Eight years into his star-crossed professional baseball career in 2019, Bubba Starling was in El Paso, Texas, for the Triple-A All-Star Game when he received a three-way phone call from Royals assistant general manager J.J. Picollo and scouting director Lonnie Goldberg.
After all the time and agony and injuries and twists and potholes in a not-so-linear 35-mile-ish journey to Kauffman Stadium from Gardner, Kansas, Starling wasn’t assuming anything when he answered. So when Goldberg asked if Starling could get him tickets to the next Royals game, Starling promptly started crying knowing he’d finally gotten The Call.
Somehow, though, the other day he got a call that he said “honestly might top that”: to play for Team USA in the Tokyo Olympics.
To clarify, Starling’s point wasn’t that this exhilarating opportunity replaces or means more than a hoped-for return to the big leagues a decade since the Royals made him the No. 5 pick overall in the draft out of Gardner Edgerton High.
But this development has myriad meanings to him, including in part his belief that it may boost his ongoing career aspirations.
First and foremost, though, this is about the singular honor in itself.
It’s a chance for a self-described “home body, small-town Kansas boy,” by all indications the first from Gardner in the Olympics, to represent his country and take in the spectacle (such as it will be under the pandemic playbook and with no fans in the stands amid a state of emergency).
And maybe along the way the basketball zealot will get to see the likes of Kevin Durant around at, say, the parade of nations during opening ceremonies — assuming that still is performed as scheduled amid pandemic protocols.
“Probably getting ahead of myself,” he said, laughing.
Even so, like he felt after that call-up from the Royals, it’s a moment he’ll tell his kids about, and then their kids, and a scenario he already is feeling butterflies over.
While USA Baseball hasn’t won gold in the Olympics since 2000 in Sydney (baseball wasn’t part of the Games in 2012 and 2016), he can picture chills and tears if the team wins a gold medal and he gets to hear the Star-Spangled Anthem played in the accompanying tribute — feelings he’s heard his friend Jack Sock describe after winning a tennis gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Meanwhile, Starling also thinks this experience will broaden him as a person — and perhaps even enhance his credentials for a return to the major leagues. Even if it’s not quite baseball’s grandest stage, the world is watching.
“It’s just good for my future,” he said, later adding, “Whether I’m with (the Royals) or another team moving forward, I think this will open up a few doors, hopefully.”
More immediately, he is to begin training with Team USA on July 16 in Cary, North Carolina, where it will play a three-game exhibition series against the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team from July 18-20.
Then it will be off to Japan, where Starling hopes to get plenty of sushi after his first flight of such duration, and be part of a six-team field at the Olympics featuring Japan, the Dominican Republic, Israel, Korea and Mexico. The U.S. team makes its Olympic debut against Israel on July 30 at 5 a.m. Central Time.
Maybe he’ll return an Olympic champion, an Olympic star or both. And maybe some way or another that will lead to a lasting return to the major leagues.
But 10 years into that quest, the only thing Starling knows is that he’ll soak up every minute of these next few weeks.
And that baseball can still love him back even when it’s not exactly the way any of us might have hoped it would unfold a decade ago … or when he got the callup.
That magic moment and his ensuing major-league debut on July 12, 2019, were among the most treasured of his life — even if he was so overwhelmed with nerves that he could barely eat in the 24 hours before the game and reckoned if they had measured what he called the RPMs in his heartbeat that he was on the verge of having a heart attack.
In a more generous world made up exclusively of storybook narratives, that time would have marked a different sort of milestone, too: a pivot to an ever-upward arc for the multi-sport phenom who had been foreseen as a future pillar of the organization when the Royals selected him in 2011.
The reality, alas, has been different.
While playing tremendous defense, Starling hit .204 with five home runs and 17 driven home in 91 games with the Royals in 2019 and 2020. He was non-tendered after last season, for the second time, actually, but once again signed a minor-league contract to remain in the organization.
Still, the guy who had considered quitting more than once and came face to face with what he called “bad anxiety” a number of times before that 2019 call-up is playing productively in Class AAA Omaha again.
Through Friday, he was hitting .258 with seven home runs and 17 RBIs in 27 games. Now age 28, he’s enjoying a mentoring role, seeking to help teammates get to Kansas City and stay up there ... even as he retains an abiding hope that a more enduring stay in the majors remains possible for him.
In the meantime, there is something between consolation and reward in this Olympics berth, something that seems a little like karma after the certain indomitable resilience he has maintained despite all that has gone against him in the game.
In fact, this sure seems an outgrowth of a fresh way of thinking he shared during our interview at Kauffman Stadium in January 2020: about how everything changed for him when he started worrying less about himself and focusing more on what he could do for others.
And on appreciating all he has in his life.
“It’s more ‘one day at a time’ living,” he said then. “One day at a time. How good can that one day be?”
Pretty good yet, it turns out. And even if he doesn’t ultimately get what he wanted out of baseball, well, at least he got something he needed here and now that he can treasure forever.
