Hunter Greene is the youngest and most intriguing of the Twins' options for the No. 1 overall pick

STEVENSON RANCH, CALIF. – The Greene home is located in a suburb of Los Angeles, in a neighborhood with streets named after such literary giants as Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Allan Poe.

Take a right out of the driveway and a left down Kavenaugh and you'll run into a community park that overlooks the Santa Clarita Valley — words can't describe the view.

It was at this park in 2002 where three words came to Russell Greene as he played whiffle ball with his 3-year-old son, Hunter.

He can hit.

"His hand-eye coordination was ridiculous," Russell Greene said while seated at his home early in June. "I wasn't throwing strikes. I was throwing to his swing path. He was swinging where I was throwing."

Russell saw the joy Hunter had in hitting a ball, so he did all he could to help his son develop.

Papa Greene ended up with more than just a hitter.

Hunter Greene has grown into a top prospect as a shortstop, but he has teams drooling over his right arm. His fastball regularly hits 98 miles per hour and can touch 102.

He also plays the violin. He likes to paint. He learned Korean. He organized a sock drive for the homeless. He wrote a paper on the dwindling number of black baseball players.

And he would like to pitch and play shortstop as a professional.

He has become the most interesting young man in baseball. And he wouldn't mind playing for the Twins, who are eyeing a franchise-altering decision Monday with the No. 1 choice in the Major League Baseball draft.

A high school righthanded pitcher has never gone No. 1 since the draft started in 1965. And the Twins have not tipped their hand, with five or six players still in the mix for their top selection.

But there's no doubt whom Hunter Greene thinks they should take.

"Every team I've been on, I've been able to win for them," Greene said. "I'm not saying I have singlehandedly beat everyone, but I have been on winning teams. The last time the Minnesota Twins won a World Series was 1991, which was a long time ago. I feel like if they select me, I could be one to help them with another World Series."

At 3? Really?

"That was my initial reaction," said Hunter's mother, Senta, who owns an international educational consulting firm.

Russell Greene called his skeptical wife and urged her to come down to the park to watch little Hunter bash the whiffle balls. There wasn't much more they could do with a 3-year-old who showed a glimmer of athletic prowess. But Russell Greene, who played football in high school and college, did not want his son in pads.

The Greenes lived in a baseball-playing community, so Hunter joined in with his friends. He began organized baseball at age 6 but would not get his uniform dirty.

"He would just stand there," Russell Greene said. "The ball is hit to him and he would just freeze. He had to be told, 'You have to pick up the ball and throw it over there.'

"He got really good, like, really fast."

Russell Greene, a private investigator whose clients have included the Kardashians, Kanye West and Harrison Ford, once bankrolled a traveling team to get Hunter, then 7, off a team with a negative atmosphere. And that year the Greenes started going to the Urban Youth Academy in Compton, Calif.

The academy opened in 2006 as a nonprofit initiative by Major League Baseball to get more black children involved with the game. According the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, black players made up only 7.7 percent of Opening Day rosters, the lowest since the studies began in 1991, when it was 18 percent.

Former major leaguers Ken Landreaux and Lorenzo Gray were part of the staff at the academy. So was Johnny Washington, the first base coach of the San Diego Padres. Juan Pierre, Matt Kemp and Rafael Furcal would stop by to speak with players, as would former Twins outfielder Aaron Hicks.

"It was great because they taught me how to be a major league citizen, and that's what they continue to teach kids," Hunter Greene said. "Be a good young man off the field … not just a good baseball player. They provided a lot of professional people to help me train and get better."

MLB annually celebrates the late Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier, and continues to look for ways to increase the numbers of blacks playing baseball. Greene is not too young to understand what he could mean to the initiative.

"I want to do something more than just baseball," Greene said. "I want to inspire the youth, not just African-Americans but everybody. I think it is important. I've seen the numbers, and they have decreased and I've done projects on the decrease of African-Americans in baseball. I'm someone who is fortunate to be in this position."

The academy helped prepare Greene for high school, and he stepped right in.

