Kaepernick Had Baseball Skills, Turned Down Cubs’ Offer To Play In Majors

Colin Kaepernick had serious baseball skills, and had the 49ers quarterback taken an offer from the Chicago Cubs he could have ended up on a major league pitcher’s mound rather than in the Super Bowl.

When Chicago Cubs scout Sam Hughes saw Kaepernick play in college for Nevada, he thought the quarterback’s skills would transfer well to baseball. Kaepernick had a tremendous arm and great poise, and a history as a star on the mound.

In fact, Colin Kaepernick was a baseball phenom at one point, The SportsXchange noted. While he was a senior in Turlock, California, Kapernick got the attention of many scouts with a fastball that reached the 90s and a pair of no-hitters that year.

So the Cubs took a chance on him, drafting Colin Kaepernick in the 43rd round of the baseball draft almost four years ago, The Associated Press noted.

Colin Kaepernick decided not to play baseball, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on the Cubs’ part. From The Associated Press:

“Hughes, the longtime national cross-checker in the Cubs’ scouting department, and several others, including then-general manager Jim Hendry, figured they should give it a shot and hope Kaepernick might reconsider.

“Hughes tried for two weeks to convince Kaepernick, who had made it all but clear he would not sign. He was surprised anybody drafted him at all given he had been so upfront about sticking with football.”

It didn’t help that the Cubs were working off some skewed projections of Kaepernick. They spoke to a few different NFL teams, all of which thought he would be a late-round pick or maybe a Canadian Football League player. Instead Kaepernick went in the second round of the NFL draft in 2011, and midway through this year won the starting job away from Alex Smith in San Francisco.

With the 49ers now favorites to win Super Bowl XLVII, one thing is clear — it’s good that Colin Kaepernick didn’t pick baseball.