KC Royals Rewind: Looking back at franchise firsts

This installment of “KC Royals Rewind” takes you back to 1969, the team’s inaugural season, for a look at a plethora of Royal “firsts.”

Welcome back to “KC Royals Rewind,” our Kings of Kauffman series highlighting interesting moments in team history and players fans may not remember or realize played for the Royals. Today’s “Rewind” examines a collection of Royal “firsts.”

By the time April 1969 rolled around, Kansas City had been without baseball since October 1967, when the regular season ended and the American League granted KC Athletics’ owner Charlie Finley’s long-held wish to move the club. Fans were stunned; after Missouri Senator Stewart Symington suggested stripping the game of its antitrust exemption, Major League Baseball suddenly decided to expand and Kansas City won a new franchise. The KC Royals were born.

The first Royals were an eclectic assortment of players acquired primarily through a special expansion draft, a pool of players other clubs deemed dispensable. Some names were familiar; some weren’t. Relatively unknown were Jon Warden, Don O’Riley, Jerry Cram, Scott Northey and Ike Brookens.

Two old friends, former A’s pitchers Moe Drabowsky and Dave Wickersham, came aboard via the draft; three draftees, Hoyt Wilhelm, Jerry Adair and Paul Schaal, were established players and four more, Bob Oliver, Al Fitzmorris, Dick Drago and Tom Burgmeier, would become KC fixtures.

And Lou Piniella, destined to become the most accomplished major leaguer of the all the ’69 Royals, joined the club a week before Opening Day when the Seattle Pilots, another expansion team, traded him to KC.

Naturally, the 1969 team achieved every club and individual “first.” The first lineup: catcher Ellie Rodriguez, first baseman, Chuck Harrison, second baseman Adair, shortstop Jackie Hernandez, third baseman Joe Foy, left fielder Ed Kirkpatrick, center fielder Piniella, right fielder Oliver, and starting pitcher Wally Bunker, who became the first Royals pitcher to get a hit. Burgmeier was the first Royal reliever.

It was this lineup that started the KC Royals’ first home game, a contest that yielded the team’s first win, a 4-3 victory over Minnesota; because it came in 12 innings, it was also the club’s first extra-inning contest and first walk-off win.

Let’s take a look at some more Royals’ “firsts.”

An up-and-coming outfielder who would later become an outstanding manager quickly collected several individual Royal firsts.

For the first few years of his professional career, Lou Piniella may have felt like an unwanted man. The player who eventually became an All-Star outfielder and excellent manager was always on the move.

Cleveland signed Piniella in 1962 but his stay with the Indians didn’t last long–he was lost to Washington later that year in the “first-year player draft,” a complicated (and fortunately long gone) process designed ostensibly to control signing bonuses. He played a year in the Senators’ minor league system, then found himself traded to Baltimore in August 1964, where he played in four games and batted once. That was the last he’d see of Baltimore–he played the next season in the minors, then was traded back to the Indians.

Piniella toiled for three more seasons in the minors before making his way to Cleveland for six 1968 games and going hitless in five at-bats. The Indians lost him again when the expansion Pilots took him in October’s special draft.

But Piniella still hadn’t found a big-league home–before the Pilots played a regular season game, they traded him to the Royals on April 1, 1969, a week before the new season opened, for Steve Whitaker and John Gelnar.

On April 8, Piniella established his big league roots in Kansas City. He started the club’s first game (and first home opener) in center field and went 4-for-5, the first Royal to get four hits in a game. Before the day ended with a KC win, “Sweet Lou” bagged even more Royal firsts.

First batter, first hit, first double, first extra-base hit, first run. Piniella led off for the Royals in their first game, becoming the first KC leadoff hitter. Facing Minnesota’s Tom Hall, he doubled to left for the club’s first hit, first double and first extra-base hit. He scored Kansas City’s first-ever run moments later when Jerry Adair singled him home. With Piniella clearly leading the way, the Royals won 5-1 in 12 innings.

First Royal hit by a pitch.  Although the club’s first game provided several firsts, no Royal was hit by a pitch until the fourth game when Oakland’s John Wyatt plunked Piniella in the seventh inning of a 9-3 road win over the A’s. (Ironically, Wyatt was a mainstay on the A’s staff before they left Kansas City).

First triple.  Piniella bagged another first a week later when he tripled at home against Oakland. Another former Kansas City A’s hurler, Blue Moon Odom, was the victim; Piniella, hitless in two previous at-bats against Odom, lashed a one-out three-bagger to left that scored Joe Foy. It was the only run in KC’s 2-1 loss.

