KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Patrick Mahomes has this memory from a fight with his dad. This was years ago. Patrick was a kid. Six years old, maybe. His dad was a big league pitcher with the Rangers. Father and son, playing baseball together, and they both had ideas.
Pat wanted Patrick to hit off the tee. Patrick thought that was dumb. A waste of time. Because he was 6 now, you see, and he didn't need the tee anymore.
"Just throw me the ball," he remembers telling his dad. "I can hit the ball off you now. I don't need to hit off the tee."
Then son followed dad to work. This is how he spent the summers, quality time, but also noticing what the best in the world do to get there and stay there. Which is when Patrick knew his dad was right, because right there in front of him, three or so hours before the game, was Alex Rodriguez hitting off a dang tee.
"Right then," Mahomes said, "I knew, 'Man, if he can do it and he's a superstar, then I can do it if I'm just getting to kid-pitch,' or whatever it was."
This is about when you realize that Patrick Mahomes was made for this. We've been over most of the story, traced nearly all the steps from childhood baseball star, to three-star quarterback recruit with one major offer, to NFL MVP and the league's most important player.
You can probably recite some of this. Playing baseball helped with his arm angles. Basketball helped with creativity. His dad and godfather being big-league pitchers showed him leadership. Andy Reid helped with a plan and structure.
But take two steps to the side. Tilt your head a bit. Look at this from a slightly different angle and you'll see one more fundamental truth about how this all came to be.
Think about Mahomes' dad and godfather. The good stuff isn't just that they allowed a window into the world of professional sports at a young age. The extra benefit _ what put the experience over the top _ was the specific window provided by those two men.
The two most important male influences in Mahomes' life spent a combined 32 seasons in the major leagues, nearly all of it in middle relief, never leading a league in a meaningful stat, never being selected to an All-Star Game.
Put another way: Mahomes is a supernatural talent whose primary male influences were grinders. He has the physical and mental gifts of a superstar, driven with the work and focus of someone desperate to just make the team.
"That definitely did help," Mahomes said. "Just seeing, like you said, the grind. Seeing how you have to try to find a way to make yourself better. Seeing how you have to really take advantage of every single little opportunity in order to live out your dream. That definitely helped a ton, for me, not taking anything for granted."
Pat was once among the Twins' top prospects and debuted in the big leagues at 21. But Pat's ascent stalled, and when the Red Sox released him five years later he had a 5.88 career ERA and no big league offers.
He went to Japan, humbled, then worked his way back for another chance. He earned it, too, pitching parts of five more seasons _ the years Patrick celebrated his fourth through eighth birthdays. Important years.
Think about that: early success, then a long stall, rejection, lots of work and more success on the other side. That's a heck of a model for a young kid wanting to be a professional athlete.
"Exactly," Pat said. "My route (to the big leagues) was fairly easy. Then things went kind of bad for a year and a half or two years. He got the experience that. He got to see it first hand."
LaTroy Hawkins' career is even more extreme. He pitched 21 years _ only nine men in history have appeared in more games _ and was his team's full-time closer in just two. Of the 19 pitchers who debuted after World War II and spent more time in the big leagues, all made All-Star games, and 11 are in the Hall of Fame.
Hawkins had shoulder surgery at age 37, and either side of that _ surgery or age _ has ended many careers. Hawkins came back, though, with a 3.08 ERA while averaging more than 50 appearances over his last five seasons before retiring at 42.
Again, a heck of a model for a young mind _ historic longevity and consistent production without the margin for error enjoyed by, say, Nolan Ryan's fastball or Bert Blyleven's curve.
"He saw the work I put in," Hawkins said. "I was always on him about putting in the same work. He wasn't one of those young men you had to pound it in and keep on him about. Once you told him about it and he knew it was going to benefit him, he was all in. All in."
Mahomes certainly isn't the first child to learn from an athlete parent, and he's not the first to pair elite athleticism with maniacal work. But his story is different than many others because of the path taken, with all that time spent around professional athletes as a kid and the fact that his personal recognition came late.
Some of that is by choice. Mahomes decided to take what everyone thought would be his more difficult athletic path, the one away from baseball and toward football. He arrived in the NFL as something of a quarterback outsider: no Elite 11 camps as a kid, only one interested Power Five school out of high school and second-team All-Big 12 honors his last year at Texas Tech.
Maybe that helps drive the work, too. He learned from his dad's rise and fall and rise again. He saw what Hawkins did to stay in the big leagues for two decades.
This wasn't supposed to be Mahomes' life, this life as a quarterback. He was a baseball player. Then the product of a gimmick offense. Then his footwork was a mess.
Those things can be fuel. He believed in himself as a quarterback when most believed he was making a mistake. Now that everyone can see he was right, he has a lifetime's worth of preparation to make sure they never forget.
