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It’s hard to say whether Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce is best known for his exploits on the football field or for his dating Taylor Swift. But had he stuck with baseball, he might have been as highly touted as the best players in MLB.
“He would have been an Aaron Judge-type player,” said Michael Dillon, Kelce’s high school baseball coach, according to The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen.
Kelce was a multi-sport star in high school in the Cleveland area, playing football and basketball in addition to baseball, but his natural talent on the diamond stood out. His father, Ed Kelce, was so convinced of his baseball talent that he called an Atlanta Braves scout, Reggie Sanders, to come watch his son.
“He looked like Josh Hamilton,” Sanders said, according to Stavenhagen. “I saw him get a base hit. He got on first, stole second and then stole third way before the catcher could even get it out of his glove. It was something surreal.”
By his senior year of high school, Kelce was one of the region’s best hitters, with an outlandish .588 batting average while splitting time between the outfield and third base.
Kelce “could have been a second- or third-round pick, and perhaps a top prospect had he grown up in a warm-weather state and played consistently,” per Stavenhagen.
If He’d Stuck With Baseball, Travis Kelce Could Have Been ‘Another Kirk Gibson’
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GettyKansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce runs out to the mound at a Kansas City Royals game
The closest Kelce ever got to pursuing a professional baseball career was in the summer of 2010, after he lost his football scholarship at the University of Cincinnati for failing a drug test. Kelce joined a collegiate summer baseball league run by Michael Bricker, a former scout for the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox.
“He had pro tools,” Bricker told Stavenhagen. “He had a major-league arm, major-league speed. He fielded the ball well and hit for power.”
Bricker even called Kelce “another Kirk Gibson,” referring to a legendary big league outfielder who averaged 25 homers, 86 RBI and 28 steals in a 17-year MLB career.
However, some recollections of Kelce’s baseball-playing days are a bit more tempered. Former University of Cincinnati baseball coach Brian Cleary acknowledged that big-league pitching would have been a challenge for the tight end, per Stavenhagen.
Travis Kelce Might Have Been a Slugger, But He Can’t Pitch
The comparisons to Judge, Hamilton and Gibson might be surprising for fans who have seen Kelce’s only stints on an actual big league baseball field, which have come in two ceremonial first pitches. His first was most memorable for failing to cross the plate.
“After hyping up the crowd and unbuttoning his jersey, the Cleveland native reared back and … fired the ball into the ground,” Jack Baer of Yahoo! Sports reported at the time. “The ball didn’t even make it to the dirt, and left Guardians ace Shane Bieber trying to dodge it more than catch it on the bounce.”
The onetime baseball star did later redeem himself with a first pitch for the Kansas City Royals, but it’s safe to say that he made the right pick with football.
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