The story of Patrick Mahomes: “Don’t play football, there’s no future in it”

Patrick Mahomes will try to expand his legend even further on Sunday. The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback will have the chance to lift his third consecutive Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl LIX (the fourth in his career).  The Texas native has three Super Bowl MVPs and two NFL MVPs. There is no doubt that, during his eight seasons in the league, he has become an increasingly important player, to the point of being the best in recent years. Many experts even debate whether or not he is the best player of all time.

But everything Patrick Mahomes is today and the legacy he will leave in the future could have been very different. The Texas quarterback was close to playing baseball instead of football, just like his father did.

He was drafted by MLB

During his time at Whitehouse High School, Mahomes played on the basketball, football and baseball teams. Despite juggling all three sports, it seemed that he was going to opt for the latter, especially because of the influence of his father. At that time, his father was playing as a reliever for the Minnesota Twins, one of the great MLB teams.

This meant that his son regularly had the opportunity to be in MLB locker rooms and meet some of the league’s most important figures. “He grew up in the locker room, he was always around the game and he was the best player on his baseball team. I always thought he was going to be a baseball player,” Patrick Mahomes Sr. told the Los Angeles Times in 2023.

“Patrick grew up in the locker room, was always around the game and was the best player on his baseball team. I always thought he was going to be a baseball player”
Patrick Mahomes father

In fact, his level was so high that he was selected by the Detroit Tigers in the 37th round of the 2014 MLB draft. However, Mahomes had already committed to Texas Tech University, so he turned down the contract with the Detroit team.

Mahomes followed his instincts

In college, he combined baseball and football during his freshman year. In the second season, he decided to focus fully on the pigskin, despite defining himself as “a baseball player at heart.”

The Chiefs quarterback ignored the advice of MLB greats such as former New York Yankees player Alex Rodriguez: “I said to him, ‘Now listen to me, there’s no money, there’s no future, there’s no history in football. You have to play baseball!’ Well, he reminded me of that recently and what a joy it is that he didn’t listen to me!” We will never know how far Mahomes’ career as a baseball player would have gone. But what is certain is that he did not make a bad choice. Time and history have shown that.