MINNEAPOLIS — He’s all football now, but everything for Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Pat Mahomes began with baseball.
Long before he became an MVP candidate in the National Football League, Mahomes spent part of his youth growing up around Major League Baseball clubhouses during his father Pat Mahomes’ playing career.
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Both Pat Mahomes, who pitched for the Minnesota Twins from 1992-96 and various other teams, and former Twins pitcher LaTroy Hawkins, Patrick Mahomes’ godfather, think those early years played a critical role in the youngster’s current success. The pair spoke about Patrick Mahomes’ quick ascent to stardom this past weekend at TwinsFest at Target Field.
Whether spending time around older athletes helped him mature into the leader he has become or playing shortstop allowed him to become Kansas City’s most famous submariner since Dan Quisenberry, his elders think Patrick Mahomes’ early exposure to baseball was to his benefit.
“You can say it definitely helped shape him into the leader he is in their locker room and helped him make that transition from college to the NFL just a little smoother,” Hawkins said. “You know a lot of times young guys come in with a lot of hype and a little cockiness. I think him being in a major-league clubhouse and being around professional athletes his whole life, he understands that’s not the way to do it. You lead by example. You be the first one to get there putting in the work. You be the last one to leave.”
Patrick Mahomes was born in 1995 during his father’s second-to-last season with the Twins. But his father’s career extended to 2009, including playing in the majors until 2003 — with two seasons abroad in Japan mixed in — and six more in the minor leagues and independent baseball.
Wearing a Chiefs beanie in the hallway of the visiting clubhouse at Target Field, Pat Mahomes said he thinks it was only natural that his son originally gravitated to baseball despite a love for all sports.
Gifted with a strong arm and a quick release, Patrick Mahomes pitched and played first base and shortstop throughout high school. The effects of the time spent at shortstop, a position known for forcing players to improvise and throw from any and all angles, can be seen every time Patrick Mahomes passes on the run or drops down with a sidearm angle.
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“Just being able to throw off different platforms and make different throws,” Pat Mahomes said. “Most people don’t try it in a game. He will try that stuff. You know the thing about that is people see the sidearm throws and the no-looks and the left-handed pass and stuff like that. That’s stuff that he practices. It’s not just something he comes up with. He practices that stuff and the key is having the guts to do it in the game with the game on the line. He’s always been like that. He’s going to try to do whatever it takes to win a game. He isn’t afraid to try anything. He’s not worried about throwing an interception at the end of the game or whatever. He’s trying to win, so he’s going to do whatever he can to try to lead his team to a victory.”
Said Hawkins: “(Shortstop) has everything to do with it. He’s one of those guys that’s very loose. He’s like double-jointed so he can contort his body and do different things. And coming across the bag and turning two definitely plays a lot into what he’s able to do when he’s rolling out to the left or rolling out to the right.”
Patrick Mahomes was so good at baseball that he surprised his family when he let MLB teams know he didn’t want to play professionally and intended to honor his commitment to play baseball and football at Texas Tech.
Even though he made his intentions clear, that didn’t prevent the Detroit Tigers from drafting Mahomes in the 37th round of the 2014 amateur baseball draft.
A three-sport star in high school, Patrick Mahomes said he often had to work on improving his throwing technique because of the vast differences between throwing a fastball and a baseball. But now that he only plays one sport, mechanics aren’t as much of an issue.
“There is stuff with mechanics, of course,” Patrick Mahomes said. “You are a little shorter with the motion of the throw with the football. All of it is about having touch and being able to have the fastball but at the same time have the changeup and be able to throw with touch and be accurate. It is something that I had to work on when I was playing both sports but luckily I play one, so I can just focus in on that.”
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The quick release Patrick Mahomes gained from baseball has provided Kansas City head coach Andy Reid with latitude in the type of plays he can run. The Chiefs’ playbook features a section of run-pass option plays that not all quarterbacks can handle.
“Maybe a little bit of the baseball part of it comes in where he can get rid of it pretty quick,” Reid said. “I would probably mix both of those things together. He gets the ball out pretty fast when he does it. He is pretty accurate with it. It is a challenge. You have to make a split decision on to hand it off or not.”
Patrick Mahomes’ success on the field is not a surprise to either of the former Twins pitchers. Hawkins, who wore a Chiefs scarf on Friday and says he’s only a football fan to support his godson, remembers Patrick Mahomes could catch, throw and hit a baseball by age 3. He always had a ball in his hand.
Even though he didn’t get the notoriety as a college recruit — Rivals listed him as a three-star dual-threat quarterback — Patrick Mahomes performed as a three-sport star throughout high school.
“We’ve watched it his whole life, so we’re just glad the world gets to see it now,” Hawkins said. “We saw it in high school before he knew anything about being a quarterback. He was just out there on pure athletic ability and using his sixth sense and seventh sense to make plays. He went to college and got a little bit better at being a quarterback and now he’s in the NFL. He’s honed those quarterback skills and still has that same playmaking ability that he had as a sophomore in high school.”
Though unsurprised by his success, neither Hawkins nor Pat Mahomes could have seen this coming. In his first season as a starter, Patrick Mahomes finished with 5,000 yards passing and produced only the third 50-touchdown pass season in NFL history.
“It’s kind of crazy,” Pat Mahomes said. “I expected him to do some things this season. Like LaTroy said, we’ve seen it all our lives. If you go back and look, his numbers pretty much look the same at every level he’s been at. Would I be lying if I said I knew he was going to throw 50 touchdowns and 5,000 yards? Yeah, I’d be lying if I was going to say that. But I knew he was going to have a pretty good season.”
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His team may have lost in the AFC Championship Game on Jan. 20, but Mahomes also fared well in the postseason. In two games, he threw for three scores and ran for another and finished with a 98.9 quarterback rating.
He also twice rallied the Chiefs late in the 37-31 overtime loss to the New England Patriots, including when they trailed by three points with only 39 seconds to go. Patrick Mahomes never had an opportunity in overtime as Tom Brady drove New England to a game-winning touchdown on the opening drive.
The elder Mahomes wonders if his son’s confidence and poise stems once again from the diamond and being introduced to a big-game atmosphere as a child, starting in Minnesota. Patrick Mahomes was often in the New York Mets clubhouse when his father played there from 1999-2000. In those seasons, the Mets reached the National League Championship Series and the World Series. Pat Mahomes didn’t pitch in the 2000 postseason, but had a 2.25 ERA in eight playoff innings in 1999.
“He got really involved when I got with the Mets in ’99,” Pat Mahomes said. “From that point on, as long as I played he was always around big-league guys and in big-league clubhouses.
“He got to see what it was like to be a professional and how they go about their business. Just sucking it all in. He was with me in the World Series and there was 65,000 people in the stands. Now when he goes out and there’s big crowds like that it’s not a big deal to him. It’s like he’s just playing a game.”
— Kansas City Chiefs writer Nate Taylor contributed to this report.
(Top photo of Pat and a young Patrick Mahomes: Courtesy Minnesota Twins)
