How Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., always expected to be an MLB star, delivered on that promise: 'Ever since we were kids ... everybody just wanted to see Bobby hit'

COLLEYVILLE, Texas — Bobby Witt Jr. fell in love here, within this 250,000-square-foot patch of grass.

On a Sunday morning in July, the ballfields behind Colleyville Heritage High School are empty, asleep. It’s quiet, save for the rushing of cars on Route 121 beyond the right-field wall and the tut-tutting of automatic sprinklers watering the outfield. A flash of sun bounces off a poster commemorating the school’s 2019 state championship that adorns a wall of the brick concession stand. Behind the first-base dugout, an enormous covered batting cage with two pitching machines and a who’s-who list of MLB donors separates the baseball field from the softball field.

There are flashier high school facilities, though this is surely one of the few campuses in Texas with more seats at the baseball stadium than the football stadium. And for four years, from 2016 to 2019, those bleachers were filled more often than not, as students, family and locals came to get a peek at the kid everyone called “Junior.”

It all started around age 7, when Witt, now a supernova shortstop for the Kansas City Royals, began attending the high school’s summer baseball camps. His dad, 16-year big leaguer Bobby Sr., would drop him in the morning and leave. Senior remembers those moments clearly, purposefully taking his hands off the wheel, trusting that the game would work its wonders on his precocious son.

Like at any summer camp, the scene in Colleyville was heat-soaked mayhem, more daycare than player development. For hours upon hours, kids played ball beneath the unrelenting Texas sun, under the not-so-watchful eyes of high school counselors, many of whom were Colleyville High ball players themselves — the kids the kids wanted to be. Only a hundred or so campers attended at a time, but those who worked the camp joke that it felt like a thousand. Organized chaos disguised as endless baseball. And Junior loved every minute of it.

“I think it’s definitely where he fell in love with the game,” Bobby Witt Sr. told Yahoo Sports. “I didn't want to be around. I wanted him to be out there just playing ball with other kids.”

Whenever the kid with the big-league name and whip-quick bat speed stepped up to hit, the entire camp would grind to a halt. Impossible-to-wrangle 9-year-olds with razor-thin attention spans all of a sudden locked in, trying to catch a glimpse. Former Colleyville Panthers head coach Alan McDougal, who organized the camps, knew it was special even then.

“Six-year-olds playing on the main diamond, 7- and 8-year-olds out in the outfield, three different games going,” McDougal, who coached Witt at Colleyville, recalled to Yahoo Sports. “But everyone knew where Junior was. People could just feel it.”

“Ever since we were kids — and then, obviously, now — everybody just wanted to see Bobby hit,” said Mason Greer, Bobby’s closest friend since childhood and a high school teammate at Colleyville.

Mason and Bobby, now 24 years old, are groomsmen in each other’s weddings this winter. Mason’s dad, Rusty Greer, played on the Texas Rangers with Bobby Senior. The two settled in the same suburban area, and their sons have been buddies for as long as anybody can remember.

But nowadays, getting to “see Bobby hit” is far from a local phenomenon limited to the preteen attendees and counselors at the Colleyville summer camp. Witt has blossomed into one of the sport’s biggest stars, a franchise-altering dynamo who recently inked a landmark, 11-year, $288.8 million contract with the Royals.

It is money well deserved: Since May 1 of last year, Witt leads MLB in Wins Above Replacement. He finished seventh in AL MVP voting last year and is a near-lock to be in the top five this season. An elite defensive shortstop with top-of-the-charts power, Witt also happens to be the single fastest player in Major League Baseball.

The Royals currently sit two games out of a wild-card spot and at 52-45 are relevant for the first time in nearly a decade. Witt, set to appear in his first All-Star Game on Tuesday, is the biggest reason for that.

In short, Bobby Witt Jr. is what happens when (1) privilege, (2) athletic ability and (3) work ethic come together to make sporting magic. He won two birth lotteries; one made him the son of a big leaguer, the other granted him otherworldly raw talent. But to Witt’s credit, he has made the most of his gifts. Junior might’ve been born on second base, but he has earned his way home.

