Paying My Dues
Whit Merrifield and Tom Hager
In partnership with Athletes For God
In the middle of each game, usually around the fifth or sixth inning, I stop and take a moment to look around. I've now played in nearly 400 games and had over 1,500 at bats in my career, but I still take the time to appreciate where God has brought me. After how long it took me to get here, I want to soak in every moment I can.
My name is Whit Merrifield and I play for the Kansas City Royals. Life is great these days, and I just signed a contract over the offseason to keep me here for the next several years, but it wasn't that long ago that I was ready to quit the sport for good.
In fact, I played that conversation in my head multiple times. Six years in the minor leagues will do that to you. I never questioned God's plan, but I did question if that plan included a career playing major league baseball. The funny thing was, the closer that I got to the big leagues, the more I started to question if it was ever going to happen.
When you're starting out your minor league career, the big leagues seem like some distant dream in the horizon. When you're in Triple-A, everything is more tangible...including every strikeout, every error, and every roster move. I can honestly say that if it wasn't for my family, especially my Dad, I might not be sharing this story with you today. But my Dad didn't raise me to casually quit something I had worked all those years to achieve.
"Once you take your cleats off," my dad warned me, "That's it. You can't put them back on."
If you would have told me back in college that my relationship with the game would become that complicated, I would have had a hard time believing it. Until that point, things had all gone according to plan. I excelled in high school, and received an offer to play at the University of South Carolina - one of the most prestigious baseball programs in the country.
Ray Tanner never had a losing season in 25 years as a head coach, and my first two seasons at USC were no exception. We went 40-23 in each of my first two years there, but it was in my junior season at South Carolina where I had the greatest moment of my career.
My last at-bat as a Gamecock was one I will never forget.
As UCLA's catcher began to crouch down, I began to feel a rush of nerves course through my veins.
Our team was on the verge of winning a national championship, and the bat was in my hands. It was the bottom of the 11th inning in Game 2 of the College Series, and the winning run was 90 feet away from me.
We were facing UCLA in a best-of-three series to win the National Championship, and after having already won the first game 7-1, we had a chance to end things right there and then. With the score tied at 1-1, all I needed was a sac fly to give South Carolina its first NCAA Championship in baseball.
As I made my way from the on-deck circle to the batter's box, I was certain that I wouldn't get a pitch to hit. Back then you couldn't point to first base to ask for the intentional walk, you had to actually face four pitches, but I knew that my plate appearance was just a formality. We had a runner on third base with one out, and nothing about the situation called for me to get a pitch to hit.
Baseball 101 says that you intentionally load the bases. The potential run at third would end the game, so the runners at first and second would serve no purpose other than to create a force out at every plate and set up a potential double play. Plus, the batter behind me was future World Series winner Jackie Bradley Jr., so I was almost certain they were walking both of us.
To top it off, future All-Star Trevor Bauer was waiting in the bullpen, so it made sense for him to come in and throw eight balls to me and JBJ to loosen up. Instead, as I gripped my bat and looked toward the mound, I noticed Trevor wasn't coming in the game. And when the catcher crouched down, I noticed they weren't walking me either.
This was it. This was actually happening.
The first pitch was low and away, and so was the second. Now with a 2-0 count in my favor, I began to think again that I was being walked. This time it was going to be an "unintentional-intentional walk", where I would get four pitches out of the zone, just to see if I would swing away.
The thing was, I had been in this position before, and the previous time I had let my team down. I was determined to not let it happen a second time.
Most Gamecock fans remember that at-bat against UCLA, but what they might not remember was our game a few days before, when we were facing elimination against Oklahoma. We were down 2-1 in the bottom of the 12th inning, with one out, when I stepped to the plate. And sitting on a 3-1 count, I got under the ball and popped it up to third. It was only because JBJ tied the game with two outs and two strikes that I was even in this position against UCLA.
Considering I had messed up the last time I was in this spot, coach Tanner had every reason in the world to micro-manage the situation. He could have given me instructions after every pitch and told me exactly what to do. But he trusted me, and believed in me, even more than maybe I believed in myself.
So with the 2-0 count and my teammate Scott Wingo inching his way off third base, I made up my mind to swing. Anything even close to the plate and I was going to hack away. Sure enough, even though the ball was low again, it caught enough of the plate for me to swing. And when I did, I could tell I had made good contact.
The ball began to sail, and sail, and when it hit the grass over their right fielder's head, that was it. South Carolina had just won the National Championship!
