The boy was a precocious 4-year old, and he couldn’t wait to roam the outfield at Shea Stadium and shag fly balls off the bats of his father’s 1999 Mets teammates.
“I just remember him being so excited to go to the yard every day,” Pat Mahomes Sr. told The Post. “I’d have to hold him back just so I could get in the car before we left because he was ready to get out there. And he’d get there to the clubhouse, get his uniform on, and he’d be one of the first guys out on the field, and of course I had to play catch and all that.”
Long before he became the best quarterback in the NFL, Little Patrick Mahomes was The Natural.
“His first practice he was playing shortstop, he threw the ball across the diamond and hit the first baseman right between the eyes, broke his glasses,” the elder Mahomes recalled, “so they told him to start throwing the ball three-quarters of the way and then it rolled there. But I wouldn’t let him do that, so I told ‘em just to move him to first base, so he became a big fan of all first basemen.”
When Pat Mahomes asked the Mets equipment manager to make Little Patrick a uniform, manager Bobby Valentine asked him to stay near the boy and protect him. “Once he saw how he handled himself on the field, how he was tracking the balls and how he was catching the balls off of the big leaguers’ bat,” Pat Mahomes said, “he felt a little more comfortable.”
Pat Mahomes, even though he was left off the 2000 Subway Series roster, was a fearless and trusted long reliever (8-0, 3.86 ERA) in 1999 for Valentine. Little Patrick’s best friends: Mike Hampton, Al Leiter, Benny Agbayani, John Franco and Turk Wendell.
“He would watch the first couple of innings of the game and then he would go to the nursery where all the kids were and they’d watch the game down there and play games and do different stuff,” Pat Mahomes said. “And then if I went into the game he’d come out and watch me pitch.”
The father’s shining moment of an 11-year MLB career came in relief of a knocked-out Leiter in the first inning of an NLCS Game 6 defeat to the Braves. He threw four innings of one-hit ball. “Ever since I was 4 years old I always said I was gonna be a Major League Baseball player,” Pat Mahomes said, “and buy my grandmother a house, so once I got to that point, I was able to do that.”
Before he would debut at 21 with the Twins, Pat Mahomes turned down Division I offers as an all-state Texas high school quarterback. “I don’t like contact, so that was never an option for me,” he said.
Pat Mahomes moved to the Texas Rangers in 2001. “A-Rod would take him down after shagging balls and stuff, he’d take him down to the cages and get him on a tee and soft toss to him and then he would break it down with him, take him into the film room and show him what he was doing wrong and show him what he was doing right, and he loved that,” Pat Mahomes said.
Little Patrick could hit and throw a 95 mph fastball and appeared destined for baseball. “I knew he had a chance because I know where I was at that point and I know he was way more advanced than I was at that point,” Pat Mahomes said.
But when the boy switched from safety to quarterback as a junior at Whitehouse (Texas) High School, baseball was intentionally walked.
The father was in a suite at Arrowhead Stadium for the AFC Championship game against the Bengals when the hobbled Chiefs quarterback ignored his high ankle sprain and raced out of bounds for five yards and a first down, before Joseph Ossai drew the 15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty that positioned the game-winning FG.
“His pain tolerance is a little bit higher than what mine was, that’s for sure,” Pat Mahomes said. “We’re just intense, man, once you get into the game you want to do anything you can to try to win that game no matter what it takes.”
The father shed tears when Patrick won Super Bowl LIV over the 49ers and comforted him when he lost Super Bowl LV to Tom Brady and the Bucs.
“Tom is very very special and he’s done things that I think other people will not get a chance to do,” Pat Mahomes said. “I don’t think there’s anybody that’ll play in 10 Super Bowls and probably anybody that’ll win seven … Patrick, if he stays on pace, God willing, he don’t have any major injuries, he’s gonna put up some crazy numbers.”
Little Patrick, 27 now, will be relishing the Super Bowl stage against the Eagles. “That comes from being in the clubhouse, being at the World Series with me, seeing 60,000 people in the stands, and want to perform in front of people,” Pat Mahomes said. “I don’t think the stage really gets too big for him.”
Never has. Probably never will.
