How a former Coastal Carolina baseball team catcher saved someone’s life last week

Kyle Skeels contributed to a lot of wins as a catcher on Coastal Carolina’s baseball team from 2016-19, but nothing he did on the field compares to what he did last Thursday in his second professional career as a police officer.

Skeels responded to a call to the City of Charleston Police Department from a family member of a man who was threatening to jump off Charleston’s North Bridge.

Skeels said at a news conference that he first attempted to have dialogue with the man, but was warned by him to stay back. Then the man began crawling over the bridge’s railing, and Skeels raced to the man and pulled him to safety.

“It’s just respect their wishes, try to talk to him at first, but as soon as I saw him make an attempt to go over the railing, that’s all thrown out the window and it’s close the distance and try to preserve someone’s life,” Skeels said.

The Pennsylvania native has been with the department nearly two years following a brief minor league baseball career.

“Our main mission here is to preserve life, so it’s meant a great deal to me but again, that’s part of our job, that’s what we do, that’s why I signed up for it,” Skeels said. “We’re here to save people and that’s what we did that day.”

Police said the man was a veteran and was taken to a VA hospital after the incident.

“Another one of our veterans going through a mental crisis like that, I think that’s a big focus we need to address, not only in Charleston but America as a whole,” Skeels said.

Skeels was selected in the 36th round of the 2019 Major League Baseball draft by the St. Louis Cardinals.

In one season in the summer of 2019 with the Cardinals’ Gulf Coast League rookie-league affiliate he batted .250 over 104 plate appearances in 27 games with two home runs, five doubles and nine RBI.

Skeels potential pro baseball career was likely cut short by the coronavirus pandemic and contraction in minor league baseball. The 2020 minor league season was canceled because of the impact of COVID, and MiLB downsized its number of teams and leagues prior to the 2021 season.

At CCU, Skeels had a career .299 batting average with more than 100 hits, 20 home runs, 24 doubles, 97 RBI, 85 runs scored, and 28 hit-by-pitches, and threw out 24 of 77 runners on stolen base attempts. He was named to the 2019 Buster Posey national catcher of the year award watch list and was a 2019 All-Sun Belt Conference Second Team and Sun Belt All-Tournament Team selection.

Skeels was a member CCU’s 2016 NCAA national championship team while redshirting as a freshman.

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