Kelly's love of Legos shapes his favorite off-field pastime

PHOENIX -- It's the Christmas mornings that Merrill Kelly remembers most.

As a kid, long before he became a Major League pitcher for the Diamondbacks, Kelly had a set routine on Christmas.

He would wake up -- usually at an incredibly early hour, he recalls -- and wake up his parents. Presents would then be opened, followed by breakfast.

"Then every time, I would go right to whatever Lego set I got and that would be the main portion of the rest of my day," Kelly said.

Kelly has come a long way from those days. He got drafted by the Rays, and after feeling his career was at a dead end in their organization, he went to Korea and spent four seasons pitching in the KBO before returning to Arizona to sign with the Diamondbacks prior to the 2019 season.

It was a homecoming of sorts for Kelly, who spent his high school and college years in Arizona. And while much has changed in his life over the years, one of the constants has been his love of Legos.

"I would say it still brings me the same thing it did as a kid -- I just always enjoy watching all that come together," Kelly said. "It's just kind of like my hobby. Some people do puzzles, some people make art and paint or do arts and crafts stuff. Legos are just kind of my outlet. It's my quiet time. I'll go in my office and build whatever it is I'm building, and I've just always loved the process of it. I just love seeing them from infancy, where it's just a bunch of pieces and bags, to the finished product whatever it is."

Over the years, Kelly has built all kinds of different things with Legos. Asked to name his favorite project, he pondered it for a while before requesting more time to decide. There have been so many and it's hard to keep track.

Kelly's two most recent projects were a Titanic set and the Millennium Falcon -- which is the ship that Han Solo commanded in "Star Wars," in case you're not familiar.

The Titanic was the biggest one he put together. At just over 9,000 pieces, it is 54 inches long, 18 inches high and seven inches wide, requiring a shelf of at least 4 1/2 feet long to display it.

It took Kelly around a year from start to finish to put the Titanic together, because as the father of two small children, he doesn't have the free time he used to. So, he'll grab 10 minutes here or a half hour there to work on whatever his latest project might be.

Sometimes, after a night game and everyone is asleep when he gets home, he'll take some time to unwind and do some building. Other days, he steals time where he can.

The Millennium Falcon is nearly done. He bought it at Legoland during the 2025 All-Star break. Spending the break in the Carlsbad, Calif., area is something the family has done the past few years while visiting friends. When he's done, he plans to display the Millennium Falcon at home with the Titanic -- something he didn't have the luxury to do when he was a baseball nomad.

"I've gotten rid of so many throughout the years," Kelly said. "I started doing it when I was little, little. So, the amount of the things that I built and had to throw away are probably beyond count now, which I'm sure a lot of Lego collectors out there would hear me say that and probably cry.

"But just with how much we moved and how life goes, it just wasn't a priority at the time. A lot of them didn't make it, but now we're at the point where obviously we have we have a permanent residence and a place to put them. So any one any of them that I get now will probably be held onto."

It's still a little too soon for his kids to participate in the hobby with his eldest being just 4, but eventually she and her younger brother might end up following in their dad's footsteps.

"Their attention spans aren't there yet," Kelly said. "But I'm not stopping doing it anytime soon, so hopefully it'll be one of those things that we can share as parent and kid, and maybe try to just hand down the love I have for Legos to them."