It’s easy to get lost in anecdotes of past historical political figures, athletes, philosophers and scientists. After years of retelling and analyzing, the original tales are so disfigured that they almost become “big fish” stories where some, who say they were there originally, can only admit that they heard it through a friend of a friend.

This is why the legend of David Kinney needs to be put into print now, lest the legend be lost. Kinney, the Clarkson University Baseball team’s All-American third baseman, 2011 Liberty League Player of the Year and two-time Clarkson Male Athlete of the Year, has had teammates shaking their heads in disbelief almost once per day since arriving in Potsdam four years ago.

It started innocently enough back in 2009 as Kinney was given his first career at bat against national power Cortland State in the Knights’ second doubleheader of the year. With Clarkson trailing 8-3 against the Red Dragons, Kinney had been a late-inning defensive replacement and was getting his chance to swing against Cortland ace Matt Tone, who turned out to be a 14th-round pick of the Minnesota Twins less than three months later. Kinney laced a hit up the middle, a groundball to the glove side of Cortland’s shortstop. In and of itself, nothing is particularly out of the ordinary at this point; a college freshman getting his first collegiate hit. What happened next, however, was a bit odd: Either the ball decided to avoid the laws of physics and neglect the concept of friction, or it was hit so hard that its momentum allowed it to roll all the way to the wall. Kinney safely arrived at third for his first career hit, a triple on a groundball that was nearly scooped by the shortstop.

Of course, the ball could have torn through the shortstop’s glove had he been able to get leather on it, as it happened just this last season in a game against St. Lawrence. With a runner on first, Kinney crushed a liner to third base that appeared to be caught and the runner nearly caught off base. However, the ball was “dropped” as Kinney reached on an error. Initially. It wasn’t until closer examination that the baseball actually went through the glove of the Saints’ third sacker. The opposing player went to the dugout and got another glove, shaking his head and looking into the pocket of the new mitt, hoping that the sturdier leather would provide more cushion the next time around.

These Bunyanesque stories of might would have some expecting Kinney to be wielding a blue bat nicknamed “Babe.” Actually, Kinney named his war club/bat Mjolnir, better known as the hammer of Thor, the Norse god associated with thunder. This year’s nickname for his bat? He’s leaning towards Dankoly, which those with an internet search engine at their disposal can find is normally a voodoo shrine for those seeking revenge. In the case of Kinney, that revenge is pointed directly at those that previously got him out.

Kinney is only happy when he gets to swing, not taking walks.

“You know he’s had like five names for his bats, right?” said former catcher and now volunteer assistant coach Sam Grainger. “(At the first practice) I told him, ‘you better be a hell of a player, because you are one weird dude.”

And while on the topic of Paul Bunyan and “weird dudes”, Kinney recently went six months without shaving his beard, making it one part Brian Wilson (closer of the San Francisco Giants), one part Yukon Cornelius (prospector from “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), and one part ZZ Top.

And this is where readers would begin to think that Kinney is an arrogant, cocky ballplayer that opponents would absolutely detest. During the Liberty League and NCAA Tournament, he adopted a routine where he volunteered getting punched in the stomach and hit in the back with his bat before it was thrown to him in the on-deck circle. Add in the fact that he smiles at hitters while pitching and sticks his tongue out at the pitchers like a thirsty dog while at the plate and any outsider would agree that the boy ain’t right. In reality, Kinney is having so much fun playing the game he can’t help but act like a goofball. During practice he often jumps over the fences that encircle Jack Phillips Stadium; walking through the gymnasium after a workout in the weight room, he inexplicably picks up random basketballs to practice his dunking technique; he sprints on and off the field during batting practice. Why waste time when you get to play?

As a reliever he glares in at hitters with purpose and anger, wanting to strike everyone out and getting irritated when they make any kind of contact. With two strikes on a hitter, he can’t help but break into a smile, expecting to get out of another bases-loaded jam handed to him as the team’s top reliever. More impressively, he almost always does, as hitters went just 2-for-15 against Kinney with runners on base in 2011.

The word of Kinney’s prodigious strength has easily spread amongst others in the Liberty League as well. It helps when the defending conference player of the year shows up to the post-season tournament and hits rockets all over the yard. Most impressive, however, was his three-run homer that capped a blowout victory over Rensselaer that led the Knights to the NCAA Tournament. With two on and two out in the fourth inning, Kinney hit a moon shot over the left-center field fence. Three innings later, players from St. Lawrence had come in from the outfield to prepare for their rematch with Rensselaer in the losers’ bracket of the Liberty League Tournament. One player was telling some St. Lawrence parents/backers of the home run that Kinney had hit a few innings earlier, claiming that the ball had cleared the fence by at least 50 feet between the left-center and centerfield distance markers with estimations that the ball had travelled a minimum of 450 feet. From the other vantage point of the field, for those behind the backstop, the ball got smaller faster than any other they had ever seen hit.

Three years from now, that ball may have travelled 500 feet. Ten years from now, perhaps 525 feet against a stiff wind. And perhaps 20 years from now the ball will not have landed, still gusting around the stratosphere in an orbit with the planet.

Such is the Knights’ legend of David Kinney. There will never be another at Clarkson University. And if there was, no one would believe you anyway.