What Bubba Starling learned on the long and winding road to home
On the first day of first grade at Sunflower Elementary School in Gardner back in 1999, teacher Linda Morgovnik extended her customary greeting to new students. As they walked in the door to her classroom, she pleasantly asked each, “What’s your name?”
When Derek Starling entered, he told her his name was Bubba — the nickname affixed by an aunt not long after he came into the world at 10 pounds and, as he tells it now, “started getting chubby fat.” It stuck ever since … with at least one notable exception.
That day, Morgovnik recalled saying, “Mmm, not in my room. What’s your real name?”
“I thought later that probably wasn’t very nice,” she said with a laugh on Wednesday. “But he was good about it.”
During the course of that school year, little Derek let on that he wanted to be a professional athlete, a common fantasy among what she called “these little 4-feet tall” children who also tended to favor futures as police officers or firefighters.
So she offered him a compromise of sorts.
“When you get to be a famous athlete,” she said, “then I’ll call you Bubba.”
Around the time Starling was drafted by the Royals fifth overall in the 2011 Major League Baseball draft, Morgovnik was eating lunch at an in-house retirement party for her when Starling and his mother, Deb, became surprise guests.
For the first time, he was no longer Derek to her.
“Mom, she called me Bubba!” Morgovnik remembered him saying.
Alas, the journey from becoming at the time what Morgovnik called “about the most famous person in Gardner right now” to making his major-league debut with the Royals last July was only beginning.
Along the way, Starling endured feelings of doubt and failure and endless injuries. He navigated many nights of staring at hotel ceilings, wondering if this was meant to be. He thought about what it would have been like playing pro football and dreamed of just getting off the carousel and having fun with friends. He battled what he called “bad anxiety” and more than once thought about quitting.
Along the way, though, he also came to see it as God’s plan and a test. And he came to appreciate the odyssey and what it did for him as a person.
“I don’t take things for granted in life anymore,” Starling said on a January day, sitting in the Royals’ clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium and noting his quest now becomes to stay in the major leagues as spring training begins this week. “It’s more ‘one day at a time’ living. One day at a time. How good can that one day be?
“(And) always just throughout the day (thinking of), ‘How can I pick others up? What can I do for others now?’”
The choice
While that perspective might have become more refined and tangible to Starling now at age 27, it’s also true that the notion of doing for others helps explain how this tangled chapter of his life began.
An amazing athlete who was said to be able to run the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds and could throw a football 50 yards from his knees and swish a three-pointer as majestically as he could unfurl any form of dunk, the 6-foot-5, then-193-pound (now 220) Starling was signed to play quarterback (and baseball) at Nebraska out of Gardner Edgerton High.
Then he got an offer he quite literally couldn’t refuse: Called by his hometown team and ultimately receiving a $7.5 million signing bonus.
Even before his father, Jimbo, lost his job of 18 years a few months earlier, his family was of modest means. But his parents invested so much in his athletic opportunities that he still frets that his sisters, Jamie and Jill, “didn’t get as much as they wanted to growing up because (their parents) were always doing that stuff for me.”
So as much as he loved the idea of being a Cornhusker, as complicated and even wrenching as the decision was for him…
“I love both sports, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “But if you’re an 18-year-old and you get X amount of money thrown towards you, and it’s the team that you’ve watched growing up your whole life … You know, I’m sorry, but you’re stupid if you don’t choose that.”
With that choice, he said: He paid off the mortgage on his parents’ house. He bought cars for everyone in the family. He paid off college for his sisters. Then he paid off the mortgage on his parents’ next house. He bought his mom a new Chevrolet Traverse last Christmas.
“I’m happy when they’re happy, when I see a smile on their face,” said Starling, who makes his off-season home in a “really cozy” barn in Hillsdale, Kansas on one of several farms he owns. “Anyone who knows me knows money is (just) money. It’s not going to make me happy. I mean, yes, I can do cool things with it and do fun stuff. But I like giving to people. That’s what makes me happy as a person.”
The pressure
The flip side of that blessing was the burden of expectations, especially as a native son known to put pressure on himself. And even more so when the parent club was mired in decades of futility and its thriving farm system (in 2011, it was the first in Baseball America’s rankings to have five players listed among its top 20 prospects) had yet to mature.
At a time the Royals were particularly intent on reconnecting with their fan base, no wonder one team official thought of Starling as the most crucial draft selection the franchise would make in years.
