Top prospect Bobby Witt Jr. is finding traction with Kansas City Royals’ Double-A club

Almost two years since they last attended a game of their son’s that counted, Bobby Witt Sr. and his wife, Laurie, sat in Arvest Ballpark’s Section 103 down the right-field line bursting with anticipation.

It already had been a great week, with the parents able to spend Mother’s Day here with the youngest of their four children and only son, Bobby Witt Jr. — the phenom who is widely expected to have a momentous impact on the Royals’ future.

Then they were able to enjoy much of an off-day with him Monday, leading up to his home debut for the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, the Class AA minor-league arm of the Royals about to play in its own stadium for the first time in 617 days after the pandemic scuttled the 2020 minor-league season.

Better yet, it was the father’s birthday, as the son had noted in a tweet adorned with a photo of Sr. on the field after Arizona’s 2001 World Series triumph. In the picture, he is holding the trophy in one arm and cradling the 1-year-old boy either chomping or siphoning a baby bottle. “Happy Birthday to the man himself! ...” Jr. wrote on Twitter. “Love ya Dad!

Sure, a few weeks at spring training had been mighty fine, including being there for that moment when his son hit his first home run against the Giants and the father found himself looking around “like I can’t believe what I just saw.”

But here, Tuesday night in Springdale, Ark., was another phase, another tier in his journey, on just the right day for it.

“If somebody would ask me what I would want on a birthday, to be able to watch your son play (on your birthday), this is like the perfect gift,” he said. “I can’t ask for anything more.”

In uplifting movies or storybooks, this also would have been a breakout night for their 20-year old son before a crowd of 2,402 that called out his name like no others on a roster featuring only three players who had appeared here before.

Perhaps that interest was all the more so with the parent club that night on the way to its ninth straight loss (and 10th a night later) … and plenty of Royals fans turning their lonely eyes towards a would-be savior drafted second overall in 2019 whose strong spring made him a viable candidate for a place on the big-league squad.

But even the most inspiring tales typically are spiced with some temporary adversities, let’s remember. And so is the odyssey of virtually any baseball player, a dynamic that once reconciled tends to help the best of them flourish.

So it was that Witt Jr. went 0 for 4 and struck out three times as his average through six games fell to .167 (4 for 24).

And so it was that a mere night later, his parents in the stands again, he launched an opposite-field home run and two singles — making for a demonstration of the more cosmic narrative point of his being here.

Even if it hasn’t been the entirely seamless script some might have drawn up, this is all testimony to why it made sense for him to get more seasoning after having played just 37 minor-league games at the Rookie League level in 2019.

Best of all, he understands that in every way.

“I think that you learn from your failures,” Witt said in a Zoom call with The Star before the game Wednesday. “And you’re on this earth for a reason. God put you here just to kind of help you learn and do your thing, and that’s what kind of I’m doing right now.

“A little learning curve and this will better me for the rest of my life.”

And the numbers only tell part of that tale. After Witt’s hard night at the plate Tuesday, manager Scott Thorman smiled when asked about him.

“He’s just getting a feel for it right now, and he’s going to be just fine,” he said, later adding that he’s going to be “very, very good.”

(Only a night later, Thorman would say, “He’s coming alive. ... He’s going to build on that momentum, and we’re going to watch him go.”)

Thorman also called him a great teammate and a pleasure to be around, both as part of a more substantial point about what will take him where he seems destined to go.

“Absolutely, absolutely: It’s just the way you go about your business, the way people react and respond around you,” Thorman said. “It all plays a part (in) it. He’s one of the first one’s here. He’s always ready to go, always ready to work. He loves the game. He plays with passion. And it’s pretty easy to get behind that.”

Along those lines, pitcher Jon Heasley calls Witt “a clubhouse favorite, for sure,” and says he “always brings good energy, no matter what.” And teammate Rudy Martin has appreciated Witt’s buoyant presence regardless of how his at-bats have gone.

