Jason Kander, BJ Kissel are part of a new adult baseball team starting up in KC
Jason Kander freely admits he is preparing for another run.
But Kander, the former Missouri Secretary of State, has no aspirations for another elected office. Instead, he’s preparing to race around the bases for a newly formed baseball team, the Kansas City Hustlers of the National Men’s Adult Baseball League.
The league is comprised of players who are 18 or older, and the ages of the Hustlers’ players ranges greatly. Games begin in May.
B.J. Kissel, the former Kansas City Chiefs team reporter who founded the KC Sports Network, will return to the game after last playing for Kansas State, and Central Missouri before that.
“There’s no doubt I missed it. I figured throwing BP to my kids was all the pitching I had left,” Kissel said in a news release
Lee Urban, a former Rockhurst player and current member of the Commerce Bank legal department, will be on the team. Some other teammates also played in college but are now teachers, construction workers, retail managers, IT professionals, firefighters, small business owners and accountants.
Kander, 40, returned to baseball last year not realizing just how much he’d missed the sport.
“Sometimes I’m standing out there in center field, and maybe it’s a long inning and it’s not going that well, and I’ll be all bummed,” he said. “And then I look down and I actually have the thought, ‘I’m 40 years old and I’m wearing baseball pants.’
“And I’m just like, ‘This is amazing.’ There’s just nothing like the sound of the wood bat and literally the smell of the grass and the sound of your metal spikes. You can very easily feel 17 again for a split-second.”
Of course, that feeling can fade when the final out is recorded and players are left to deal with the sprains and bruises that come with playing the game and, well, age.
No time to run
Kander said the Hustlers’ games will be played at the Mid-America Sports Complex in Shawnee, the Kansas City 3&2, Jackson Park and KCK Community College. The team has a 55-game schedule, usually playing three games a week, and won’t be charging admission.
“Everybody always asked me, ‘Are you gonna run for office again?‘ ... And I’m always wanting to be like, ‘Hey man, I joined a baseball team. It’s a serious commitment,’” Kander said.
He added with a chuckle: “But nobody wants to hear that.”
But baseball will be a large part of his focus even when he’s away from the ballpark. The Hustlers have hopes of playing in the adult baseball world series in October.
“When I’m in the gym now, it’s not just getting stronger,” Kander said. “I’m just thinking about what do I have to work on to make sure that by that third game every week I can still steal second without pulling something.”
This story was originally published March 2, 2022 at 8:00 AM.