His agents, Scott Boras and Bob Brower, tried to brace Starling for that feeling of needing to produce immediately, he said, and urged him to fend off that lurking mental stress.
“But I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got to be in the big leagues in a year,’ instead of just (embracing) the process,” he said.
In fact, by 2014 or so, the Royals thought Starling was ready to be a plus center fielder in the major leagues. But his bat lagged, a reflection of what had become fragile confidence. He hit just .185 in 255 plate appearances at Double-A Northwest Arkansas in 2016.
He had trouble settling even on routines, from his basic pregame preparation to mechanics. And he was in just as much flux emotionally. Going 0 for 3 in any given game almost certainly meant going 0 for 4.
“I was always that confident ‘no one’s going to beat me’ (guy) coming out of high school,” he said. “Obviously it’s a different game here, but I got humbled real quick about the failure part of it. And I guess I wasn’t mature enough at times to know how to get out of that and how to get through those things. … I wasn’t good about opening up to people either; I’ve always been independent.”
All the worse that he kept dwelling on the smoother paths he perceived other top picks to have made, that “boom, they’re in the big leagues” while he felt light years away.
And the steepest challenges were ahead.
The doubt
In early 2017 at Triple-A Omaha, Starling recalled, “I was awful, like baaaad. I was swinging at everything. I was striking out a lot. I was just negative.” Despondent as he sat in a batting cage in Nebraska, he texted his mother that he felt ready to give it all up.
He was “pretty much at rock bottom,” Deb Starling told The Star’s Sam Mellinger later that season.
All along, Starling had been sustained by family, friends, teammates and longtime hitting coach Jeremy Jones (“he’s like my second dad”) and uplifted by Royals’ staff.
But the words that night from his mother, who works for the Gardner Edgerton school district, took particular hold in him.
“She’s like, ‘Stick with it. You know you’re a fighter. You’ve always been a fighter. You’ve always grinded your way through things,’” he recalled. “She’s like, ‘God has a plan for you, and God knows that he’s putting you through this. It’s a test right now, it’s a test for you. And I know he knows that you’re going to come out of this and be a better person … (and) a better player.’”
Something clicked in the weeks to come. One way or another, her thoughts merged into Starling hearing hitting coach Tommy Gregg in a new way.
“We moved my hands down a little bit,” Starling said. “And he’s like, ‘Dude just go out and be an athlete … Have some fun … Who cares what everyone’s thinking?’”
Starling became torrid at the plate over the next few months, enough that he figured he could get the long-awaited September call-up.
But soon he was onto a tear in more ways than one, suffering the first of several oblique muscle tears that prematurely ended his season.
One oblique injury cascaded into the next and the next. He missed most of the 2018 season and, for good measure, stumbled out of bed and dislocated a finger that required surgery.
“It seemed like stuff was just snowballing,” he said. “And I could not get out of the negativity of my life.”
The rebuild
But even when the Royals non-tendered him that November, making him a free agent, hope persisted.
Team officials made it clear they still were interested in him. He was so attached to the organization, and grateful for how it had stayed with him and encouraged him even then, he had no interest in going elsewhere.
Days later, general manager Dayton Moore publicly said the Royals wanted to bring him back on a minor-league deal, adding, “I think if we get one more year with him, I think he’ll make it. That’s what I think.”
By then, Starling had started working with Ryan Maid, the Royals’ director of behavioral sciences.
For perhaps the first time, he had been speaking openly about his anxiety and how he was always worried “about this and that.” Staring at the possible end of the road, now all he could think about was “what do I need to do, what can I do, how do I need to do it … and then execute it? And that’s what we did.”
As ever, family and teammates (particularly Cam Gallagher) and others kept him going. But Maid that offseason was instrumental in “instilling positive things in my head.”
At what might have seemed the darkest time ...
“It’s almost like all the negativity that was going on that had led up to that point, I did a 180 (degree turn), and everything was positive in my life,” Starling said. “Going into spring training in 2019, I couldn’t have felt any better than what I did.”
Asked to elaborate on what he drew from Maid, Starling pointed to simple things to illustrate the complex breakthrough. Like how he breathed.
“Going up to the plate or, or you know, you have fans heckling you,” he said. “I’m a competitive person. I’ve always been competitive. But it was allowing myself to block those little things out. Breathe.
“Or my techniques, (such as) look at the left field foul pole (from the plate) like Evan Longoria does. Playing with my batting gloves. Just little things. Breathing through my stomach, not my shoulders, allowing me to focus and be in the present.”
