Salvador Perez is back where he wants to be: playing October baseball in Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo.–Before each game, salvador perezThe 34-year-old catcher for the Kansas City Royals slathers his entire body with icy balm to wake up his muscles. “Knees, shoulders, waist,” he said. “Everywhere.” He binds parts of his body with tape – different ones each night, depending on the pain – puts neoprene sleeves on his thighs, and gets ready for another night in baseball’s most unforgiving job.

“I’m not 25 anymore,” Perez said this week.

It was a magical era. It was 2015. The Royals won their first World Series in 30 years, a series in which Pérez won MVP honors after hitting .364. He loved the postseason – the pressure, the spectacle, the stakes, all of it – and he fantasized about the great performances to come in October.

It was only a week ago that the Royals finally returned to the playoffs. Pérez endured eight terrific seasons, and now he’s back to work more magic at Kauffman Stadium, this time in the deciding Game 3 of their American League Division Series. New York YankeesOf all the spectacular results of Kansas City’s baseball renaissance this year – the emergence of a reign from a fan base that had grown numb to losing bobby wit jrAs a superstar, turning from a 56-106 record to 86-76 – the thing that’s most satisfying to the veteran staff in the organization is Pérez’s postseason drought coming to an end.

None of them were surprised that Pérez found himself in the middle of the Royals’ series-tying victory Monday night at Yankee Stadium. Even at the age of 34, having played 1,300 career games as a catcher, he remains one of the best at the position. He is Kansas City’s captain, its cleanup hitter and the author of the home run in Game 2 that ensured Yankees starter Carlos Rodon had his tongue in his mouth after his first-inning celebration.

Pérez has made a career of ruining pitchers’ good times. He made his ninth All-Star team this season, hitting 27 home runs, driving in 104 runs and playing in 158 games, 91 of which were at catcher. He spent the winter changing his catching style to better prepare for pitches and has had great success redeveloping himself. He’s approaching 11,000 innings of catches and 300 home runs, the kind of gaudy numbers that are the domain of people inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. And two years ago, when Matt Quatraro was named manager, Pérez was the first player he contacted. He wanted to hear what Pérez thought about the present and future of the Royals.

“One of our big goals was to get him back to where we feel he truly belongs in the game,” Quatraro said.

That’s October. “This is what he lives for,” said cole ragansThe winning pitcher in Game 2 of the ALDS. Ragans learned this last year, when he became an ace under Perez’s tutelage. Even when Pérez’s body barks at him and tells him that guys in their mid-30s aren’t meant to play regularly in the big leagues, he still struggles with the physical challenges as much as he struggles with the mental challenges. longs for.

“I like to think about the game,” Perez said. “I want to be in charge. I tell these guys, put all the pressure on me. I’ve got it. I want to think about the fastball, the slider, the curveball, how we got him out in the last at-bat, now we What he does, what he’s looking for, that’s why I love catching it.”

For years, teams reached out to Royals general manager Dayton Moore to inquire about a trade. The Royals could not advance Pérez. He is Salvi, ancestor of Salvi Splash, owner of number 13, who will someday be retired. But at the end of last season, Royals GM JJ Piccolo asked Pérez if he had a desire to play elsewhere. Piccolo believed the Royals were near a turning point, and owner John Sherman promised to spend the money, but he did not want to keep Pérez if he did not have confidence in Kansas City’s future.

“I talked to JJ about this last year when we lost a lot of games,” Pérez said. “A bunch of teams wanted me, but I don’t want to go. This is my second home.”

What he means is this – after 13 years in Kansas City, Perez is the guy who will stop by when there’s a whiffle ball game going on in the neighborhood and play the game with the kids. Pérez gets mutual love from a city that remembers his walk-off hit in the 2014 AL wild-card game like it was yesterday and will pack Kauffman Stadium in hopes that the Royals can do what they did the last time they faced the Yankees. Had done. Postseason, 1980: Win five-game series.

Asked about Yankees third baseman Jazz Chisholm’s comments after the Royals’ 4-2 victory in Game 2 on Tuesday — “They were lucky” — Pérez dropped his happy-go-lucky ideal, becoming brief and anything but. Refused to say. There’s no time for nonsense in October. It’s time to go home – After 17 days on the road to end their season and eliminate Baltimore in the wild-card round, Pérez was forced to wash his clothes at the hotel for the first time in his life – Show more His teammates explain what postseason games are like at Kauffman Stadium.

“‘What would it look like?'” Perez said he asked her. “‘What’s it going to be like? How fast is it going to be?’ “We have the best fans ever. Even in the bad moments, they were there for us.”

They will be there on Wednesday and Thursday. Playoff games in the parking lot at Arrowhead Stadium are a thing of the past, but K? They are special, and they wouldn’t feel at all good without Salvador Pérez, the heart of their team. So he will arrive early, complete his routine, prepare his body, hit the ground at 7:06 pm and settle down in his second home, his city, where he wants to be.