Everybody mobbed Scott at home, but I had to touch first to make the run count. As soon as I rounded the bag, my teammates made their way toward me. They formed a huge dog pile, and even though I was at the bottom of the heap, it felt like I was on top of the world.
We celebrated as a team, and then I celebrated with everyone who had come to watch me - my mom, my dad, my brothers and sisters, and my girlfriend. Then the next day when we got back to Columbia, I began to realize just how big of a deal this was to the people there. We had a parade and celebration in front of the state Capital, and everywhere I looked I saw Garnet and Black. And they had all come there to congratulate us.
But God's plan didn't call for me to stay in that moment forever. If I was going to get to the big leagues, I needed to be humbled first.
It didn't take me long to realize I wasn't in Columbia anymore.
The first thing to change was my jersey number. I had played as #5 in college, but when I got to the minor leagues, I had to switch to a new number.
The second thing to change was the level of play. Playing at USC helped me skip the Rookie-ball system, but I had to start my minor league career at Single-A. The SEC is more similar to a Double-A level of baseball, but if I wanted to reach the big league level of Kansas City, I was going to have to earn it.
And maybe, although I can't speak for God, He wanted to see how badly I wanted it. The best things in life are often hard to accomplish, and although God could have just catapulted me right to the big leagues, it was in His plan that I go through some adversity first.
The minor leagues can be a brutal experience...you're playing games in front of sparse crowds, and taking long bus rides from one game to another. And of course the pay is not exactly the same as the major leagues either.
But the toughest part of all was seeing how people approached Single-A ball. Almost nobody cared whether we won or lost. The entire system is based on player development, so the better a player does, the less likely he is to stay with his current minor league team. Therefore, since everybody is focused on who is advancing up through the system, almost no one is focused on whether the team wins or loses. And even fewer seem to pay much attention to how the other teammates are doing.
It was the complete opposite of South Carolina. At USC we were one team, and we were focused on winning as a team. But just because the minor leagues can be a selfish experience, that doesn't mean it has to be. One of my favorite bible verses in Mark 12:31, which says there is no greater commandment than to love others as yourself, and I've tried to live that out as a player.
I have a funny way of showing it sometimes, because if I'm teasing my teammates, that means I like them. But as long as I get the message across that I care about them and I'm pulling for them, then that's what matters.
The ironic part was that even though the Bible tells us to love others - and that I tried to show that every day in the clubhouse - it's not always easy to do. While I was still toiling away in the minor leagues, two of my teammates from the 2010 USC team were already on the big stage. Sam Dyson broke through with the Blue Jays in 2012 and Jackie broke through with the Red Sox on opening day of the 2013 season. At that point I wasn't even really close to the majors. I was still with the Northwest Arkansas Naturals of Double-A, and jealousy was something I struggled with at times.
It wasn't like I wanted them to fail...it was more like when is my turn ever going to come? Or will it come? But the Bible tells us not to be jealous of others, so I did the only thing I could - cheer for my teammates and get back into the batting cage.
In baseball we're taught to never look at a third strike, but to give yourself every chance by swinging. It was the same for my career. I didn't know if I would ever get to the big leagues, but there was only way one to find out.
If was going to strike out, I was going to strike out swinging.
God could have put me in any major league system. He could have put me in a really struggling organization where I could have made it quickly through the ranks. Instead, God's path took me through the Royals organization, where major league spots were not easy to come by.
In 2014, as I finally made it to Triple-A Omaha, our major league team was heading to the World Series. Even though I hit .340 that season in the minors, it seemed like there was nowhere to put me. Our major league roster was stacked.
In 2015 the Royals got even better, and that season our organization won our first World Series since 1985. But as the big league players were enjoying two of the best seasons in our franchise's history, I was really struggling.
Earlier that season I thought I had finally gotten my chance. Alex Gordon got hurt that July playing for Kansas City, and I got the call. I was heading to the big leagues!
I started packing my bags and that's when they called back to let me know they had changed their minds and had decided to keep me in the Triple-A system. It hurt, but I was okay. I knew that the rosters expanded in September, and I would surely get my call up then. If they had considered me in July, they were definitely going to bring me up in September.
It didn't happen.
I was asked recently if the time in the minor leagues made me a nicer person, and I didn't know if that was true. I think I've been a nice guy my whole life, and that I would have stayed that way, even if I had been called up the majors as a 23-year-old. But all I know is that God didn't intend for me to be in the majors at that time, and I just accepted whenever He let me break through.
Plus, as I had found out earlier in my life, God can take bad situations and make something beautiful out of them.
