Print edition: 
The New Alex Gordon is moving slowly but with purpose, cradling a wooden bat in the crook of his arm as he ducks his head under a wall of black netting. The backdrop says baseball — batting cages, turf, a bag of balls — and Gordon is decked out in the offseason garb of basketball shorts, a dry-fit shirt and a blue stocking cap, the familiar KC logo stitched across the center.
It’s just past 8:30 a.m. on a mild winter morning, and Gordon is almost ready to talk about last season; about his transformation from an injury-ravaged third baseman — a maybe-sort-of-almost bust — to one of the best all-around outfielders in the American League.
But first, more drills.
“Give me a minute,” he says.
He grabs his glove and heads for the stairs, a long, slow descent to the indoor infield that takes up most of the first floor at Mac-N-Seitz baseball facility in Martin City. Time for defense.
For the last 30 minutes, Gordon has been tucked into his familiar stance, spraying baseballs into the back of the cage as Royals hitting coach Kevin Seitzer inspects each swing. The facility is silent save for the cannon-fire explosion of wood meeting rawhide, and the return sound of ball smacking into the back of the netting.
In a few days, Gordon and Seitzer will pack up and take these early-morning hitting sessions to the Royals’ spring training headquarters in Arizona. A few days later — Thursday — Gordon and the Royals will agree to a one-year deal worth $4.775 million, a contract that comes as both sides continue talks on a long-term deal that could set up Gordon’s family for generations — and keep the former first-round pick in Kansas City into his early 30s.
But for now, Gordon is ready to reflect on a 12-month period that has redefined a career and altered the perception of a city. This is a turnaround story with plenty of pivot points. Some of it has to do with health, of course. Some of it, Gordon says, has to do with the arrival of manager Ned Yost in May 2010.
But for Gordon and Seitzer, so much of the story begins inside the batting cages at Mac-N-Seitz. One year ago, the Old Alex Gordon was a 27-year-old former No. 2 overall draft pick and minor-league star with the Double-A Wichita Wranglers was coming off the worst season of his career — an injury-shortened year pockmarked by a demotion to Triple-A and a position change.
“I just wanted to start over,” Gordon says.
And Seitzer had a plan. They would arrive early, sometimes before 8 a.m., and overhaul the mechanics of his swing. Maybe it wasn’t Gordon’s last chance. But after four seasons in the big leagues, years spent internalizing the struggles and setbacks, Gordon began to sense his career being squeezed by the pressure of time.
“He was gonna tell me exactly what to do,” Gordon says, “And I had to listen.”
Fast forward to 2012, and Gordon is back in the same cage, his hands cocked and loaded as another batting-practice fastball comes down the chute. The story of 2011 will come in a moment. But for now, Gordon waits on the pitch, his swing short and compact, before rifling a line-drive to the opposite field.
“My gosh, he looks good right now,” Seitzer says, his eyes turning back toward the cage. “… It’s batting practice; it’s not games. But that stuff’s gonna play right there.”
He was called aloof and distant, too cool. They said he moped, his rigid and upright gait casting him as a coldly mechanical figure, and a ballplayer whose emotions were just as robotic. And for those closest to Alex Gordon, there was the most cutting criticism of all: People said it looked like he didn’t care.
Mike Gordon had taught his boys — all four of them — the proper way to play the game. And emotions, the kind that drew attention or showed up opponents, were never part of that. For years, the boys heard the same advice: Let your play do the talking.
But even in a family where working-class values were treasured, Gordon’s unassuming nature stood out. His older brother, Eric, remembers the days at Lincoln Southeast High, where hitting sessions where measured in hours and conversations in seconds.
“Al has always been the most reserved out of all of us,” Eric says.
If anything, family members say, this begins to explain those first couple years in the big leagues, when the hype was Tebow-charged and some in Kansas City were already thinking how Gordon’s number would fit on the scoreboard.
Even now, it’s impossible to tell Gordon’s story without mentioning George Brett. Those closest to Gordon say the deluge of Brett comparisons during Gordon’s rookie season in 2007 were probably counter-productive. It was almost too perfect. Gordon played third, and hit left-handed, and one of the Gordon boys was even named after the Royals’ only Hall of Famer.
And, of course, it didn’t help when Brett himself said that he was honored by the comparison.
“I take it as a compliment,” Brett would famously say.
The problem: Gordon had always been taught that sweating in silence could be a virtue; that working while no one was watching was just as important as hitting the game-winning home run. And then came the comparisons, and Gordon’s instincts told him he hadn’t earned them. Maybe he didn’t go into a shell, friends say, but his baseball identity had certainly been knocked off-kilter.
