Why Royals star Bobby Witt Jr. made himself watch Yankees’ ALDS celebration

The most stunning season in franchise history ended at 9:44 p.m. Thursday, its demise slow and painful.

The Royals scored in just three of the final 30 innings of the American League Division Series, the middle of their order vanquished once more. They somehow completed their best single-year turnaround without a home victory in the last five weeks.

But this is about five minutes.

Initially.

By 9:49 p.m., the Royals’ dugout at Kauffman Stadium had cleared out, almost completely, except for one player.

Bobby Witt Jr.

With his arms draped over the railing, his eyes locked on a Yankees celebration that covered the infield after New York captured the best-of-five series in four games with a 3-1 victory. Witt hardly flinched as he watched the visitors’ revelry, stoic even as a couple of teammates patted him on the back.

The enduring image spanned a minute, then two, then two more, before Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton left the chaos on the mound and approached Witt in the home dugout.

A handshake, and then Witt was gone.

“That’s where I want to be,” he said after returning to the clubhouse. “I just try to take it all in when I can.”

There’s a lot to take in now.

Witt should be the runner-up for the American League Most Valuable Player award next month, but his bat disappeared for much of the series. The three who carried the Royals to this point — Witt, Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvy Perez — combined for six hits in 49 at-bats ( .122) over four games.

Pasquantino was playing at less than 100% health.

Witt was 2 for 17 in the series. He scored only twice and did not drive in a run. He stunk at the plate. There is no getting away from that.

But that’s precisely the point — he doesn’t want to get away from it. He spent those five minutes ensuring this moment was painful enough to scar.

Same as the guy who stars across the Truman Sports Complex parking lot, part of the pinch-me realization that Bobby Witt Jr. plays in Kansas City is not just his talent.

It’s this.

The response.

Witt took about a dozen questions while standing in front of his locker after the game. Still dressed in full uniform, his voice cracked during the first answer. His eyes were a slight shade of red by the time the interview began.

But there was a telling theme in his replies. Among the first nine, he spun the answer to an element of the future — quite confidently — in all but one of them.

Before an example, it’s imperative to provide the context that the Royals won 30 more games than they did a year earlier — imperative to mention that the first Royals playoff season in nine years was preceded by a season of 106 losses. The year was an unmitigated success.

But his perspective?

“It feels like you let a lot of people down whenever you do things like this,” Witt began. “Something that will light a torch in you and leave you a bad taste for the future.

“Because, now, for Kansas City Royals baseball, this is what we want. This is what we’re gonna do every year — get in the postseason. Now it’s how far are we gonna go. It’s not how we’re gonna get there — it’s how far we’re gonna go.”

Sure, we’ve heard that kind of thing before. Hours before the 106-loss 2023 season began, Pasquantino sat in the Royals’ interview room and talked about the playoffs. These are professional athletes. Confidence is what they do.

There’s an obvious difference in Kansas City this time.

It’s no longer wishful thinking.

They got a guy. For the long-term.

Their future, though, rests on a 24-year-old shortstop who is locked up for the next decade. The Royals handed Witt the most expensive contract in their history, nearly $300 million, and there still might not be a more attractive contract in all of baseball.

We can take a look backward even if Witt refuses: The 2024 Royals will be the team that brought Kauffman Stadium alive again. The team that made baseball relevant here again. This city was talking about the Royals during a month reserved for Patrick Mahomes.

This team, more simply, returned playoff baseball to Kansas City, even if just for a couple of loud nights.

Witt’s reaction to its conclusion, to playoff elimination, is more relevant because he’s tied to the response for years. It isn’t strictly about self-motivation. It is a message intended to reverberate throughout the rest of the clubhouse:

This was great and all, but it ain’t enough.

It was, after all, a missed opportunity for an organization that doesn’t offer itself many of them. This year’s postseason is without a dominant team, leaving a playoff run open for, well, anyone.

The Royals could’ve stepped through that door. Why not? They had the best playoff rotation of any remaining team, with three starters finishing in the top-20 in earned-run average — and that’s a combination that frequently correlates with playoff success. They even figured out their bullpen in September.

Like a Kyle Isbel flyout to right field, it’s hard to think solely of the ride. It’s easier to think about what could have been on the other end of it.

That’s the intention of their star.

Don’t lose that feeling.

The Royals had a lot break their way this year. The rotation stayed healthy. Their MVP candidate played like an MVP candidate. None of it is guaranteed a year from now. But they also blended several past scouting wins — internationally and through the draft — with modern-day processes inside their dugout. The mixture stunned baseball. The Royals had about a 1-in-10 chance of reaching the postseason when the year began.

That’s the backdrop for just the third postseason appearance in the past four decades. Nobody needs to remind them how infrequently these opportunities arrive. That’s why it stings. That’s why it should sting.

Its aftermath is the difference. There’s no evidence of a proverbial window closing.

Look back at the last time the Royals made it here. Even just one year after winning the World Series in 2015, that core group was at Kauffman Stadium taking a curtain call ... because they were gone. And you could see it coming. Through the enjoyment, you could see the end.

Late Thursday night, as Witt stared out of the home dugout toward a playoff celebration, he saw the end. But he saw something else, too.

The future.