Alex Kirilloff signed a baseball for his parents’ wedding anniversary Oct. 20, 2009.

That day, he spent a long batting practice with his father, Dave, at Memorial Park in New Kensington taking aim at the fence, which sat about 300 feet away from home plate. Kirilloff’s fly balls consistently landed at around 275 feet.

Then, Dave Kirilloff said, “The Lord inspired me.”

He showed his 11-year-old son a leg kick, with the idea being to get more of his body into his swing. Within an hour of more hitting, Alex launched a ball 305 feet and over the wall. The ball became his anniversary present.

“He went from 275 feet to 305 in the space of one hour,” Dave Kirilloff said. “It wasn’t because of more pushups or pullups, or strength. We changed his batting model. He’s never looked back after that.”

Alex Kirilloff — who attended tiny Cheswick Christian Academy before becoming a power-hitting outfielder for Plum — still uses a modified version of that leg kick, and he took the next step in his baseball journey last week, when the Minnesota Twins selected him with the 15th pick in the first round of the MLB Draft.

His rise includes plenty of stories like the Memorial Park one.

Kirilloff learned baseball almost as soon as he could walk. At 11 months old, about a month after Alex took his first steps, Dave Kirilloff took out a rubber tee and put a plastic ball on top.

“We said, here, just smack it off this little stand,” Dave Kirilloff said. “And he just started hitting away in our basement at 11 months old.”

Kirilloff hit off a pitching machine for the first time when he was 3 years old, at a Baltimore Orioles Fan Fest event. By the time he was 8, he was playing travel baseball with 12-year olds and more than holding his own.

Baseball always was a part of Kirilloff’s life. Dave Kirilloff, a former amateur baseball player, Pirates scout and Point Park assistant, operated a baseball training facility in Wexford for many years before it moved to Pittsburgh Mills mall in October 2015. His mother, Laura, worked at the facility, so baseball conversations were plentiful.

Alex Kirilloff could hit at his father’s facility whenever he wanted, and he took full advantage. He also would take outdoor batting practice with his father at least a few times a week at Memorial Park or other local spots, like Valley High School.

“I’ve always, from a young age, had confidence and felt the Lord’s leading in my life was for me to play professional baseball and to one day be in the big leagues,” Alex Kirilloff said. “I never doubted myself or thought it was a far-fetched idea or anything. It’s very exciting that something that was a goal and something you set out to do for such a long time may become a reality, but it definitely wasn’t really a shock.”

Kirilloff attended Cheswick Christian through the winter semester of his freshman year before transferring to PA Cyber School, which gave him more of an opportunity to focus on baseball.

But he also shined in basketball at Cheswick Christian, winning a middle school championship in eighth grade and playing up in junior varsity and varsity games against non-PIAA opponents as an eighth-grader.

“He was talented in (academics and athletics), had goals, and put the time in to reach his goals,” said Todd Rosio, Cheswick Christian’s athletic director and boys basketball coach. “He had a very pleasant personality and was naturally able to lead in a way where others naturally followed. He was a straight-A kind of student here.

“One of the first basketball practices he came to with me, we started shooting foul shots. He downed like 15 in a row to start with. It was pretty clear he was not a normal eighth-grade kid. He would have been a really good basketball player, but obviously that was not his main sport.”

Kirilloff became a force in the middle of Plum’s lineup and a top-of-the-rotation starter as a freshman. Through Sunday, he was batting .513 with four homers, four triples, 14 doubles and 27 RBIs this season, and he helped Plum reach the WPIAL and PIAA Class AAAA championship games.

“You hear all the time of a player coming in (that) he’s really good; you want to see it firsthand because sometimes those reports aren’t altogether accurate,” Plum coach Carl Vollmer said. “This one was dead on. He was special from the jump.”

Kirilloff’s first scholarship offer came before his freshman season, when Liberty extended an offer after an August camp. Kirilloff committed later that year, citing the school’s religious background — Kirilloff is a devout Christian — among other reasons.

He stuck with his commitment even after power programs came calling last summer, when Kirilloff won the Perfect Game All-American Classic Home Run Derby at San Diego’s Petco Park.

That performance brought dozens of scouts to Plum games this spring — “This is a totally different animal, totally different, just by sheer numbers,” Vollmer said — and ultimately paved the way for Kirilloff to become the first WPIAL high school player to be taken in the first round since Neil Walker in 2004, and Plum’s first selection since Scott McGough was taken by the Pirates in 2008 and the Dodgers in 2011.

“I’m excited for this next journey and very, very blessed to be a part of the Twins organization,” Kirilloff said.

Bill Beckner Jr. contributed. Doug Gulasy is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at dgulasy@tribweb.com or via Twitter @dgulasy_Trib.

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