CHICAGO - A couple years ago, when his brother was in high school and he was a few miles away in Evanston, Mike Kafka began joking around. He hadn’t thrown a baseball in years, but being the older brother, cockiness took over.

So the Northwestern quarterback and former baseball captain at St. Rita in Chicago started warming up with a baseball in an attempt to beat his brother on a speed gun. Never mind his brother, Jason, was one of the best pitchers St. Rita had that year.

Machismo ruled.

“(I) walked out there and said ‘Let me try this thing out,’” Kafka said. “I threw 85 and I was OK. He beat me, though. He threw 92.”

Both Kafka boys had to make a decision between football and baseball coming out of high school. Both chose football - Jason is going to San Jose State - and Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald is glad Mike kept with football, too, especially after his career resembled a merry-go-round with the Northwestern bench.

VIDEO: MIKE KAFKA SPEAKS AT BIG TEN MEDIA DAY

Kafka redshirted his first year. He started as a redshirt freshman, passing for 106 yards and a touchdown and rushing for 89 more against Miami (Ohio). A hamstring injury sidelined him for three games during the season and didn’t regain his starting job until 2008 - when an injury to C.J. Bacher gave Kafka a chance to start again.

The chance became worthwhile. In his first start, against Minnesota, he ran for 217 yards, a school and Big Ten record for a quarterback.

And it all set up this season, where Kafka is once again going into his final year as a starter, just like he did his first one.

“It was great to go on and get some experience and some playing time,” Kafka said. “I was hoping for it, wishing for it, for a long time. So it was good to actually go out there. I would never have it at the expense of C.J. getting injured, but it was good going out there and to show what I can do and what our offense can do.”

Now, Kafka will be looked at as a leader for Northwestern, a team replacing its initial 2008 starting quarterback along with the second-leading rusher in school history (Tyrell Sutton) and third and fourth leading receivers in school history in Ross Lane and Eric Peterman.

And without all of those options, Fitzgerald may look to Kafka to do even more than he did last year, when he was a run-first quarterback. Fitzgerald said he’s going to cater his team’s version of the spread to what Kafka and backup Dan Persa - who has similar qualities to Kafka - can do.

Part of that is to perhaps open up the offense more as Kafka continues becoming more comfortable as the starter.

“His strengths are that he’s got tremendous athleticism,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s got a big-time arm, great accuracy.

“…He throws it better than I think any of us in this room want to give him credit for.”

Kafka doesn’t seem concerned about any of the physical aspects. Instead, he’s paid more attention to the leadership that will need to come from him with the departure of the rest of the offensive skill players.

It’s also the thing that most first-year starters - be it freshmen or fifth-year seniors - need to build the most.

“That’s one of the biggest things I’ve grown and learned,” Kafka said. “To get to know everyone on the entire team.

“Because that’s who is behind you, the guys you are counting on. The more I get around those guys, the better off we’ll be as a team.”

There’s one more thing all this has done, too. There were times - perhaps around the time Kafka picked up a baseball again for the first time in a long time - when he wondered what life would have been like if he had gone in the baseball direction instead of the football one.

It’s not something he dwells on, but the thoughts, at one time, were there.

“I know I had some good abilities in baseball,” Kafka said. “It would have been cool to see what happened.

“But, I’m excited where I’m at right now.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for annarbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558 or by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com.