Joe Kelly is a 25-year-old pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, still practically a rookie having not yet completed one full season with the club. He will step to the mound in Busch Stadium in St. Louis to face the Boston Red Sox Saturday night in what will be the most important game of his life. His prep until that moment won’t be watching game tape or seeking advice from other players, it will be playing Call Of Duty for an extended period of time.
“I’m more of a first-person shooter guy,” Kelly said Friday afternoon, after the Cardinals’ workout.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t really like to lock in and focus on my start until the day of,” Kelly said. “Like the night before, I usually stay up playing video games all night, competitive gaming, more ‘Call of Duty.’ But like you said, you don’t want to put too much emphasis and just mentally drain yourself of thinking, man, this is a huge start, and you have to go out there and perform.”
“[It] just relaxes me,” Kelly said. “It helps me not to think about anything else except for going out and competing. And I like to play competitive gaming, so actual matches and play with other professional players that I’ve met off Twitter and stuff like it that.
“It’s dating back to all the way since the original ‘Halo’ … It’s another way that I can get out there and just relax and compete at a different level. It’s just something that I’ve been doing for a while and it’s fun for me.”
Whatever you have to do to relax. Don’t forget the Red Sox won with beer and chicken in the clubhouse and those ‘idiots’ took the title from St. Louis in 2004. However the method, MLB players have always stressed the importance of staying loose.
Not watching the World Series but still a baseball fan? Either way, look up Joe online if you’re a C.O.D. gamer; he’s currently challenging fans.
Josh Helmuth is the editor of CraveOnline Sports. You can follow him @JHelmuth or “like” CraveOnline Sports on Facebook.
Photo Credit: Getty
