Why Drake Maye gave Twins pitcher Bailey Ober a shoutout before Super Bowl

There were many days in Huntersville, N.C., when Bailey Ober attended his younger brother Drew’s youth sporting events, and as one of the older kids, Ober was asked to watch another family’s younger siblings.

Ober’s brother was always on the same teams as a kid named Luke, the eldest of four boys in his family, so their families were close.

The youngest kid in the group Ober watched, seven years younger than Ober, was the one everyone figured would become the best athlete.

And now he will be at the center of the Super Bowl on Sunday: New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye.

“I was kind of in charge of looking after the three younger Maye siblings,” said Ober, 30. “We would play Wiffle ball on the backfields or go run around and just get our hands on whatever we could when we were growing up. I was looking after them when we were watching our brothers play.”

The two families that lived 10 minutes apart from the town of about 60,000 were filled with incredible athletes. Ober has been a mainstay in the Twins rotation for five seasons. Drew, who is a little less than two years younger than Bailey, played college baseball at Charlotte.

Luke Maye was a star basketball player at the University of North Carolina, leading the school to a national championship in 2017 after hitting the game-winning shot to beat Kentucky in the Elite Eight. The two middle brothers Cole (pitcher at the University of Florida) and Beau (played basketball at UNC) were college athletes, too.

“You could tell that Drake was going to be the top athlete out of the bunch,” Ober said. “It’s hard to say that looking back because they were all really good athletes obviously, but just the way Drake moved around, he was 6 years old and he was playing with the 10-year-olds. He was just one of those kids that was way advanced.”

Ober remains close to the Maye family. He’s been in fantasy football leagues with all the brothers except Drake, and he’s still in one league with Beau Maye — and yes, Beau picked his brother early for his fantasy team.

Ober met his agent, Tom Little, through Jerry Maye, the grandfather of the four boys. The Maye grandparents, Ober said, were at virtually all the youth baseball, football and basketball games.

“I got to be around the Maye family a lot growing up,” Ober said. “Just traveling all the weekends whenever we would go watch my brother, the Maye family was always there. They are great people. Like one of the nicest families I’ve ever been around.”

Ober hasn’t seen Drake Maye much since he started pitching for the Twins because the baseball and football off seasons don’t have much overlap, but they’ve exchanged congratulatory texts over the years.

“You didn’t know exactly what he was going to do because at that time, when you’re 6 years old, 8 years old, you can go into anything you put your heart into,” Ober said. “I could’ve seen him being a baseball player, a basketball player. That’s how athletic he was.”

Along with Maye, Ober went to high school with Patriots center Garrett Bradbury, a former Vikings lineman. Bradbury was the baseball team’s catcher during Ober’s senior season, and he attended Ober’s MLB debut in 2021.

Another player on that high school baseball team was recent Twins waiver claim Jackson Kowar, who is Bradbury’s brother-in-law.

“It’s pretty crazy,” Ober said. “It was really fun when Garrett was with the Vikings just meeting up with him and hanging out for a little bit when he was up in Minnesota.”

Ober has, of course, enjoyed following Drake Maye’s career from afar. It can be a little surreal watching the little kid who ran around at their brothers’ youth games transform into one of the NFL’s stars.