From the time his parents got a divorce strictly so he could transfer from Nederland High to Port Neches-Groves, Josh Stinson’s dream was always to be a top Major League Baseball draft choice.

But six years after that drastic move, five years after he batted nearly .500 as a high school junior and four years after graduating from high school, Stinson’s amateur baseball career is ending and that dream is dust.

Nearly 1,500 names were called in this year’s pro baseball draft and when they wrapped up Friday, the 30 Major League teams had failed to call Stinson’s.

Unthinkable as it was in the summer of 2002, when he was coming off a junior year at PN-G that saw him named MVP of District 20-4A and earn all-state honors, Stinson is completing his high school and college career without ever having been drafted.

And he has been eligible for the draft four times in the last five Junes.

So why is Josh Stinson smiling?

Because he feels he has a lot to be thankful for, not the least of which is being a part of a Texas A&M team that was within two wins of the College World Series at the start of Saturday night’s Super Regional game against top-ranked Rice University.

“In my opinion, this is my best year, even though I’m not being an everyday player but instead I’m being the No. 1 guy off the bench,” he said a few days ago.

Stinson, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound left-handed hitter, has spent his senior season appearing as the Aggies’’ designated hitter, pinch-hitter and backup catcher. He has batted .307 with one home run and 15 RBI in 88 at-bats.

“Hitting-wise, this has been my best year at the plate in college,” he says.

And, best of all, Stinson was speaking in the present tense as Texas A&M was one of only 16 Division I teams still playing, after the Aggies came from the losers’ bracket to win their NCAA Regional tournament last Monday.

They needed another comeback performance at Rice, where they lost the first game of the best-of-three series with the Owls 3-2 in 10 innings Friday.

“Being caught up with winning the regional, I haven’t really thought much about the draft at all,” confessed Stinson, who went 2 for 4 with a two-run homer in his only start in the College Station regional, a 10-4 win over Ohio State.

Too bad rules wouldn’t allow him to be drafted after his junior year of high school. In his first season at PN-G, he batted .451 with eight home runs and 47 runs batted in. The Indians won district and Stinson was district MVP. All-state, too.

“If that had been his senior year, he probably would have gone in the first day of the draft,” said Port Neches native Bobby Straface, owner of the SSE Group player agency and Josh’s brother-in-law.