He was an all-around ball player of the first class, a hard hitter and a fine thrower and fielder, and had it not been for his bad habits he might have still been playing ball to-day.

Women and wine brought about his downfall, however, and the last time that I saw him in New York he was broken down, both in heart and pocket, and willing to work at anything that would yield him the bare necessities of life.
Mike Kelly, who afterwards became famous in baseball annals as the $10,000 beauty, came to Chicago from Cincinnati, and soon became a general favorite.

He was a whole-souled, genial fellow, with a host of friends, and but one enemy, that one being himself.
Time and time again I have heard him say that he would never be broke, and he died at just the right time to prevent such a contretemps from occurring.

Money slipped through Mike's fingers as water slips through the meshes of a fisherman's net, and he was as fond of whisky as any representative of the Emerald Isle, but just the same he was a great ball player and one that became greater than he then was before ceasing to wear a Chicago uniform.

He was as good a batter as anybody, and a great thrower, both from the catcher's position and from the field, more men being thrown out by him than by any other man that could be named.
He was a good fielder when not bowled up, but when he was he sometimes failed to judge a fly ball correctly, though he would generally manage to get pretty close in under it.