The University of Mississippi Athletics
Major Surprise
9/30/2002 | Baseball
Sept. 30, 2002
by Joe Hamelin; The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA)
A man half-asleep on his sofa heard the words "Bobby Kielty" and jumped to his feet. Crossing the room in two hops, he put his nose to the television screen, then went to the phone and called the newspaper.
"That Kielty guy with the Twins? That can't be the same one who used to play for RCC . . . Can it?"
It can, he was told. "Amazing! I played with him there. The first day we all hit, it was like he'd never had a bat in his hands before. I can't believe he's playing big-league ball!"
Others can't, either:
* The 30 teams that didn't draft him, either out of high school or college.
* Kielty's USC coaches, who told him to give up hitting and concentrate on pitching. (This explains why he struggled initially at Riverside Community College: he hadn't hit in a year.)
* The people at the University of Mississippi, where, in his one season of Division I, aluminum-bat baseball, he hit .307.
* Probably, the doctors who examined him four winters ago after he fractured two lumbar vertebrae, skiing.
* And, in certain reflective moments, Kielty himself.
"It's been a long road for me," said Kielty, a Moreno Valley native, "going to SC, then junior college -- where I didn't put up huge numbers, by any means -- and then Ole Miss, and having the back injury. And never being drafted. It made me wonder if I should walk away from baseball."
Instead, Kielty, 26, ended up with a half-million-dollar signing bonus, owns a condo in Florida and is making $ 200,000 this year playing for a Minnesota team that's postseason-bound.
In roughly a half-season of at-bats, he is hitting .287, with 10 homers, 42 RBI and a team-leading .403 on-base percentage.
"I'm kind of a self-made player," Kielty said. "I don't think most people put as much time in the weight room as I have the last seven, eight years. I wasn't going to leave anything behind. I was going to try it and try it and see what happened . . . Hard work pays off."
Kielty batted .415 his senior year at Moreno Valley Canyon Springs and was first-team All-County along with future major leaguers Adam Kennedy and Mike Darr. He went to USC on a partial academic scholarship and walked on for baseball and water polo.
"The baseball coach wanted me to shut water polo down, so I did," Kielty said. "Then he told me to shut down hitting, too, and just pitch."
Which is why, after a redshirt season, he fled LA. At RCC, he found a coach who had a hunch he could make it hitting.
"He had one of the best athletic bodies I've ever been associated with," said Dennis Rogers, whose RCC teams have won three straight state titles. "He had a passion for sports -- but not for any one sport. He had to learn to play the game -- throwing mechanics, the mental side, what people were trying to do to get him out. I was on him a lot, but once he understood the grind you have to put into baseball every day to succeed, things fell into place."
Kielty played in 1996 and '97 for Rogers, then moved on to Ole Miss. There, he met his wife, Meredith. But he struggled with baseball, still sore from his fall on the slopes. That summer (1998), with one year of eligibility left, Kielty played in the Cape Cod League, a wood-bat circuit in Massachusetts, and it all came together. He hit .384 and was Player of the Year.
A dozen teams, among them the Dodgers, Padres and Diamondbacks, opened their checkbooks, ready to scribble. So much for Ole Miss.
"We talked after Cape Cod," Rogers said. "I was driving . . . and saw his car behind me, and we both pulled over."
Recognizing Kielty's car wasn't difficult. He drove an old blue Honda Prelude with holes in the floor that you could see pavement through. Rogers called it the "Flintstonemobile."
A teammate remembers being scared to ride with Kielty, in part because he drove like he skied. What Rogers remembers is Kielty was a down-to-earth guy who didn't need fancy cars.
"He had all these offers and was trying to decide what to do," Rogers said. "I remember him saying that he'd probably sign with the team that gave him the quickest path to the majors. He didn't just take the best offer. You don't often run into kids who think that way."
Ironically, Kielty finds himself caught in a numbers game at Minnesota, the third or fourth outfielder on a team with five or six good, young ones. He was hitting .332 at the end of July, being mentioned as a Rookie of the Year candidate -- and still was playing part time.
"My brother-in-law is on me," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said at the time, ". . . saying, 'How can you not play Kielty every day?' I tell him, 'Because the other guys are .300 hitters, too.'"
Gold Glove center fielder Torii Hunter (.289, 29 homers) and left fielder Jacques Jones (.298, 27 homers) are outfield fixtures, leaving Dustan Mohr, Kielty, Michael Cuddyer and others to battle for playing time.
Which led, Kielty suggests, to the 9-for-60 (.150) slump that stretched into September and sliced 50 points off his average.
"It's hard," he said, "when you never know what's going to happen when you come to the park, whether you're going to be in the lineup or not."
Kielty's father, Roger, is a Moreno Valley High teacher. His mother, Linda, is a manager at Kaiser Permanente in Fontana. His dad taught him to switch-hit in Little League.
A natural right-hander, he hit .333 righty and .186 lefty (.297 overall) last year in three call-ups totaling 104 at-bats. He talked to Manager Tom Kelly about giving up left-handed hitting. Instead, he worked so hard on it last winter that he's better from the left side this year. Gardenhire, Kelly's replacement, often benches him against lefties.
For a rookie, this game can be awfully confusing.
"I'd like to get a starting job somewhere," Kielty said. "If not with the Twins, maybe with somebody else."
Not to worry, said Rogers: "He's in the playoffs. His name is out there. He's made an impression. His future is bright."
* * *
KIELTY FILE
Age: 26
Position: Outfielder
Hometown: Moreno Valley, CA
High school: Canyon Springs Colleges: USC, Riverside Community College, Mississippi Honors: Most Valuable Player in 1998 Cape Cod League . . . 1998 Summer Player of the Year by Baseball America.
Signed: Undrafted free agent, by Twins, off Cape league exploits.
Pro career: A switch hitter, in second season with the Twins, he's hitting .287 with 10 homers in part-time duty . . . Often bats fifth in the lineup.
