The kid from Cleveland Heights is coming home in a big way.
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is joining the Cleveland Guardians ownership group as a minority investor, purchasing a stake in the team he grew up watching and reconnecting with a game that he once believed offered him the clearest path to a professional sports career. The news was reported by Jeff Passan of ESPN on Wednesday morning.
“I have so much love for this city,” Kelce told ESPN. “I say it all the time: I’m just a kid from the Heights living the dream. I credit every good thing in my life to Cleveland and being raised here with the values and the people and the work ethic. Cleveland Heights is such a diverse and dynamic place. Every friend, neighbor, teacher and teammate, they all made me the man I am today. It just fueled such a deep appreciation for life and community and service. That mentality of Cleveland against the world runs deep.”
Before football took over and turned him into one of the greatest tight ends in NFL history, Kelce was a baseball player who scouts noticed. In his senior season in 2008, he hit .588 with six home runs and played the game with the kind of physical gifts that made professional evaluators pay attention. He grew up watching the Cleveland baseball renaissance of the 1990s, the Kenny Lofton and Carlos Baerga and Jim Thome era that filled Jacobs Field and made the city believe in its baseball team in a way that a generation of fans still holds onto.
Kelce was brought into the ownership group by lead minority owner David Blitzer, who also co-owns the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils and whose pathway to majority ownership of the Guardians could be converted as early as after the 2027 season.
The Guardians are currently in first place in the American League Central and hold a nine-game lead over the Royals. The franchise has won back-to-back division titles and is building something that looks increasingly sustainable with each passing month. Travis Kelce looked at all of that and decided he wanted a piece of it.
A kid from the Heights. A minority stake in the Guardians. Cleveland against the world.
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