Kansas City Royals Mike Moustakas: His Journey

Mike Moustakas endured three and a half years of failure, only to become a postseason hero in a city weighed down by 25 years of failure. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports

"“The first days after, I left her a ticket,” Mike told Vahe Gregorian of the Kansas City Star “I knew this would be her first stop. To come see me.”"

Major League Baseball has seen its fair share of turnaround stories, but Moustakas’ is unprecedented.

Jose Bautista and David Ortiz went from complete unknowns to superstars, but neither of them endured near the sample size of failure that Moustakas did.

Josh Hamilton and Alex Gordon went from circumstantial busts to superstars, but even in the midst of their circumstances, still exhibited flashes of the players their respective clubs thought they had drafted.

Mike Moustakas experienced a vastly larger sample size of failure than Gordon and Hamilton, while having dealt with expectations that Bautista and Ortiz never even began to sniff during their ascension to the bigs.

For all intents and purposes, Moustakas was a complete and utter failure as a baseball player, and was given more at-bats to prove that he wasn’t a failure than most Royals fans prior to 2015 would have cared to see.

Yet, here we are, about to watch our Kansas City Royals defend their American League Championship, and Mike Moustakas is as much a reason for this fact as he is a key factor in bringing the Commissioners Trophy back to Kansas City.

In the coming days and, hopefully, the coming weeks, thousands upon thousands of fans will flood Kauffman Stadium and audibly shake it’s very foundations.

A good chunk of these audible calls will undoubtedly be calling out Moustakas, with  low-pitch, thundering “Moose” call that will churn the stomach of those calling and cause the nerves in each fans arms and neck to flinch at the sound.

The atmosphere will absorb the noise and send it flushing into the Kansas City sky above Interstate 70, surely to be heard by any in it’s path.

I’d be willing to bet that one of those souls is wearing a black and red baseball jersey with a big number 8 stitched on the back.

Next: Royals Awards for 2015 Season