When most baseball fans think of the Royals, they think of George Brett. By winning batting titles in three different decades, leading the Royals to their only World Series win, and being the only Royals player in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, Brett is by far the greatest player in team history. Brett’s contribution to the Royals did not end when he retired from the majors back in 1993; he has spent the better part of the last 20 years working as a member of the Royals front office. To the untrained eye George Brett stands alone in dedication to the Royals organization, however there is another former player who rivals the dedication shown by Brett and Wednesday that player was voted to the Royals Hall of Fame.

Mike Sweeney was drafted as a catcher in the 10th round of the 1991 amateur draft by the Kansas City Royals and made his major league debut with the club on September 4th, 1995 against the Toronto Blue Jays. Sweeney posted average batting numbers for the first four years of his career before busting out with a .322 batting average in 1999. 1999 also marked the beginning of a seven year stretch where Sweeney would average .311 at the plate and 96 RBIs while spending time at catcher, first base, and designated hitter. Injuries marred Sweeney’s 2006 and 2007 campaigns and he was let go by the Royals after the 2007 season. Sweeney had a disappointing 2008 and 2009 in Oakland and Seattle, respectively,  before retiring after spending the 2010 season on minor league rosters. Sweeney’s seven year stretch was one of the most successful and consistent stretches in Royals history, but it is often overlooked because it took place in possibly the darkest period of the team’s history.

When Sweeney was drafted by the Royals in 1991, the team was still a mid to top level  franchise, only six years removed from the team’s first and only World Series win. That status began to change with the death of legendary owner and team founder Ewing Kauffman in 1993. With Kauffman’s death, team ownership was passed to a well-intentioned, but ill-conceived ownership trust headed by current owner David Glass. The new ownership immediately began cutting back on the payroll, sending the team from 4th highest payroll in 1994 to second lowest by 1996. This cut in payroll had a direct effect on the team’s on field performance and eventually lead the Royals on a steady decline into obscurity. By the time David Glass purchased the Royals outright in April of 2000, the damage to the franchise had been done. The repairs to the damage done by the uneven ownership would not even begin to be repaired until the hiring of Dayton Moore as general manager in 2006, just a year before Mike Sweeney’s career with the Kansas City Royals would come to an end.

After spending two years in retirement and two years as an analyst for the MLB Network, Mike Sweeney returned to the Royals as a special assistant to baseball operations in February of 2014. Sweeney spent his first full season as part of the front office in probably the wildest season in team history culminating  in a one run loss to the San Francisco Giants in Game 7 of the World Series. In now only his second season as part of the front office, Sweeney will be inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame having received 89.7% of the vote (I’m not sure what a**holes didn’t vote for him). Sweeney has been extremely emotional about his selection, dedicating his work thus far to his father, affectionately known as “Big Mike”, who he cites as his inspiration.

When Mike Sweeney was born, Big Mike gave up on his dreams of becoming a major league player so that he could bring in the consistent money needed to raise a family that would eventually contain eight children. Big Mike has closely followed the career of his second oldest child and has always been the person that Sweeney shares his career news with first. The announcement Wednesday was an especially emotional milestone for Sweeney because it comes on the heels of the news that Big Mike had been diagnosed with cancer in January. Sweeney has stated that he’s confident that Big Mike will overcome his cancer will be able to be at Kauffman Stadium in August when Sweeney is inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame.

When people inquire into Mike Sweeney’s dedication to the Royals, he likes to say that he would turn down any GM job in the league just to be a parking attendant for the Royals. That’s the kind of dedication that can lead a young Royals team to a path of consistent success and restore the glory that the city of Kansas City has longed to regain.

– Tommy Watson