Royals’ Mike Moustakas had many career highlights. One epitomizes era of champions
Of all the enchanting aspects of the 2014 and 2015 Royals, the most rare and captivating part of it all was this: how enmeshed they were with the long-suffering fans who had basked in watching that vibrant group rise up before their eyes.
As it all unfurled, it came to feel like players supported fans as much as the other way around, didn’t it? The engagement and accessibility and near-innocence of the vibe felt like something from a bygone era.
Those Royals didn’t merely appear in a stadium near you; they might be about anywhere with you.
In the height of the 2014 postseason, for instance, outfielder Lorenzo Cain repeatedly popped into Town Topic for a burger. First baseman/DH Billy Butler would announce on social media that he was going to @eggtckc for breakfast.
Pitcher Brandon Finnegan gave a fan tickets to the American League Championship Series because, well, he asked on Twitter.
Heck, star first baseman Eric Hosmer put up a veritable social media Bat-signal to invite fans to join players at McFadden’s after the Division Series sweep of the Angels: “KC you guys showed us so much love all year were returning the favor for you guys tonight at @McFaddensKC #allonebigfamily see.u all there.”
Hosmer and teammates underscored the invite by paying for the $15,000 bar tab.
Far-flung as the feeling was, that symbiotic relationship was distilled into one shimmering, indelible instant on the field.
A snapshot that both defined that chemistry and is at the very heart of the legacy of third baseman Mike Moustakas — who was honored Saturday at Kauffman Stadium to retire a Royal with a celebration spotlighting that eternal moment.
Moustakas’ career with the Royals had too many highlights to list, including hitting a club-record five postseason home runs in 2014 and driving in eight postseason runs in 2015 as the Royals won their first World Series since 1985. In 2017, he broke the decades-old franchise season-single home record.
For a guy who lived on the motto of being a great teammate, winning that World Series will always be Memory No. 1. But what might be considered 1-A epitomized so much about the team and the first draft pick of the Dayton Moore era — a player who led with his heart through all the ecstasies and agonies of his career.
Never was that mindset and the kinetic kinship with fans on greater display than in Game 3 of the 2014 American League Championship Series against Baltimore.
That’s when Moustakas with the most reckless of abandon went soaring after a foul ball into the right field dugout suites with the game tied 1-1 in the sixth inning.
Rewatch the play, and it sure looks like after he went over the rail he was on trajectory to go head-first into the concrete.
Only to be propped up and, in fact, saved from whatever fate awaited him by an intrepid group of Royals fans willing to absorb the brunt of the fall for the 230-pound third baseman.
“It’s just kind of how this city was with us,” Moustakas said Thursday in a phone interview with The Star. “Every pitch, every moment, they were in it with us.”
Good thing … in more ways than one.
Looking back now, the father of four thinks about how steep the plummet into the dugout was.
“Deep down there, man,” he said, laughing. “And I didn’t get close to that ground. They held me up. And, you know, I’m a pretty big dude and they pushed me back over that fence like it was nothing.
“So, like the adrenaline that they had, and the care and caring that they had … it was just an incredible experience.”
One further memorialized into Royals lore on Saturday, when they presented Moustakas with a portrait of the play and a sculpture of his No. 8 entwined with netting from the dugout suite.
It was a perfect touch when it came to the guy who stayed grounded and relatable despite being drafted No. 2 overall in 2007.
“Just because we get to play baseball every day,” he told me in 2014, “doesn’t mean we’re any different from anybody else.”
So he was easy to root for from the get-go in 2011 when he got the call up from Triple-A Omaha and proceeded to cry.
And easy to back when his 2014 struggles relegated him to Triple-A Omaha and he embraced it.
“When you get sent down, you get three days to report: I drove out that same night and was in the lineup the next day,” he said, later adding, “It was definitely a springboard into the rest of my career, because I was able to start playing a lot more free (after that).”
You reveled in his intensity, perhaps never more so than in the fiery admonitions to his teammates in the “keep the line moving” comeback in what loomed as a 2015 ALDS elimination game at Houston.
And you couldn’t help but be moved by him in 2015 when his mother, Connie, died, and he kept leaving her tickets for games and started using his bat to scrawl her initials in the dirt when he’d come to the plate.
(Two seats at the ceremony on Saturday were left open in honor of his late mother and father, Mike; guests included Moustakas’ children, wife Stephanie and three sisters. Also on the field were Royals general manager J.J. Picollo, assistant GM Scott Sharp and George Brett, Alex Gordon, Eric Hosmer, Moore, Jason Vargas, Ned Yost.)
With pitchers Chris Young (September) and Edinson Volquez (October) losing parents later that season, there was a certain extra poignancy to that World Series triumph in New York: I’ll never forget being out on the field speaking with Volquez during the postgame celebration when Moustakas brought him the trophy and whispered, “I really love you” in his ear.
“We all know how hard it was, what we went through,” Moustakas said at the following spring training. “But it was so special knowing that Eddie’s dad and C.Y.’s dad and my mom were all sitting there watching the game together, so proud of all three of us.”
A lot like fans felt about those teams … and vice versa.
As he reflected on that time, Moustakas brought up the epic 2014 AL Wild-Card game against Oakland.
Not just because of the amazing comeback and how it became a portal to a whole new world for Royals fans who hadn’t enjoyed a postseason game since 1985.
Instead, he thought of warming up in front of the dugout — as ever, with Hosmer — before the game and a countdown for the TV audience.
He might as well have felt the earth shaking as fans waved towels.
The surge that went through him was hard to describe, but it was the sort of energy he’d maybe never felt before.
“Like, these people are ready to rock,” he said. “Like, they’re with us. Like, let’s go.
“They weren’t going to let us lose. And we weren’t going to lose.”
Along with his love for the organization that raised him, that unique relationship was a major part of why Moustakas wanted to formally end his career here after playing for four other teams since 2018.
“Forever Royal,” he called himself Saturday at what could only be called a homecoming for the California native.
As if Kansas City hadn’t known that all along.
This story was originally published May 31, 2025 at 5:35 PM.