Growing up in Colorado, Kaleb Geiger had his sights set on a very different sporting destination. Baseball was his first love, and his dream was to play for his hometown team, the Colorado Rockies, in Major League Baseball.

Today, with 74 Major League Rugby appearances and a USA Eagles jersey to his name, Geiger has found himself on a sporting path that could hardly be more different. He has traded his childhood dream of playing in Major League Baseball for a new ambition: representing the United States at the 2027 Rugby World Cup.

“I definitely put the most energy into baseball,” Geiger recalls of his high school years. “I wanted to play baseball the most in college. I really wanted to be successful.”

Geiger attended Concordia University in Nebraska, where he committed to the baseball team as a first baseman and occasional third baseman. His year-round sporting calendar also included football and wrestling, two sports in which he flourished.

“I’d started to grow physically, and I was really coming along in those sports, but I was really set on playing baseball,” he explains. “I just loved it and could play all day!”

But baseball, a sport in which failure is an unavoidable part of the game, taught Geiger some difficult lessons.

“As a hitter, you’ve just got to be successful three out of ten times, and you’re world-class,” he says.

“I trained really, really hard to be good at baseball. You always think something’s owed at the end, and boy, I was wrong. There’s nothing in life that’s owed.

“Physically, I definitely had the skill set. I think mentally, I just couldn’t go to the next level at that time. I accepted my fate and don’t feel like ‘what if’, as I was blessed for my sporting journey to take another path.”

With no professional baseball opportunity emerging, the dream of becoming a Colorado Rockies player began to fade. Geiger was ready for the next chapter, which initially involved football, where he played as a defensive lineman, drawing on the toughness and competitive instincts he had developed through wrestling.

Rugby, however, was not yet on his radar. In fact, Geiger’s route into professional rugby was anything but conventional.

After college, he had planned to join the Army. When that did not work out, an unexpected encounter in a bar in his hometown of Sedalia, Colorado, changed the direction of his life.

In January 2021, he was approached about trying out for the American Raptors, a Colorado-based programme that brings athletes from other sporting backgrounds into rugby.

“As ridiculous as it sounds, I got found in a bar to go crossover and be a rugby player,” Geiger says.

“To be honest, I wasn’t really listening to the guy, but fortunately, my brother, who was with me, was listening and got hold of the guy’s email.

“Long story short, I got in contact a week later, and I’ve been playing rugby ever since.”

Much like the story of former NFL linebacker and fellow USA Eagle and MLR star Cassh Maluia, the opportunity to join the Raptors arrived at a pivotal moment. Having spent years developing his athleticism through baseball, football and wrestling, Geiger discovered a sport that brought those experiences together.

“I felt very, very comfortable in it,” he says.

“The contact side of things, I understood I can’t hit people with my face anymore. I can just do wrestling. I realised I could use wrestling here instead of using my face to get guys to the ground.”

Wrestling had taught him how to embrace uncomfortable situations and keep fighting when his body was exhausted. That experience became invaluable as he transitioned into rugby.

“Wrestlers are the toughest athletes out there in terms of going to a dark place,” Geiger says.

“It really helped transitioning into rugby, where I find myself in a dark place more often than not, fitness-wise. But that grit and ‘get through it’ attitude hugely helped me.”

Geiger progressed quickly with the Raptors before making the jump to Major League Rugby, signing with the New York Ironworkers in 2022.

As a front-rower, he is happy playing either hooker or prop. While he credits wrestling with helping develop his rugby contact skills, it is baseball, the sport he once believed would define his career, that he considers the source of one of his most important rugby attributes.

Geiger believes the hand-eye coordination he developed on the baseball diamond has proved particularly valuable on the rugby field.

“Hitting a baseball is one of the physically hardest things to do in all of sports,” he says.

“There’s a whole lot of hand-eye coordination when it comes to just catching and throwing.

