<table> </table> SURPRISE, Ariz. | It&#8217;s no secret, I guess, that Brian Bannister is my favorite pitcher in the big leagues.</p><p>Some say a sportswriter is not supposed to have a favorite player &#8212; anyway that&#8217;s what my college journalism teacher always taught &#8212; but I don&#8217;t see how you avoid it. I don&#8217;t see how you can watch someone like former Chiefs lineman Will Shields play week after week without gaining a deep admiration for him. I don&#8217;t see how you can watch the brilliance of a young Carlos Beltran without feeling a little bit lucky to do your job.</p><p>And I don&#8217;t see how you can be around Royals starter Brian Bannister without rooting for the guy.</p><p>You know his story. He was an infielder in high school. He was a walk-on in college. He was told by plenty of people that he did not throw hard enough to be an effective big-league pitcher. He surprised everyone by making the New York Mets&#8217; rotation in 2006. Then he got hurt. Then he got traded. Then he shocked even more people in 2007 by winning 12 games for the Royals and finishing third in the Rookie of the Year voting.</p><p>Then, last year, he went through a nightmare season. He lost 16 games. He had a gruesome 5.76 ERA. He gave up 29 home runs. Lefties hit .313 against him. Nothing, it seemed, went right. He lost confidence. Worse, some lost confidence in him. This year, Bannister knows he will need to pitch well in spring training just to make the club.</p><p>&#8220;No, I haven&#8217;t looked back at the video from last year,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I remember every game.&#8221;</p><p>This is not an uncommon story, of course, the story of a young pitcher without a blazing fastball or devastating second pitch struggling to find his way in the big leagues. What makes it uncommon is Banny himself. He has put himself out there. He&#8217;s brutally honest. He&#8217;s a huge fan of the game. And he wants to let people inside, help fans understand what it is to try and get out Manny Ramirez or Jim Thome or Curtis Granderson, show people the new statistics and how small the difference is between a good pitch and a long home run.</p><p>Because of that, last year was especially hard on him. He didn&#8217;t just have a rough year, he had a very public rough year. Everyone knows that Banny goes deep into statistics &#8212; he scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of his SAT and so when he struggled, many said that he was thinking too much. &#8220;I guess he&#8217;s figuring out that statistics don&#8217;t get people out,&#8221; one person wrote to me in an e-mail, and Brian was hearing a lot more of that kind of thing. He was searching all year for something to hold on to, something to feel good about, and because of that his quotes sometimes came across like he was making excuses. Even though he never meant it that way.</p><p>&#8220;I guess I knew that if I ever really struggled, I was opening myself up,&#8221; he says. &#8220;And I really struggled.&#8221;</p><p>He had to get away. Ten days after the season ended, his first child, daughter Brynn, was born. There&#8217;s nothing better for helping you forget your personal worries than having your first baby. I remember the first month after our oldest, Elizabeth, was born, I was so exhausted that when friends called to ask how I was doing, I apparently lost it and just muttered, again and again, &#8220;Oh you know, hungry diaper, sleepy diaper, hungry diaper, sleepy diaper.&#8221; I have no memory of this, of course, but there are witnesses, and anyway the point is that when you&#8217;re going on three or four fitful hours of sleep at night, you can&#8217;t worry much about your opponents&#8217; batting average on balls in play.