ALL TY’D UP
Amazin’ Kelly produces video sketches, plays guitar, writes screenplays ... and plays baseball!
Ty Kelly is enjoying another warm winter day in San Diego. He has lived in too many places to count on his hands, and life isn’t always so generous. Sometimes, a move meant a promotion; sometimes, a setback. Other times, it only signified inconvenience. At least he had his guitar, making each temporary residence feel a little more like his own, where Kelly could be Bradley Nowell of Sublime, playing covers of one of his favorite bands. He had been playing since he was a teenager, but it wasn’t until this fall — after having posted videos of himself to YouTube playing other acoustic covers and original songs — that he played in front of a live audience for the first time. Kelly would love to play another show, but isn’t easy finding the time.
He no longer operates his cooking blog, but now Kelly eagerly discusses starting a live podcast. For the past few months, he has spent most days working with writing partner/roommate Matt Paré, creating, and then filming sketches, with comedian Steve Hofstetter.
Kelly needs to get back to his screenplay, too.
Now that baseball season is starting, maybe he will have the time.
“I’ll probably be able to write more during the season, after games or before I go to the field,” said Kelly, the veteran minor leaguer who appeared in 39 games with the Mets last season. “Baseball is such a grind mentally throughout the year. For me, I constantly have to be doing other stuff to take my mind off baseball, whether it’s writing or making videos or playing music, it’s nice to have some kind of balance and not be so caught up in baseball that you have nothing else going on …. [but] there’s a lot of stuff to fit in.
“I’ve talked about it a lot with Matt, that if players have any other interests besides baseball they get labeled as a Renaissance Man, that people are shocked to hear that baseball players should have other interests.”
Mit ost often, interests produce audiences rather than inspiration. But the Mets’ utility man wants to create. He wants to learn. He wants to be as versatile as is he is on the field. In his eight-year journey through the minor league systems of Baltimore, Seattle, St. Louis and Toronto, Kelly played every position but catcher. Finally, after 855 minor league games, Kelly got the call he had waited for his entire life, and was promoted to the majors on May 23, debuting with the Mets the next day.
Some months before then, Kelly met Paré — the “Homeless Minor Leaguer” — through a mutual friend, and began helping with the videos that the latter was making, starring in one sketch as a minor leaguer looking to get adopted, parodying advertisements of animal adoption.
Paré, who has spent the past four years in the minors, developed a routine with Kelly this winter, working out in the mornings, grabbing lunch, then writing or filming or editing.
“It’s been a very creative offseason,” Paré said. “He is so funny, and we’re both not afraid to say something stupid because maybe that takes you down a rabbit hole to something else you can work with. We’re not afraid to have dumb ideas.”
Spend enough time on minor league buses, living on minor league salaries, and it becomes obvious that baseball isn’t forever.
“Having other interests off the field, it probably makes the identity crisis athletes have when they’re done playing — athletes define themselves so much, they put in so much work to learn these skills and eventually the game gets taken away from them whether they like it or not,” Paré said. “It’s such a shock, this lifestyle that they live, the rug gets pulled underneath you and it’s like, well, what do you have now? What do you have to fall back on? For very few, it’s a long major league career. Most guys, that’s not what happens. Alot of issues come out of that and I think it’s really important to have off the field activities and passion for something so that way when you’re done playing it’s a lot easier to transition.”
Kelly already has big plans, writing the screenplay he hopes to see on a big screen someday. He reveals few specifics about the script, other than that it contains elements of comedy and
“I’ve talked about it a lot with Matt [Paré], that if players have any other interests besides baseball they get labeled as a Renaissance Man, that people are shocked to hear that baseball players should have other interests.” — Mets utility player Ty Kelly
drama, part of what Paré believes is a “really interesting concept.”
Of course, Kelly learned soon after he started writing that the real work began after he developed the premise.
“I thought I had a really good idea for a movie and I thought I would be able to write scene for scene what the movie would be, and it’s not gonna work out quite as easily as it did in my head,” Kelly said. “I’ve got the main plot points and everything. I’ve written the first four scenes of dialogue, and now I’m back to plotting it out. I think it’s gonna be funny and it’s sort of a different way to go about what a lot of movies are like. I hope it’s something that’s just written differently and isn’t so predictable. It won’t be where people from the first scene can say, ‘Oh, I know what’s gonna happen.’”
Kelly can’t be sure what will happen this season, now heading to Florida to reclaim the roster spot that looked like it would el ude him forever.
At least now, he doesn’t have to question whether he ever will make the majors. He doesn’t have to wonder if he is too old to draw the eyes of management, ending last season with a pinch-hit single off of Madison Bumgarner in the NL wild-card game. Kelly rejoins the Mets at Port St. Lucie confident, and comfortable, returning to familiar faces after spending the previous four seasons with five different organizations.
But before spring training is over, the 28-year-old utility player will travel to South Korea, where he will join Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic. During this busy offseason, he went to Israel for the first time with his mother — whose side of the family is Jewish — and other members of the team.
Though religion didn’t play a large role in his upbringing, Kelly said he felt a deeper connection with his heritage after the trip, leaving prouder to represent the country he didn’t even know he was eligible to play for when he was asked.
“It’d be hard to go over there and not feel any change,” Kelly said. “You can see how passionate the people are who live there, for their country and their religion and just how they fight to keep everything intact because it’ s such a soughtafter place for many religions. It was good to be able to talk to the people and go everywhere. It was a really enlightening experience, getting a taste of what life is like outside of the bubble we live in now in this country and understand what life is like over there.”
Sometimes, it is hard for Kelly to recognize what his life is like now. So much has changed, so much continues to.
“It’s been an amazing year,” Kelly said. “When my career is over, I’ll be able to look back and think of what an amazing experience it was.”
There still is so much to look forward to. There still is so much to do.