DENTON, Texas _ Just over there is the window Hunter Dozier's father, Kelly, told the kids not to play near. "For some reason" they did anyway, his little sister Kenzie said, gazing that way and smiling.
Naturally, her brother fouled off a pitch and shattered the glass.
"We finished the game, though," Dozier, a potential cornerstone of the Royals' future, recently said with a laugh.
That was par for a trail to the major leagues, or at least the foundation of it, laden with broken ceiling fans, lights, cratered walls and a cavity in the garage door that may still need repair.
Out in the back yard, though, sits the most telling testament to Dozier's path from being undrafted and virtually unrecruited coming out of high school to becoming the eighth overall pick in the 2013 draft to, at last, a breakthrough 2019 season.
There sits the batting cage fashioned by his father, once an arena in itself and a priceless symbol in so many ways.
Ask Dozier how much of where he is today stems from the dynamics of that setting, and he'll instantly say, "All of it _ all of it."
Never mind that 16 years later, beset with wind storms and pine needles and squirrels, the cage is perhaps more a monument than anything else.