His first two seasons were solid but not overwhelming. Then came the injury-plagued seasons of 2009 and 2010. Entering last season, Gordon had never batted better than .260 or hit more than 16 homers.
“It didn’t go to script,” Royals general Dayton Moore says. “It wasn’t what he envisioned or the fans, or all of us.”
Gordon says he tried to block out the mounting criticism, the negativity that shrouded his young career. But that didn’t stop some of it from floating back to the family in Lincoln.
“People always thought he didn’t care when something happened in the game,” says younger brother Derek, now a sophomore pitcher at Park University. “That’s far from the truth. He’s got more passion about baseball than anybody I’ve ever seen. He just doesn’t always show it.”
Alex Gordon takes a seat at an empty table in the lobby of Mac-N-Seitz. It’s still morning, and the building is still nearly empty.
He’s spent much of the offseason answering questions about his breakthrough in 2011, and now he’s listening to a few more. Something changed, but it was more than just the numbers. Gordon hit .303 with 23 homers and 45 doubles, all career highs. He won a Gold Glove in left field while recording 20 outfield assists. But there was something else at work.
The old perceptions began to melt away. Gordon was no longer cast as too mopey or too cool. Now he was business-like, a consummate pro, all those things.
Gordon begins to sense where the conversation is leading, and he interjects.
“It’s not unfair,” he says of the old criticisms.
Bottom line, he says, he didn’t perform. He may have been the same player with the same work ethic. But he had his own expectations as well. And if people were disappointed in his performance, well, he was disappointed too.
“If you’re not playing well, then stuff is gonna get said,” he says. “You’re playing the game you love. You get paid great. So if that’s the least of your worries, then so be it.”
So here comes the next chapter, a new season marked with new questions.
For years, Gordon answered questions about untapped potential and finally breaking through. Now Seitzer stands near the batting cage and talks about how good Gordon can be.
According to one advanced metric that attempts to quantify overall value by measuring offense, defense and baserunning, Gordon was the seventh-most valuable player in the American League in 2011. Seitzer says Gordon can be better. His vision started to come into focus in 2011, but the New Gordon was still an unfinished product. One example: Seitzer believes Gordon can cut down on his strikeouts while maintaining his power.
“Last year,” Seitzer says. “I would say he’s at 60 to 70 percent of what I wanted him to be.”
There are also questions surrounding Gordon’s long-term future in Kansas City. He is under club control through the 2013 season, but both sides remain interested in exploring a long-term extension before the season begins.
The Royals, Moore says, generally consult a checklist before extending long-term deals.
“Do we think the player will perform over the lifetime of the contact?,” Moore explains. “Do we believe the player will stay healthy over the lifetime of the potential contract? And finally, do we think this long-term contract will rob the incentive of a player?
“In Alex’s case … we feel comfortable with all those areas.”
Not that there aren’t concerns. Gordon, of course, could reveal himself in the long-term as a .260 hitter with solid power; a player with the ability to get on base at a high clip while also striking out more than 100 times per year. These are solid numbers, valuable numbers, but they are not what Gordon was in 2011.
Additionally, there’s the little detail that Gordon, in all likelihood, will leave some free-agent dollars on the table if he signs a long-term deal in Kansas City. One Royals official characterizes this as “trading the comforts he enjoys now” for the extra millions that generally materialize during a free-agent bidding war. Translation: A potential hometown discount.
For all that, Gordon has continually expressed desire to stay in Kansas City for the foreseeable future. And it is, perhaps, telling that Gordon is the only Royal — besides Topeka native Aaron Crow — that spends most of the offseason in Kansas City. Gordon also says none of his brothers have strayed far from home. Eric still lives in Lincoln; Brett is working in Wichita; and Derek still has three years left at Park.
Back in the lobby at Mac-N-Seitz, Gordon is finishing his story about 2011. It was a breakthrough summer, a busy summer, but Gordon says he and his wife, Jamie, still managed to piece together plans for a new house in Lincoln. The timeline was nearly perfect. Their only child, Max, was all set to celebrate his first birthday while the construction began. And they’d be all ready to move in for first months of the offseason.
Well, the plan was perfect — until construction ran a little behind schedule.
“It was a little bit late,” Gordon says.
In a moment, Gordon will stand up, the sweat on his brow now dry, his morning workout over. One year after the beginning of a career renaissance, the routine is staying the same. The New Alex Gordon is not so different from the old.
“The biggest thing with me,” Gordon says, “When I wasn’t playing well, I was the same person as when I was playing well. I just tried to stay the same person no matter what.”