“In rugby, you’re never throwing the ball standing still. You’re always moving while you’re throwing the ball.

“I saw some brilliant athletes come from football at the Raptors, but they were defensive ends who had never caught a ball at high speed. For me, I felt at ease when the ball was coming to me and felt comfortable moving and passing.”

It is a connection Geiger believes could open the door for other American athletes who have spent their lives playing baseball.

When asked whether baseball players could become successful rugby players, his answer is emphatic.

“One hundred percent. My goodness.”

He points to former Colorado Rockies star Matt Holliday as an example of the kind of powerful athlete who could potentially thrive in rugby, particularly given the rotational power and strength generated through the legs and torso in baseball.

For Geiger, the physical attributes are already there. The key is developing the conditioning, technical skills and mindset required to succeed in a contact sport.

“They’re high-level athletes,” he says. “If we worked with them to condition them into contact and they went into it with the right mindset and right approach, absolutely they could be incredible rugby players.”

Since making the transition, Geiger has established himself on the rugby field. After his spells with the Raptors and the Ironworkers, he joined the New England Free Jacks in 2024, signing for the most successful franchise in MLR history.

Major League Rugby provided the platform for Geiger to pursue his professional rugby career, but the league has come to mean much more to him than simply finding another sport to play.

“I think that the good Lord shut some doors on me and he opened a couple, very important ones for me,” he says.

“It’s opened up a door for me and, most importantly, also for my family to experience a lot of really cool things and meet some incredible humans.”

Geiger is a three-time MLR champion. He won his first title with the Ironworkers in 2022 before claiming back-to-back championships with the Free Jacks in 2024 and 2025.

His performances and continued development also earned him a place in the USA Eagles squad in 2023, when he won his first international cap against Portugal.

More recently, he was part of the Eagles squad that travelled to Japan for the Pacific Nations Cup, followed by a further two weeks of training and matches against some of the top sides in Japan Rugby League One.

With ten caps to his name, Geiger is now preparing for the Eagles’ upcoming matches against Australia XV on home soil this month, in Nashville on Saturday, October 24, and New Jersey on October 30.

For a player who once hoped to make it in baseball, representing his country in another sport is a remarkable turn of events.

While the dream of playing for the Colorado Rockies may belong to another chapter of his life, his immediate ambition is clear: earn his place in the USA squad for the 2027 Rugby World Cup.

But Geiger’s vision extends beyond a single tournament.

“A goal of mine is to make the World Cup squad, but furthermore, I want to see the Eagles achieve big things in years to come,” he says.

“The games this month and next year’s World Cup are chances for us to inspire our nation and help grow American rugby. Although we need to focus on the here and now, it’s also important to remember that the ultimate vision is building something that can last for generations.

“It’s an honour and privilege anytime you get to put on an Eagles jersey. It means something different to each and every American that puts on the jersey, which is what’s special about being an American.”

When asked to compare his childhood ambition of playing for the Colorado Rockies with the possibility of representing the United States at a Rugby World Cup, Geiger embraces his roots.

“Colorado’s just one of the fifty greatest states on the planet,” he says.

“So if I get to represent the whole of America, amen. That’s the way to go.”

As baseball fans dream of World Series glory, Geiger is chasing a different kind of sporting achievement. The Rockies may never have called, but a chance encounter in a Colorado bar set him on a journey from the baseball diamond to Major League Rugby and, ultimately, the international stage.

His story is a reminder that American rugby’s next generation of talent may come from unexpected places. The athleticism, hand-eye coordination and competitive instincts developed on a baseball field can provide a valuable foundation for the rugby pitch.

Geiger’s journey is proof of what can happen when an unexpected opportunity meets the right athlete at the right time. Having traded one childhood sporting dream for another, he now has his sights set on representing the USA at the 2027 Rugby World Cup.

The destination may have changed, but the ambition remains the same: to compete at the highest level and represent his country on the biggest stage of all.