And not dwell on three bad at-bats, or negative results, to start clean every plate appearance and maybe get that hit the fourth time around to take with him into the next day.
He also found equilibrium by concentrating more directly on teammates.
“When you’re gelling with your teammates, your coach, you’re not only going to win ballgames, but I feel like it’s going to take care of the way you play out on the field,” he said, adding that his bad days no longer automatically meant more ahead. “It was one bad day, right? Then the next day, it’s me versus you out there on the field and that last day is left there.”
The call
Starling hit .310 through 72 games in Omaha last season and was chosen to represent the Pacific Coast League in the Triple-A All-Star Game on July 10 in El Paso, Texas, where he received a three-way phone call from Royals’ assistant general manager J.J. Picollo and scouting director Lonnie Goldberg.
“Hey, Bubba, can you give me some tickets to the game Friday night so I can watch?” he remembered Goldberg saying. “I put two and two together, and I just started bawling.”
His parents were in El Paso for the game, and somehow Starling was able to wait to tell them the long-awaited news at dinner that night.
“Looks like I won’t be flying to Omaha, and I’ll be seeing you guys at home: I finally got the call,” he said. “Their eyes lit up.”
Starling still can’t help but bring up the bittersweetness of his place on the roster being opened up by the release of Terrance Gore, a friend he loves. But as Starling spoke last month about the promotion, he had to pause a second as he choked up.
On July 12, he made his major-league debut at Kauffman Stadium, consumed by nerves and barely able to eat in the intervening 24 hours. Talking with Alex Gordon, whose game he tries to emulate, helped calm him. But Starling figures if they could have measured what he called the RPMs in his heartbeat, well, he was close to having a heart attack.
The young man who treasures his childhood memories of having had his picture taken with Royals’ mascot Sluggerrr (and Chiefs’ mascot KC Wolf) thought about being that boy going to Kauffman, the magic of walking through the entryway and seeing the field for the first time.
“It’s like the best feeling ever when you’re a kid,” he said. “So getting to experience it here, there’s nothing like it.”
The work
Starling got his first major-league hit the next day, which became part of an 11-game hitting streak. He finished the season batting .215 with four home runs and 12 runs batted in … and thus still not apt to take anything for granted this season.
He’s spent the offseason knowing it’s hard to get here but harder to stay.
So he’s worked to put on weight and get his swing and “mental stage” right. He hopes to be able to drive the ball more this year but also be more consistent in the zone and avoid chasing bad pitches. He figures he has to be a good bunter, too, and be the type of player who can move runners over to help the team win.
He has been so intent on bettering himself he even took up yoga … as self-conscious as he felt walking into a studio with his girlfriend and sister, keeping his head down at first. Soon, he could tell how much more flexible he was.
In multiple ways, really.
“I’ve always been like, ‘What will people think about me if I’m in here?’” he said. “But now it’s more or less, I’m just going to go do it, and if it helps me I don’t care what people think about any more.”
Not that he’s not the same guy he’s always been at heart, someone proud to say “I’m just pretty simple. I have a simple family. We’re simple people.”
He still loves hunting with his father, still is proud to call himself a small town kid taught to mind his manners. And he still feels funny about signing autographs for anyone but little kids.
“Hey, I live in Hillsdale. I’m just a normal person,” he said. “Don’t make me up to be like I’m some person that’s just higher than everyone. I don’t like being put like that. I don’t want to be on that pedestal.”
The future
Just the same, something felt a little different this offseason. Where he once felt strange and undeserving when he was asked to attend a few years ago, he looked forward to Royals FanFest. He felt at ease and gratified doing community events for the Royals.
And then there was the way he felt after seeing Morgovnik following one game.
She had followed him all along, as it happens, even saw him play some minor league games when she was visiting family.
Once, in Virginia, he caught a ball in center field and brought it to her at the end of the inning and later signed it and posed for a picture with here — gestures that still move her.
When he got the call up, she was among many from the Gardner area who attended one of his first games but hadn’t had a chance to see him afterward.
On Aug. 31 against Baltimore, though, she was there when Derek Starling hit a home run. Unbeknownst to her, Deb Starling arranged a meeting after the game between the retired teacher (who still substitutes) and her boy.
Sure, Morgovnik actually had called him Bubba back in 2011.
But, somehow, this time it resonated more and felt new to him.
“She called me Bubba for the first time,” he recalled, beaming. “How cool is that?”