Piniella went on to win Rookie of the Year (obviously the first Royal to do so), and played five seasons for the club with a .286 average. In an infamously lopsided deal, the Royals traded him (and Ken Wright) to the Yankees for Lindy McDaniel in the winter of 1973; Piniella played 11 seasons in New York before retiring after the ’84 campaign with a .291 career average.

He also found managing to his liking–he managed five clubs, won a World Series title with Cincinnati, and finished with a .517 winning percentage in 23 seasons (1,835-1,713).

For all the “firsts” he collected for the KC Royals, Piniella is definitely the King of Royal Firsts.

Although it may have seemed like it, Lou Piniella wasn’t the only member of the KC Royals to register offensive firsts.

Rookie of the Year Lou Piniella quickly cornered the market on offensive “firsts” for the KC Royals, but others collected firsts in the club’s opener and soon thereafter. One important first had to wait until midseason.

First RBI, first lead.  To no surprise, Lou Piniella scored the first KC run, one of many firsts he accomplished in the KC Royals’ opening game. It was Jerry Adair, an expansion draft selection from Boston, who drove in Piniella in the bottom of the first inning for the club’s first RBI.

Adair, the only Royal besides Piniella to have a multiple-hit game that day–he had two singles–followed Piniella’s leadoff double with a single to left off Minnesota starter Tom Hall to give the Royals their first-ever lead. Adair singled in the sixth and finished 2-for-5.

Best known for his nine seasons with the Orioles, Adair held down second base for the Royals in 1969, but was released in May of the next season and never played in the majors again.

First game-winning hit, first walk-off hit, first walk-off win, first extra-inning win.  Joe Keough, another expansion draft selection, pinch-hit for fellow draftee Ellie Rodriguez in the bottom of the 12th inning of the KC Royals’ first game. KC and the Twins were tied 3-3 when manager Joe Gordon chose Keough to face reliever Dick Woodson with one out and the bases loaded.

Ed Kirkpatrick lined to center to start the inning. Joe Foy singled and went to second on a passed ball; Joe Grzenda intentionally walked Chuck Harrison. Harrison and Foy moved up a base apiece when Grzenda unleashed a wild pitch to Bob Oliver, forcing Grzenda to issue another intentional walk to Oliver.

Woodson relieved Grzenda and gave up a single to Keough for the Royals’ first game-winning hit, first walk-off hit, first walk-off win and first extra-inning win.

Keough played for the Royals through 1972 and finished his short big league career with the White Sox in 1973.

First home run. The Royals didn’t hit a home run until the sixth game of the 1969 season, an April 13 road game in Oakland. First baseman Mike Fiore led off the second inning by blasting a Blue Moon Odom offering out to right field for the club’s first-ever round-tripper. (It was, of course, the same Blue Moon Odom who gave up the first KC triple to Lou Piniella).

Fiore was traded the next season to Boston and later played for the Cardinals and Padres.

First grand slam.  The KC Royals’ first grand slam home run highlighted their July 4 fireworks against Seattle in Kansas City. The blast came in the first game of a doubleheader sweep of the Pilots.

Jim Bouton, first made famous by his stellar pitching for the Yankees, then by his baseball expose Ball Four, started the eighth inning for Seattle. He gave up a double to Juan Rios, got Jackie Hernandez on a grounder to second, then walked Foy and Pat Kelly to load the bases for Bob Oliver.

Oliver then crushed a Bouton delivery out of old Municipal Stadium for the club’s first grand slam, giving the Royals the 13-2 lead they’d win by. KC won the nightcap 3-2 and Oliver finished the day 3-for-8 with five RBIs.

Oliver played three more seasons in KC, then went to the Angels and Baltimore before ending his career with the Yankees in 1975.

First stolen base.  Kansas City’s new team didn’t get its first stolen base in its first game, a 12-inning 4-3 victory against the Twins; instead, they had to wait until their second game, a 17-inning marathon they also won 4-3.

The steal came in the bottom of the fourth against Twins’ star Jim Kaat; with one out, Joe Foy stole third base and immediately scored on Jim Campanis‘ sacrifice fly. Foy’s run tied the game 2-2.

Foy stole 36 more bases and was traded that winter to the Mets in the deal that brought Amos Otis to the Royals; Foy played one season in New York and another for the old Senators.