"It's not usual to have a freshman start on varsity," said Tom Dill, Greene's coach at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, where Miami Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton played. "Coaching in the Mission League for 25 years, we've had about 10 first-rounders."

Dill said Greene was not a physical specimen early but had good instincts. His fastball his freshman year was in the low 80s. He didn't hit well but had a nice swing. The coaching staff saw the potential.

"The big change came between his freshman and sophomore years," Dill said. "He was different."

Greene was league MVP as a 10th-grader. Dill said Greene was hitting 83 mph on his fastball as a freshman and topping out at 90 as a sophomore. As a junior he topped out at 95 and settled in at 93. Then he showed up for his senior year hitting 98 consistently.

Greene also throws a curveball, slider and changeup, with his slider potentially his best offspeed pitch.

"He's a unique kid, and I don't think this industry has seen this type of kid for a while," said former executive Dan O'Dowd, a draft analyst for the MLB Network. "On the mound he reminds me of a young Doc Gooden. There's is natural, internal rhythm on the mound. You would think he was a college junior just coming out."

The Greenes arrived in the Twin Cities on a recent Thursday. They ate lunch at Maynard's off Lake Minnetonka and later had dinner at Manny's in Minneapolis. On Friday, they ate breakfast at Ike's, then went to Target Field for a workout. The Twins also invited several area prospects, as they usually do, but Greene was the one high-profile attendee.

It was not his first time in the stadium. That was in 2013 for the Revitalizing Baseball in the Inner Cities World Series. He played third base on a team from Venice, Calif., that defeated a team from the Dominican Republic for the title.

"I like stadiums where you cans see downtown in the background," Greene said. "My favorite part was seeing that stadium."

Greene's connections with Minnesota run deeper. He met St. Paul native and Hall of Famer Dave Winfield when he was 13 during a discussion about youth baseball in a cafe at Studio City. Six months ago, he bonded with Twins great Torii Hunter at a fundraiser at Los Angeles' Wilshire Country Club.

"He talked with Hunter about financial literacy for about 45 minutes," Russell Greene said. "It was touching as a father to sit back and watch those two. It was like a father-son conversation."

The two exchanged numbers, and Greene was surprised by a message from Hunter.

"I was like, 'This guy doesn't have the time to text me,' " Greene said. "The next day, he wrote this long paragraph about how he enjoyed meeting me and getting to know me, and if I ever needed anything, just text him."

Hunter Greene still remembers where everyone was sitting when then-scouting director Deron Johnson, West Coast supervisor Sean Johnson — the Twins' new scouting director — and area scout Taylor Cameron visited their home last fall.

"It was like a three-hour meeting," Hunter Greene said. "That tells you we kicked it off really well. We were able to talk a lot about some things. I enjoyed being around those guys, and we still have a great relationship with them."

By the way, Greene also likes to fish … but has never been ice fishing.

There is still a great reluctance among major league teams to take a high school pitcher first overall, but a player who can throw 100 mph might be irresistible.

The Twins went into the weekend eyeing six players: high school stars Greene, Royce Lewis and MacKenzie Gore, and college standouts Kyle Wright, Pavin Smith and Brandon McKay.

Twins Chief Baseball Officer Derek Falvey has tried to put less attention on the first overall pick and more on building a draft class. The Twins also have the 35th and 37th overall selections.

"We want to look at it as after the player we take with Pick 1, we're not even thinking about it anymore; we're moving on to how we're going to set ourselves up for 35 and 37 and so on," Falvey said. "I'd view that no different if we were picking 15th, first or 50th. We've got to put ourselves in the position to get the best player possible at that pick."

Signing Greene could be another challenge. The league recommends that the Twins put a $7.77 million ceiling on the first pick, but the Twins might want to save some of that money for later choices who either slide down or want to be paid more than what's recommended.

That could be an interesting discussion with the Greenes.

"That's a very private question between his adviser, ourselves and the ballclub," Russell Greene said. "But I think Hunter has clearly set himself apart from all the players in the draft. I think that is very clear."