“Hey, big spender!”
The bass blares from his walk-up song, shaking the metal bleachers, as junior Dylan Kelly smoothly walks to the dish Tuesday afternoon against Jackson State at Taylor Stadium. A lefty, he raises his bat toward the sky, like a lightning rod, waiting to torch a pitch off the 420-foot sign plastered on the steel Dan Devine practice facility.
But it’s all an act. The music cuts and the sounds of baseball return. On the fourth pitch, Kelly softly loops the ball over Jackson State second baseman Stephen Curtis’ head, where the orb gently drops on the grass in right field for a single, extending his hitting streak to seven games.
Kelly, the starting catcher, was plucked from Middle Georgia Community College last year and has shocked the Missouri baseball program so far this season with his playing abilities.
Although leading the team in hits, the “Big Spender” really swings a conservative stick. Of his 14 knocks so far this season, only one has been an extra base hit. But his slow-and-steady approach at the plate has driven his average to .424, nearly 200 points higher than the team average.
His numbers speak true to his hitting prowess, though they don’t tell who Kelly really is. Despite it being his first season at Missouri, he considers himself a leader on the team. Last Saturday, for example, Kelly shouted encouragement from the field, trying to keep his team together in a lopsided 8-3 loss to San Francisco.
Outside the game, Kelly displays an amiable persona. With a goofy grin and wild hair, he always shakes hands with reporters and talks with tremendous confidence. He even apologized once for “cussing” after using the word “hell.”
Despite his undeniable baseball abilities, Kelly will tell you right away that his athletic career didn’t start on a warm, dirt infield. In fact, it was just the opposite.
**Emerging from the ice**
In Roswell, Ga., pictures of a hockey player line the walls in Kelly’s home. The figure in the photo is his dad, Brian “Battleship” Kelly, who was raised on the ponds in Farmington Hills, Mich. Brian played hockey at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, the best D-I hockey school in the south at the time. He later played professionally in Sweden and in the now defunct International Hockey League.
“I’ve kind of got hockey in my blood,” Dylan joked.
Growing up, Dylan preferred the hockey stick to the baseball bat. His father raised him a Red Wings fan, and Dylan idolized Sergei Fedorov, a winger for the Detroit Red Wings.
“(My dad) taught me everything I knew,” Dylan said. “We both loved it. Most of the kids in the South grow up playing baseball, but I grew up with him teaching me to shoot wrist shots in the driveway.”
Brian said that he slapped skates on his son when he was two years old. After men’s league games, Brian helped Dylan skate on the ice, tugging him along and getting him used to the balance and motion of skating. Before the games, Dylan often wanted to gear up to watch his old man play.
“If Dylan wasn’t skating, he just wanted to have his skates on,” Brian said.
With a penchant for the “Mighty Ducks” movies and NHL Hitz video games, Dylan certainly didn’t fit the mold in Georgia. Although the short-lived Atlanta Thrashers franchise drove some regional support to the game, Dylan said most people didn’t really understand hockey where he grew up.
Dylan became a talented player and played mainly as the team’s center. He skated for AAA teams in Georgia, the highest level in youth hockey. His father often served as coach.
Dylan started playing baseball when he was five and also wound up on soccer and basketball teams. Those sports, though, took a backseat to the ice.
“Baseball wasn’t really big in my life until high school,” he said. “Hockey’s just what I loved. It’s a great sport.”
Kelly excelled on the ice. He led his conference in scoring for three years and his youth team almost made it to Nationals one season.
However, the rink wore on Kelly. He said that grades, travel and feeling like the game was becoming a job distanced him from hockey. He doesn’t remember when he exactly quit, but it was around the age of 16.
“I wanted to do something that mattered,” Kelly said. “People didn’t care that you were playing hockey in the South.”
So, Kelly traded skates for cleats and started getting serious about baseball, where he again shined. He played all four years on Centennial High School’s varsity squad and the Georgia Dugout Club selected him as a Georgia Top-100 player.
Although he raised Dylan a hockey player, Brian was enthused his son found a new love in baseball.
“I was happy he was playing something and enjoying it,” he said.
In his last two seasons, Dylan fine-tuned his game at the junior college level, swatting .429 for Middle Georgia College last season, an average that placed him in the top 15 junior college hitters nationally.
With the Tigers, Kelly has proven to be a tough out and has certainly turned heads with his early success.
“He works really hard and has done some really good things,” coach Tim Jamieson said. “He’s separated himself from the other guys because he does everything really well.”
Brian and Sherry, Dylan’s mom, will be in attendance to watch their son this weekend as the Tigers take on South Carolina for a three-game series starting tonight at 6 p.m.
