Craig MeyerUSA TODAY NETWORK
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Since his first full season as the starting quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes has transformed into a superstar with few peers across all of American sports.
During that time, the former Texas Tech standout has won two NFL MVP awards, won two Super Bowls — of which he was the MVP of both — and has helped his team secure four AFC championships while making six straight AFC Championship Games.
On Sunday, the Mahomes-led Chiefs will compete in the 2024 Super Bowl against the San Francisco 49ers, with a win giving Mahomes his third championship ring at just 28 years old.
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For all he has accomplished in his still-burgeoning career, though, Mahomes isn’t the first person in his family to reach the highest level of his sport. In fact, he’s not even the first Patrick Mahomes to do it.
At least some of Mahomes’ athletic proclivity came from his father, Pat Mahomes, a former professional baseball player who is regularly spotted at Chiefs games and, sometimes, even gives postgame interviews like he did last season following Kansas City’s win against the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC championship game.
While attention can often shift to the younger Mahomes’ wife Brittany, or his younger brother, Jackson, Mahomes’ father has as interesting of a background as anyone in the family.
Here’s everything you need to know about Pat Mahomes:
Who is Patrick Mahomes’ father?
Pat Mahomes is a former professional baseball pitcher who played 11 seasons in Major League Baseball for six different clubs — the Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox, New York Mets, Texas Rangers, Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates.
Born in Bryan, Texas, Mahomes’ father Johnny worked for an oil company and his mother, Cindy, was a nurse. When he was seven, however, his mother was partly paralyzed in a car accident and could no longer continue her nursing career.
Mahomes has previously cited his mother as his inspiration while his mother believes her condition had a profound impact on her son’s development.
“I never gave up,” Cindy Mahomes said to the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1992. “I think just seeing that, maybe that’s why Pat is such a competitor. My family has had to be strong and we have been.”
That competitive drive allowed Mahomes to excel in virtually every athletic endeavor he tried. He was an all-state honoree in three sports — football (like his son, he was a quarterback), basketball (in which he averaged 30 points per game) and baseball.
Pat Mahomes MLB career
Coming out of Lindale High School in Lindale, Texas, Mahomes had the opportunity to play college baseball, as he was offered a scholarship to Arkansas, which was also giving him a chance to walk on to the school’s men’s basketball program under then-coach Nolan Richardson.
After being selected in the sixth round of the 1988 MLB Amateur Draft by the reigning World Series-champion Twins, however, Mahomes opted to go pro at just 17 years old.
“I wanted to play professional baseball all along and here’s the chance,” he told the Tyler Morning Telegraph in 1988. “I figured it would be best for me instead of waiting about three years after college.”
After several years in the minor leagues, Mahomes made his MLB debut on April 12, 1992 at 21 years old and pitched in 14 games that season, starting 13. He spent three more full seasons with the Twins, highlighted by a 1994 season in which he started 21 games, and went 9-4 with a 4.73 ERA. Near the end of the 1995 season, his first son Patrick was born.
In 1996, Mahomes was traded to the Red Sox, who released him one year later. He went on to play from 1997-98 with Yokohama BayStars in Japan before making it back to the United States with the Mets, who signed him in December 1998. There, he rejuvenated his career, coming out of the bullpen to go 8-0 with a 3.68 ERA for a team that made the playoffs. The following year, the Mets made the World Series, where they lost to the New York Yankees.
"I always felt I could count on Pat," then-Mets manager Bobby Valentine told ESPN in 2019. "He was one pitch short for a starter, but he was the perfect long man and a godsend for us. He could throw every day, he was a great athlete for a pitcher, and a joy to have on the team. His fastball was pretty straight and it got caught a couple of times, but you always wanted someone on the mound who wasn't afraid. And Pat was never afraid in big games."
He would play three more MLB seasons — with the Rangers in 2001, the Cubs in 2002 and the Pirates in 2003 — before spending the rest of his career as a minor-league journeyman until his final professional season in 2009.
His career offered Patrick Mahomes the opportunity to get early and up-close exposure to professional sports. There are widely circulated photos of a five-year-old Mahomes tracking a fly ball with Mets pitcher Mike Hampton before a World Series game in 2000. Before a Mets game against the Yankees, he was able to spend time with Derek Jeter. In his father’s lone season with the Rangers, he was able to play toss with Alex Rodriguez, who had joined the team the same offseason as the elder Mahomes after signing a 10-year, $252 million contract.
“He grew up in the clubhouse, he was always around the game, and he was always the best player on his baseball team,” Pat Mahomes said to the Los Angeles Times in 2023. “He was an unbelievable shortstop, he always led his team in hitting, and he threw 97 mph on the mound, so I always thought he was gonna be a baseball player.”
With his son appearing in the Super Bowl eight days later, the elder Mahomes was arrested last Saturday in Smith County, Texas and charged with "driving while intoxicated third time or more."
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Pat Mahomes career stats
Across his 11-year MLB career, Mahomes went 42-39, with a 5.47 ERA, 452 strikeout and 392 walks.
He appeared in 308 games, 63 of which he started.
