Mike Moustakas still gets ‘chills’ from World Series runs. Will he retire a Royal?
Mike Moustakas walked into the Royals clubhouse at 4 p.m. on Friday and made a hard left.
Rather than head toward the stalls where his jersey once hung, Moustakas went to talk with some old friends. He entered a room and there was a huge cheer as he greeted Jeff Davenport, the Royals’ vice president of team operations, equipment manager Pat Gorman and Chuck Hawke, the senior director of clubhouse operations.
“Just all the guys that I know, which aren’t many anymore,” Moustakas said, “but it’s good to see those old familiar faces.”
Moustakas was back at Kauffman Stadium with the Rockies, a team he signed with earlier this year.
There’s only one familiar face in the Royals dugout these days: catcher Salvador Perez. They were teammates on two pennant-winning teams, including the 2015 World Series championship squad.
Most of those players have since retired, although a few like Moustakas and Perez are still active. While they are no longer together, many of those former Royals keep in touch. Moustakas says he talks with Perez once in a while and has a text-message chain that includes Eric Hosmer, Jarrod Dyson, Alex Gordon, Luke Hochevar, Greg Holland and Wade Davis.
“We’ve got a good group chat going. It’s pretty cool. It’s a special group that we had here,” Moustakas said. “And it’s one of those things where obviously we won the World Series, so we would keep in contact through that alone. But just because of how close we became, there’s nothing that will ever stop that.”
Moustakas, 34, said he had tears in his eyes watching Lorenzo Cain’s retirement ceremony with the Royals a month ago.
Could we see a similar scene play out at Kauffman Stadium in the future with Moustakas?
“Now that I’m getting a little older and obviously you don’t get to play baseball for the rest of your life, you start thinking about those things,” Moustakas said. “But I still feel like I’ve got a couple of years left in me, and obviously I loved being a Kansas City Royal. I’ll always be a Royal, and at the day that time comes that’ll be a decision I make. I think it’ll be pretty easy.
“But I love the city. I love these people and I love this team. So I’m happy that I got to come back here and be a part of it again. And to be able to play in front of these fans is gonna be awesome.”
Growing up in KC
The Royals drafted Moustakas with the second overall pick in the 2007 MLB draft out of Chatsworth Charter High School in California.
Moustakas made his big-league debut four years later and, in addition to a pair of memorable postseason runs, twice was chosen for the All-Star Game with the Royals. In 2017, Moustakas set the Royals’ single-season record with 38 home runs, a mark that has since been bested by Perez.
When Moustakas was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers in 2018, he was 30 and had played professional baseball for a dozen years.
“Growing up here, these fans saw me when I was 18 years old and got to see me grow up and become a man in this game and in front of them,” Moustakas said. “So just that alone is pretty special. And then just being here and in all the years I was here, just walking around the city, everyone’s so nice. Everyone’s so respectful. It’s how you want your kids to grow up being is how the people in this city and in this area treat you.
“It’s unbelievable. First class all the way and they’ve always been amazing ever since day one. So it’s so much fun to come here and see all the fans and all the people and how they act and how they treat you.”
Moustakas was asked about the Royals’ run to the 2014 Fall Classic and their World Series championship a year later, and he singled out the fans again.
Being able to bring a championship to Kansas City remains a source of pride for Moustakas.
“It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I was fortunate enough to be on a couple more postseason teams after that, and it was a lot of fun on those runs too. But the love and passion that these fans have for this city and this team, it was insane. We came to work every day excited to play in front of these people and it was so much fun.
“I’m just getting chills thinking about it now. It was so much fun showing up, even when we weren’t very good. The fans came and they had our backs every step of the way. And then when we turned it around in ‘14 to ‘15 it just made it so much better. It was incredible. ... I think I said this long time ago: I was fortunate enough to be a Royal for a long time but the people in the city have been Royals fans their entire lives. So to be a part of something like that and be a part of something special that we were able to give back to this community was amazing.”
