Royals broadcaster Steve Physioc has written two novels in between time in the booth

Steve Physioc is the quintessential utility player, a man who dons many hats.

He is best known for a 40-year broadcasting career, the last nine years spent as a Royals’ play-by-play man for Fox Sports Kansas City and the Royals Radio Network, but he is also an environmentalist, a yogi, a devoted husband, father and grandfather. More recently, he added another title: award-winning historical fiction author.

Despite the demands of a 162-game season, he still finds time to pursue his newfound love.

“It’s funny,” he said, “because the guys will make fun of me. I’ll be on the bus and I’ll be writing, I’ll be on the airplane and I’ll be writing.”

Physioc, 65, has managed to weave authoring two novels into his broadcasting schedule. He published “The Walls of Lucca” in 2018, a novel set in the Italian town of Lucca following World War I. The story uses fictional characters and focuses on a critical time in Italian history, during the war and rise of fascism.

It won the 2018 Reader Views Literary Award for Best Historical Fiction. Physioc followed it up with “Above the Walls” in 2019, an award-winning sequel where the “drum beats again for World War II,” he said.

The idea to write novels was born overnight — literally. Vacationing in 2006 with his wife, Stace, in Italy, Physioc had a vivid dream of a “great-walled city.” The image was captivating, strong enough to pull him out of bed to draft a rough outline.

“I told (Stace) about the dream and she said, ‘Wow, that sounds really cool,’” he said. “We go to Florence, Venice, hike the Cinque Terre, then we’re meeting four other couples in the town of Lucca a week later. As we’re driving in, I go, ‘Oh, my gosh, Stace. This is it. This is the walls I saw in the dream.’”

Physioc was hooked. He had stumbled upon the town that appeared to him in his dreams. Lucca, a city of nearly 90,000 people in Italy’s Tuscany region, is defined by its Renaissance-era walls and cobblestone streets.

It was a fateful sign that he needed to put pen to paper.

It’s also a snapshot of how Physioc operates. Ever the workhorse, he is on a seemingly never-ending quest to tackle something new and do what makes him happy.

“I always start my day with a cup of coffee, meditation, prayer time, then I work out,” he said. “Then, for two hours, I have to write. I have to crank it out and then as soon as I’m done with the writing, I turn on my baseball cap, turn on my baseball mind and go from there.”

Physioc has had a baseball mind for as long as he can remember. It stretches back to his childhood in Kansas City, where he was, of course, a Royals fan.

“When the announcement came that Kansas City was going to get Major League Baseball and the Royals came in, The Kansas City Times had a little bio on every single player that (the Royals) had drafted in the expansion draft,” Physioc said. “I cut out every single one of them and put it in a scrapbook.”

Physioc has been broadcasting games since 1979. He’s been calling major league games since 1983. Asked what his 10-year-old self might say if he knew he’d be in the booth for his favorite team, Physioc said, “Impossible. It couldn’t happen. There’s no way.”

There’s still that pinch-me-I’m-dreaming aspect to his job, even now in 2020. And it was especially so during the Royals’ magical run in 1985, when they won their first World Series title. Physioc got to broadcast a handful of games for the Royals that summer.

“George Brett, who was my hero, hit a three-run home run to give the Royals the lead late in one contest,” Physioc said. “I remember when he was rounding the bases, I was saying, ‘Isn’t this awesome?’ Here I am, a guy who grew up in Kansas City, loved the Royals, loved George Brett, and I get to call one of his shots that, later obviously, helped lead the Royals to the (AL West) championship and eventually, (the) World Series.”

Impossible.

It couldn’t happen.

There’s no way.

He smiles at it now.

“There are times during the season, where I’ll be sitting in the booth broadcasting the game and I’ll look down and see a father and son and going, ‘That was me. That was me watching Paul Schaal, then later George Brett, Dennis Leonard and all the stars that I really loved growing up,’” he said.

“I was that kid in the stands just loving baseball.”

Ryan Lefebvre, the team’s play-by-play broadcaster on Fox Sports Kansas City, said Physioc’s consistency is what makes him such a joy to be around.

“Phys is just about as steady as you can be. He shows up every day with a good attitude, shows up every day prepared, shows up every day wanting to learn something new,” he said. “He’s a breath of fresh air to be around because he’s just so positive. Those are the kind of people we need during the grind of the baseball season.”

Lefebvre said Physioc is the consummate professional, a broadcaster whose impact on him precedes the pair’s work together.

“When I got to know him when he was broadcasting the Angels and I was broadcasting the Twins and eventually coming to the Royals, I would pick his brain and I would ask him a lot of questions about stuff,” Lefebvre said.

“He was one of the established major league announcers that really had an impact on the way that I did the game and communicated with my analyst and my producer.”

Physioc is a time management guru, something he takes great pride in. He sets aside time to write his novels, time to call Royals games, time to spend with his wife and family. Everything in life is about time management, he’ll tell you.

He and Stace are involved in the Kansas City community, with several different organizations, including the Sierra Club, an environmental organization, Operation Smile, which works with children with cleft palate, like his granddaughter, and several Royals charities.

Physioc likens himself to former Royal Chris Young, the 6-foot-10, right-handed pitcher who did it all for Kansas City when it won the World Series in 2015. Young started games, came out of the bullpen, pitched long relief.

Physioc has adopted a similar approach.

“Ryan Lefebvre is an awesome broadcaster, and he is our anchor,” he said. “Denny Matthews is the Hall of Fame broadcaster. I can fit in wherever they need. If they need me to do television, I’ll do TV. If they want me to do radio, I’ll do radio. That’s what I really, really enjoy, in this time in my career.”

How much longer he’ll broadcast games remains a gray area. He has three granddaughters in Michigan who are begging him and his wife to move closer to them. Family is important to him, as is baseball and novel-writing and yoga and the environment.

In typical utility-man fashion, Physioc will continue to juggle it all, making sure there’s enough time allotted for each of his passions.

Impossible.

It couldn’t happen.

There’s no way.

Except, it did.

“Being able to come home,” he said, “to finish my career to broadcast the team I love growing up has been incredible.”

Maybe he’ll write a book about it.