Talking with Jim "Kitty" Kaat a doggone pleasure

When I was a kid, my dad used to buy me baseball cards, and oftentimes I would go out to the steps of our front porch and open those treasured cardboard pictures of my heroes, gobble down the sometimes stale bubblegum and eagerly search for the Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle cards.

Inevitably, I wouldn’t find as many of the aforementioned stars as I would have liked, but I could always count on finding plenty of cards or players like Jesse Gonder, Ed Brinkman, Gates Brown, Gus Gil, Jerry McNertney or Coco Laboy.
And Jim Kaat.

Kaat was a pitcher for the Minnesota Twins in the 1960s and early 1970s. Despite Minnesota being in relative geographic proximity to my home in Illinois, I was pretty ambivalent about the Twins. I grew up smack dab in the middle of Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals country, so I was more familiar with those teams. Even then, I didn’t follow them as closely as my pals because I was, it seemed, the only Pittsburgh Pirates fan in Illinois.

Kaat went on to have a pretty distinguished career. He pitched 25 years in the big leagues — spending 1976-1979 with the Phillies — and is the third longest-tenured pitcher in the history of the game behind Nolan Ryan with 27 years and Tommy John with 26 years.

He amassed 283 career wins as a pitcher and holds the record for pitchers by earning 16 consecutive Gold Glove Awards from 1960-1975. Kaat has long been considered in Hall of Fame discussions, but has yet to receive that call.

His nickname is Jim “Kitty” Kaat, mostly because his last name looks like it could be pronounced “cat.” In fact, it is pronounced “cot” but the nickname stuck nonetheless.

After his playing career, Kaat served many years as a television baseball broadcaster for many stations and his work in the broadcast booth earned him seven Emmy Awards for sports casting.
I got a chance to talk to Mr. Kaat last week. Turns out that growing up in Michigan, he was a big fan of Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. Because of that connection, he has been invited by the Hatboro-based Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society to be its keynote speaker and guest at a society breakfast Oct. 4 at Williamson’s Restaurant in Horsham.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am on the board of directors for the A’s Society and my reason for speaking with Kaat was to write a story for the society’s newsletter. That story will also appear in the Public Spirit, which covers Hatboro and Horsham for Montgomery Newspapers, in an upcoming edition prior to the Oct. 4 event.

Kaat is a gentleman, told some great baseball stories and came across as a genuine fan of the game of baseball. I went home that evening and dug through all my old baseball cards to find Jim Kaat cards, of which I had plenty, just as I remembered.

Sometimes, I can’t believe how lucky I am to do what I do for a living. For a baseball guy like me, talking to a baseball guy like Jim “Kitty” Kaat was just a doggone pleasure.

It took me back to the steps of my front porch some 40 years ago. There I would sit, opening packs of baseball cards that my dad have given me, and pull out a cardboard treasure of Jim Kaat, never dreaming then that the man on the card and I would someday have a chat about a game we both love.