — this flew in the face of conventional wisdom.

Tim actually stopped playing baseball when he was 10 or 11, but came back within a couple of years. One of his clearest memories is when he got to play, as a sixth-grader, with his older brother Jeremy in a varsity summer-league game at East Coweta. The team needed a ninth player, so they pointed to Tim, who had tagged along with Jeremy.

He got his first big hit against a varsity pitcher, and the path to his future came into focus.

He continued playing basketball, but decided to quit after his sophomore year to focus on baseball. He said the decision didn't sit well with then-Griffin basketball coach Ferris Qualls, but the steady stream of scouts who wanted to see him play baseball has validated it.

Sandy Creek coach Eddy Householder, who coached Calvin Johnson, a Detroit Lions receiver who also was a good baseball player, and third-round pick Brent Brewer, has faced Beckham twice in the past two years. He said it is easy to see why the 6-1, 190-pound Beckham is so highly rated.

"You can just tell with one swing," Householder said. "He's got great bat speed, and that's what they look for. He's got a real short swing. He's got baseball knowledge and mannerisms on the field. There ain't no doubt he's the real deal."

Few easy choices

Beckham has seen his father make tough choices. Jimmy and his wife, Ella, divorced in 2003. Rather than keep the three-bedroom house the family had on Griffin's north side, Jimmy opted to live below his means.

That choice was made because a larger house payment meant his three sons — Tim and older brothers Jeremy and Stephen — would be able to do fewer things.

So Jimmy and the boys moved into a small three-bedroom apartment in town.

"We just had to live as cheap as we could," Jimmy said.

Even then, it was obvious to him that Tim would play a lot of baseball, and that it was not going to be cheap.

"Tim has been kind of expensive," Jimmy said. "I paid for him to play AAU baseball."

That has cost around $3,000 a year, Jimmy said, most for travel expenses so Tim could play with the Atlanta Blue Jays, a traveling team. Other teams had greater financial resources — Jimmy said one team offered to pay for all expenses — but Tim wanted to stay with the Blue Jays.

"We've paid for him to be comfortable that way," Jimmy said.

The dad's sacrifices aren't lost on the son. Tim has seen Jimmy wake up at 4 a.m. to make the 45-mile drive from Griffin to Doraville, where he works as a union representative at the General Motors assembly plant.

Jimmy, who left a retail management job to work for GM 23 years ago so he could spend more time with his family, said it was merely another choice to facilitate family life.

"I was married and working 60 hours a week," Jimmy said. "That's hard on a family. I just took the job with General Motors as a temporary thing, but it went from temporary to 23 years."

The family's life is going to change radically in the next four months, regardless of where Tim goes in the draft. The GM plant will close in September, and Jimmy, three years from retiring, says he'll transfer to another GM plant.

"I'm just glad it didn't happen before then," Jimmy said. "At least this way my boys will all be out of high school."

Knowing all this, Tim already has made one choice.

"I don't know how much I'm going to get, but if I do get a lot, [I'll] be able to take care of my family," he said. "I'd move my dad out of an apartment, and I'd move my mom out of an apartment, too."

And then?

"I'll probably get a car I've wanted; there's a few of them," he said.

There's also a nice fall-back position. Tim has signed a scholarship to play college baseball at Southern California. But that option doesn't seem realistic.

Cassady said at least three major-league general managers have come to the Griffin campus. One got Beckham out of his sixth-period economics class for a workout.

"That's when you know they're serious," Cassady said. "When the GMs start showing up, they're really interested."

So all those choices, it seems, are close to paying off.

THE STAT LINE

Tim Beckham's production line is suitable for framing:

.500 (39 for 78)

5 HR

31 RBIs

16 SB

22 BB

9 2B

3 3B