Boston Red Sox: David Ortiz is a commercial success

Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz is a natural before the cameras, but before Papi, there was another baseball player who mastered the art of celebrity.

A very lucrative sideline for baseball players is selling their name for endorsements. Drifting back to a bygone era the reward for some banal postgame discussion would be a gift certificate to a local store – usually $50, but in that time frame it was a healthy amount of money. How times have changed.

Celebrity endorsements are nothing new and certainly not with baseball. Since the days when a fan base was created there was always a business willing to be associated with a current or past star. In the days before television and radio an often lucrative sideline would be the stage or vaudeville circuit. Enter King Kelly.

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Kelly was one of the very first up in lights stars of baseball. Kelly was also an individual who clearly understood how to maximize his fame and his talent. A bitter salary dispute with the Cincinnati Reds resulted in Kelly being shipped to the Boston Beaneaters (Braves) for $10,000 in 1887. Kelly then acquired the nickname “The $10,000 beauty.”

Kelly realized the value of personality in that people would pay to see a celebrity and Kelly took to the stage in 1888. Kelly was also both intrigued and fascinated with the stage and that certainly helped. Kelly also – unlike many who followed – put some serious effort into learning this new craft. Kelly succeeded and remained on the stage for years.

Kelly may have been the first player to have an agent via his connection with entertainment. Kelly also wrote a book called “Play Ball” that is generally regarded as the first baseball tome written by a player. Need more? He’s the basis for the famous era song “Slide, Kelly, Slide” and Kelly is also reputed to be the inspiration behind the classic baseball poem “Casey at the Bat.”

In 1894 Kelly contracted pneumonia while living in his adopted hometown of Boston and died. At that junction of his baseball life, he had just completed his first season with the New York Giants and was clearly, at 35-years-old, in the latter stages of what would be a Hall of Fame career.