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What fueled Kaelen Culpepper's MLB dreams

jake mintz · jordan shusterman

Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman are joined by the Kansas State shortstop to discuss the origins of his big league dreams and when he discovered that he could get paid to play baseball. Subscribe to the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

It sounds like you've had ambitions to become a professional ball player for quite some time.

So when, when did, when did that dream begin?

How far back do we go?

When Ken is like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a professional ball player probably in high school.

Honestly, I was a switch hitter.

Like I only, I wanted to ask about that up until I got like the offer.

Uh so our hit co co way, he recruited me as a switch hitter and I remember like I wanted to be a switch hitter, you know, in the future as a big leaguer, but um I had to give it up because I didn't really have as much power like Jews, I wanna hit home runs and I can really only hit home runs on my right side.

So I just got rid of that stuck to my right side.

And I think it's my junior year where I was like, all right.

Well, I can do this.

Definitely.

So I'll say junior year of high school, it's funny because like, I didn't even know you can make money off like this sport.

And until I got to like high school or I think it was like, eighth grade or something, or ninth grade volunteer.

So, I was like, I was like, I can do this.

But how are we going to live?

And then it all started coming together and they were like, oh, yeah, you get paid and somebody signed like, $100 million contract.

I was like, oh, my God, the thing is right now.

So you have an older brother?

You played college ball, right?

What was it like having someone that you could kind of follow the path where, like, you knew some of the things that you needed to do to be a successful baseball player.

It was awesome.

Honestly, uh because my dad never played baseball ever, he ran track and played football.

So, I mean, my, my brother playing baseball kinda like helped me a little bit because he was like my role model so I can look up to him and be like, well, I, I need to do this if I wanna, you know, get to D one baseball.

So him being able to, you know, play baseball and just be like I said, be a role model, like, really help me and get me going because we've always competed against each other when we worked out together and I always wanted to be better than him.