The road to superstardom, down State Highway 360 to the Midsummer Classic at Globe Life Field, began in Colleyville. Bobby Sr. and his wife, Laurie, settled in the upscale metroplex suburb in the late ‘90s, when the Boston-raised ballplayer was pitching for the Texas Rangers. By the time Junior was born in June of 2000, Senior’s career was reaching its twilight. After winning the 2001 World Series with the Arizona Diamondbacks — Junior was at Game 7 as a 1-year-old — the elder Witt hung up his spikes.

But while Witt Jr. didn't grow up in MLB clubhouses like juniors Griffey, Guerrero or Mahomes, the sport was still the dominant presence in his early years. It's no accident that Bobby Sr. and Laurie's three eldest children, all daughters, all married big leaguers. And because Bobby Sr. was retired, he was around and present for Junior's entire childhood, perpetually available to hit ground balls or throw batting practice or lend a word of big-league advice.

“The only thing I was pushing on him was to get better,” Senior said. “And for him to understand the game and respect the game.”

As Junior aged from summer camp to little league to travel ball, showing brilliance at each stop, it slowly dawned on Senior that his son was going to be different. At first, he was hesitant, cautious to not get too excited. Junior was good for the Dallas-Fort Worth area, sure, but what about Houston? The rest of Texas? What about the rest of the country? Senior had seen enough and played enough to know how difficult baseball is supposed to be, how long the odds are, even for the uber-talented son of a big leaguer.

Then the aha moment came the summer before Witt’s freshman year. He went yard during a wood-bat tournament at the University of Oklahoma, where Senior starred in the mid ‘80s and where Junior would eventually commit but never play.

“He hit one out. And I sit up, like, that’s really good, man,” Senior remembered. “At that age? At a college field? And he’s not a big kid, and he’s using a wood bat.”

As Junior’s reputation grew, so did the expectations. An outstanding freshman season for the Panthers only raised his stock further.

In December 2016, a few months before the start of Witt’s sophomore season, Perfect Game, an online authority on youth baseball, ranked him as the No. 1 draft prospect in the class of 2019 — high school or college. That meant Junior was suddenly under a microscope, with an enormous target on his back.

For the next three years, jeers and chants would follow Witt wherever he and Colleyville played. He was the hot-shot brat who couldn't actually be that good. Every pitcher in the state wanted to be the guy who punched out Bobby Witt Jr.

“One night, a kid struck him out, but the umpire called it a ball,” Greer recalled. “The kid started yelling at the umpire, and the next pitch, [Bobby] hit it about 500 feet. The ball just went into the night.”

Through it all, Junior remained unfazed. He was a big leaguer in miniature, with the “one-day-at-a-time” platitudes to match.

Also during Witt’s sophomore year, he started dating a junior named Maggie Black, coincidentally a starting infielder on Colleyville’s softball team. The couple, who are now engaged, connected over their shared love of the diamond. Maggie would sometimes throw batting practice to Bobby and his friends inside the shared cages that stand between the baseball and softball fields at Colleyville. The two understood each other and the future that lay ahead.

By senior year, the noise had reached a fever pitch. Hordes of MLB scouts flocked to Colleyville to see the show for themselves. For most of those evaluators, the trip was eyewash. Only a small handful of teams, the ones picking at the very top of the draft — Baltimore, Kansas City, the Chicago White Sox — had a chance of landing the country’s best prep prospect.

Dayton Moore, the former Royals general manager who oversaw the club’s selection of Witt, tells a story about Junior. One night during Witt’s senior year, the Panthers were on the road against a school with a particularly ruthless student section that was showering the boy wonder with ear-splitting chants of “O-VER-RA-TED.”

In predictable fashion, Junior launched a no-doubter, silencing the rowdy crowd. As his dugout hooted and hollered, Witt circled the bags stoically. Head down, face expressionless, he simply floated above the moment, an even-keeled kid mature beyond his years.

“He didn't pop off,” Moore, now an advisor with the Rangers, told Yahoo Sports. “He just ran around the bases and shook the third-base coach’s hand.”

That stoicism helped Witt carry the immense pressure on his young shoulders. Each at-bat raised or lowered his draft stock. An ill-timed injury could cost him millions of dollars. And once Colleyville’s playoff run started, each game could mean the end of his storied high school career. For a team as talented as Witt’s Panthers — eight of the nine starters played Division I or professional baseball, including highly touted Braves prospect AJ Smith-Shawver — nothing but a state title was enough.

