Las Vegas baseball collector acquires very special bat

Mike Kennedy is 37 years old, a collector of baseball things: cards, bats, anything once belonging to Mike Trout of the Angels, because Kennedy is a longtime Halos fan (his parents’ first date was at The Big A) and Trout is his favorite player. A game-used fielder’s glove courtesy of some guy who once was a prospect but now plays in the Korean League.

Recently, Kennedy acquired a couple of bats that formerly had been property of Bishop Gorman grad Joey Gallo, who hit a combined 42 homers at Class-A Myrtle Beach and Double-A Frisco this season, second-most in the minors.

Second only to another Las Vegan, Kris Bryant, who smacked 43 combined in Double-A and Triple-A.

When Kennedy saw one of Bryant’s game-used bats advertised on eBay for $850, he thought it would make a great addition to his growing collection. But $850 is a lot of money for a guy who installs lighting for concerts and other special events (Kennedy recently helped set the mood for Robin Williams’ private funeral service in the Bay Area).

So he reached out to the Chicago Cubs’ superstar-in-the-making to inquire about the bat’s legitimacy.

Bryant signs his name with a flourish that makes the letters like an “X,” Kennedy said. So the signature looked authentic. But because there are scoundrels on the Internet, one can never be too sure. So he posted on Bryant’s Twitter account, never expecting to hear back from the former college baseball player of the year and second overall pick in the 2013 major league draft.

He heard back.

Yes, Bryant said, the bat was authentic; in fact, it sounded like the same one he had given to a kid this season. But $850 for one of his bats? That’s crazy, Bryant tweeted.

And then Kris Bryant did something unexpected, something that makes the young slugger seem almost too good to be true, even should he never hit a solitary home run for the Cubs: He asked for Kennedy’s address, said he would just send him one of his bats.

A few days ago, a package arrived at Mike Kennedy’s place.

Inside the box was a black Chandler baseball bat, Model D24. Maple. Made especially for Kris Bryant or whatever. You could see where the pine tar had been on the handle, up near the trademark. On the barrel: two distinctive blue smudges. In a previous life, these smudges probably were the autographs of the Southern or Pacific Coast League presidents. Either that, or Bryant was swatting blueberries in the on-deck circle.

Running speed, arm strength, hitting for average, hitting for power, fielding. These are the Five Tools of Baseball. Kris Bryant is a six-tool guy. He even paid the postage.

“If he makes it big in the majors, that bat’s worth $5,000,” Kennedy said. “I would never expect a player to give me something like that.”

If I were Kris Bryant, I would shut down my Twitter account. People on the Internet are relentless when it comes to asking for free swag.

“There’s a huge, huge market for this kind of stuff — Mike Schmidt just sold a bunch of his World Series stuff for hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Kennedy said.

After receiving the Model D24 from Bryant, Mike Kennedy paid it forward.

He has a friend in the collecting business, a struggling actor from Chicago and a devout Cubs fan, who is between jobs. Kennedy sent his friend an autographed Kris Bryant baseball card. I found a similar card on the Internet Sunday, one of those Bowman chrome jobs, with an asking price of $1,330.01.

The cool thing — well, one of many cool things — about the bat Bryant sent Kennedy is that it wasn’t broken, not so much as a hairline fracture. One could still use the D24 to take somebody on the Omaha Storm Chasers deep.

“That he gave this to me, that’s it signed to me ... I asked him to put ‘game used’ on there, so I will remember it 30 years from now,” Kennedy said.

When a ballplayer personalizes his autograph, it’s like driving a sports car off the showroom floor. The worth of the bat on the open market depreciates dramatically.

Not to Kennedy. Some guy already has offered $1,200 for Bryant’s bat, even with the personalized signature.

He said collectors can stop reaching out to him. The D24 is not for sale. The story about how he got it is worth much more than $1,200, or whatever somebody might offer once the strapping Las Vegan starts smacking baseballs beyond the Wrigley Field ivy and into the new bleachers, or onto Waveland Avenue.

Mike Kennedy returned Kris Bryant’s bat to its usual resting place. His shoulder.

“I’m never selling this. Never,” he said.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.