“He’s really, like, a really genuine dude, a funny, goofy dude,” said Martin, a 25th-round draft pick in 2014 who noted how Witt “clicks pretty good with the whole team” and added, “He’s one of those guys who’s going to dance around the clubhouse … He’s always dancing to my music.”

Meaning, actually, that Witt also continues to dance to his own distinct beat even while being tested as never before. Or as Witt put it, he should always try to be the best person he can be on and off the field, starting with attitude.

“If something’s going wrong,” he said, “then don’t be like Debbie Downer.”

Instead, he’s been learning more about himself than he ever has and filling up his twin notebooks. One primarily is for hitting and the other for “notes about life and stuff” that includes motivational concepts he comes across and likes.

For all he’s absorbing, though, he’s still the kid who was born with a certain radiance, especially when it comes to baseball — a trait that will serve him perfectly in the months and years ahead.

As a young boy, his father recalled, that exuberance was reflected in such ways as his son wanting to have older kids over to play Wiffle Ball for his birthday parties so he could challenge himself more. And even as Witt Sr. consciously tried to avoid pushing his son in the game, he remembers him wanting to do extra when he’d hit pitch to him or hit him ground balls and the father would start trying to shut it down.

“‘Dad, throw me some more, throw me some more,’” he recollected him saying, the memory making a smile evident in his eyes even with a mask on. “He’s just had that attitude his whole life.”

Now, that mindset will be vital in a new way for someone who has long demonstrated a certain mental toughness in how he’s handled being rated among the top talents in baseball — including currently as the No. 13 prospect in the minor leagues, according to a recent Baseball America ranking.

Instead of expectations burdening him, he has embraced having what his father called a “bullseye on his back” and knowing he’ll always get the best stuff from opponents.

He’s shown that even since being drafted. He thrived at Spring Training 2.0 (“This guy’s the best hitter of all time. Already,” Danny Duffy said at the time. “Like, seriously, dude.”) and at the Royals’ alternate training site last year and in the spring.

So, surely, he was disappointed not to be on the opening day roster. But he shrugs off that notion now, instead raving about how awesome it was to be in the major-league clubhouse in Surprise and getting to watch how the likes of Whit Merrifield go about their work. And he gushes about opportunities he had as part of the alternate site operating here for the month between spring training and the minor-league season.

That included getting to experience an 11-hour bus trip to Louisville (“I had a blast with the guys,” he said) and learning more about such finer points as pre-game routines before a road game.

It’s all part of why the Royals reckoned that, barring injury, “nothing can really go wrong with him starting at Double-A,” as assistant general manager J.J. Picollo put it to The Star’s Lynn Worthy.

Meanwhile, turns out something crucial could go right even when things didn’t go smoothly:

Beyond simply getting further acclimated professionally, beyond experiencing the grind of a longer season, Witt can learn how to navigate ups and downs he’s seldom experienced without the looming pressure of having to do so prematurely on the brightest, biggest stage.

“Physically, it’s all there; it’s just going to be the mental side of things,” his father said. “How is he going to adjust if he gets in a little bit of a slump? What’s he going to do to be able to do to get out of that?

“Those are the things that all young players go through.”

He can say that with conviction through both his own experience over 16 years in the major leagues as well as through the eyes of players he’s represented as an agent over the last 20 years.

“My mindset was not to get too high and not to get too low, and I’m hoping that kind of transfers to him,” he said. “I’ve seen guys get down, and it takes them for a while to get back out of there. And (he’s seen) guys that are really riding the high wave, and then all of a sudden it crashes, and they can’t get their footing any more.

“I think the biggest thing is just keeping yourself positive.”

So far, so good then, it seems.

“You either win or you learn, I think,” the son said. “That’s how you play it: You’re never really losing, (because) you’re always gaining some type of edge over either the other team or yourself (by) just trying to get yourself better.”

He added, “It’s going to help me in the long run. And whenever it happens, I’m going to shoot off like a rocket from there.”