But when Colleyville lost the second game of a best-of-three series to Mansfield Heritage High School in the regional quarterfinals, their backs were suddenly, unexpectedly, against the wall. That Game 2 loss also meant Witt, Greer and the other graduating Panthers would have to miss their senior prom, scheduled the same night as the deciding game.

That day, as an afternoon rain pelted the sidewalk, the Panthers and their dates gathered in the Witt family living room for pictures. Bobby's sister Nikki — whose husband, former MLBer James Russell, threw to Bobby on Monday in his run to the finals of the Home Run Derby — did Maggie's hair and makeup. Bobby wore a silver, patterned tuxedo with a black bowtie and a white corsage. The young adults blushed and giggled as their parents snapped photos. An MLB Network camera captured it all for a mini-documentary.

Then Bobby’s mom, Laurie, clapped her hands and told the boys to get their uniforms on. Maggie, who was then a college freshman at Northwestern State, skipped prom, joining the Witts for the big game. Greer’s then girlfriend and now wife-to-be, Elizabeth Welch, went to prom with the rest of their class. But because thunderstorms delayed the crucial contest deep into the night, she was able to make the game after the party ended, arriving at the stadium moments before first pitch, still in her prom dress.

“We never got to experience senior prom,” Greer said. “But I think, you know, we have a funny story to go with it.”

Witt, Greer and the Panthers won that night and never lost again. They cruised to the state championship, the first in program history. Witt was drafted second overall by the Royals on June 3, three days before the state semifinal game. When a local reporter asked during the draft party how quickly he thought he could get to the big leagues, Witt, in classic big-league, hum-drum fashion, responded that, for the moment, he was entirely focused on winning a state championship.

He couldn’t have been more ready for the world of professional baseball.

In that cynical environment, Witt's outrageously humble demeanor could come across as contrived. Too-nice-to-be-true. A facade. But those who have spent time around the young star, during his days as a pro and prep, insist that it's real. They say he actually is incredibly skilled and incredibly kind.

After attending the 2018 High School All-American Showcase at Wrigley Field, Witt gave his uniform from the event to Regina-Prince Jones, a parking lot attendant at Colleyville High School and a die-hard Panthers baseball fan.

That’s the type of small, selfless gesture that has endeared Witt to those who have come into contact with him throughout the years. McDougal, his high school skipper, has since moved on to coach at a different school. But he still holds Junior as an example of what a ballplayer should be.

“There's no scenario in which I would hold you accountable for being able to perform athletically like Bobby Witt Jr.,” McDougal said. “However, I can ask that you perform as a human like Bobby Witt Jr. And I got to see that in the classroom. I got to see that on the baseball field. Just the way he conducts business, it's a model for everybody.”

That beacon now plays in Royal blue — and will for at least the next decade. Witt's appearance in Tuesday's All-Star Game might be his first, but it certainly won't be his last. Throwing the words "Hall of Fame" around a 24-year-old usually feels irresponsible, but not with Junior.

Vinnie Pasquantino, the Royals starting first baseman, was drafted the same year as Witt, albeit 317 picks later. He remembers having some initial skepticism about how the young superstar-to-be would carry himself. A top pick with oodles of talent, a big signing bonus and a famous dad can be a sticky combination.

But then stories started rolling in from the team’s complex in Arizona, where Witt was stationed for the summer, to the club’s rookie ball affiliate in North Carolina.

“The older [college-aged] guys that we knew in Arizona at that point are typically the later-round picks. And they hate everything,” Pasquantino said. “And when they're talking about how a guy is totally awesome, yeah, that carries a lot of weight.

“And then you meet him, and he's the nicest kid in the world.”

While Junior has never been the most outgoing character, he has shown more pizazz since signing his massive extension, gradually growing more comfortable with being a public figure. But he doesn’t need to say much to capture the attention and adulation of young baseball fans. Witt’s smile, swing and game are more than enough. His contagious, innocent, child-like energy comes across loud and clear.

Witt plays the game like it's a game. That’s how it has always been for Junior, ever since he was a kid bouncing around Colleyville’s summer baseball camp.