“He would have been an Aaron Judge-type player”- When NFL superstar Travis Kelce's potential MLB career was compared to Yankees MVP
Travis Kelce is an NFL superstar and one of the most notable players in the sport. There was almost a reality where he was that for the MLB. Multi-sport athletes are rare and the vast majority have to stick to one, and Kelce chose football. If he'd chosen baseball, he could have been an absolute star.
Scouts and coaches raved over his abilities, with one recently saying a while ago that he could've been like Aaron Judge. The New York Yankees MVP is a superstar and Kelce drew comparisons to him.
Michael Dillon, a Cleveland Heights baseball coach, said via Daily Mail:
"He would have been an Aaron Judge-type player."
Brian Cleary, a former University of Cincinnati baseball coach and now a Washington Nationals scout, said:
"He was playing right field. As they take in-and-out [warmups] and as he's playing pregame, it's the best thrower of a baseball I've ever seen, to this day, in my life."
Ironically, Judge and Kelce united on the diamond for a commercial where Judge himself was impressed with the NFL player's swing.
Travis Kelce truly could have been an MLB star
A lot of athletes play multiple sports growing up, perhaps even in high school and college. Most of them don't have a real future in any but the one they eventually play professionally, but Travis Kelce may have been different.
A former Atlanta Braves scout named Reggie Sanders said about his plan to defer football to go into baseball:
"He wanted a Plan B. He was like, 'Bro, I don't know about this football thing. He was not really thinking the football thing was going to work out."
The scout added that it would have been a great option for the eventual star tight end:
"He looked like Josh Hamilton. 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. I think that was his father's dream, to see him in a major-league baseball uniform playing in the World Series."
His father had to settle for Kelce becoming arguably the best NFL tight end in history, as he's a two-time Super Bowl champion with tons of records and a likely first-ballot Hall of Famer instead of an MLB superstar.