In 2005, I met my future wife at a funeral. Jordan was in the grade above me in high school, and I had always known who she was because she was beautiful, but I had never gotten a chance to meet her. Then her great-uncle, who was a good friend of my grandfather, passed away. Out of respect for my grandfather and his friend I attended the funeral, and for the first time in my life I got a chance to talk with Jordan.
A few months later we started dating, and this year, in November, I will finally call her my wife.
I tried to be there for her during a difficult time in her life at the funeral, and now that I was struggling, she was there for me. She knows just what to say when things are going bad, and how to make me feel better. In this profession sometimes it's difficult to tell people's motives when they spend time with you, but with Jordan there's no doubt. It's because she loves me.
She was there with me when I got the call in 2015 that I was staying put, and she was there with me the next season when I found out I was getting called up. For real this time.
I should clarify that Jordan was with me metaphorically, because when I finally did get the call, I couldn't get anybody to answer my phone. Not my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my siblings. Nobody could answer, because I think they were all asleep.
Our team was playing at Tacoma, Washington, and I found out around 7 or 8 p.m. local time, which meant it was 10 or 11 back home in North Carolina. The thing was, I had to be on a taxi at 3 a.m. that next morning.
So I finally got a hold of Jordan's sister, and then had her wake everybody up to tell them. By this point it was about midnight Tacoma time, and with just three hours to spare before I headed out, I didn't get any sleep at all. I flew straight to Kansas City and drove straight to the field, with none of my stuff. All my gear was on its way to Reno with the Triple-A team, so when I got to the ballpark I didn't have anything to practice with.
Of course, that hardly seemed to matter, because I almost had no time to practice anyway.
By the time I got to Kauffman Stadium, the Royals had already played the first game of a double-header, and they were about to play the second. There's a 45-minute window between games to prepare, so I borrowed some cleats and a glove, and went out to take three or four fly balls. Then I took a few swings, and convinced myself I was ready enough for my debut.
I normally get to the ballpark for a 7 p.m. game at 1 or 1:30, but for the biggest game of my life I was showing up later than most of the fans.
The ironic part was that I was making my big league debut against the guy who played a role in helping me get there in the first place.
We were playing the Red Sox, so watching my first at-bat from center field was none other than Jackie Bradley, Jr. I didn't have time to say hello before the game started, but after the game he made sure to welcome me to The Show.
If I couldn't tell I had made it at that point, I certainly felt it a few weeks later when I was playing against the Twins. I was a second baseman that night, and when Joe Mauer got on second, he told me that he liked watching me play. Here was a future Hall-of-Famer, telling me he enjoyed how I played the game.
But as quickly as my success came, it was gone just as fast.
I made my debut on May 18, but by July the organization recalled me to Omaha. I had played well - I hit .283 with the Royals my rookie season - but I was being sent back down. It was ironic because Omaha was the place where I had the greatest moment of my baseball career, but now Omaha had a chance to resemble where my career started to go backwards.
But here's the thing, you've got to keep pushing, because God never puts anything on your plate that you can't handle.
I used the demotion to motivate me, and by September of that season I was back in Kansas City. And I've never looked back since.
I hit .288 in 2017, and last year I had the best season of my career. I hit .304, and led the league in hits. Going into the last game of the season, I was also leading the league in the steals, by just one over Trea Turner. It was still a tight race, but when I stepped up to the plate in the eighth inning of that last game, I had my opportunity to cement my lead. I knocked a base hit through the middle to get on first, and on a 1-2 count I took off for second. The throw was off the mark and I was able to slide in safely for the steal.
It was at that point my manager Ned Yost called for me to leave the game...to a standing ovation. I had never been in a situation like that before, and forgot to tip my cap, but I hope the Royals fans know how much I appreciate their support.
God's blessings continued to pour in over the offseason, and now that I signed my contract to keep me in Kansas City, my family will never have to worry about money ever again. Money doesn't make people happy, but it's nice to have that security.
The money and the fame haven’t changed me, and I still plan on doing my same routine before each game. I'm going to read my devotional every day, and about an hour before the game starts I'm going to say a little prayer. And then one more time, as the National Anthem begins to play, I'll thank God for where I am, and what's led me here.
When you play at Kauffman Stadium it's not difficult to be thankful, because there's no other team I'd rather play for than the Royals. And there's no person I'd rather share this journey with than Jordan.
Not only do I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet, I'm lucky enough to realize it as well.
So for all of you young players out there struggling to make it, just remember to keep pushing, because you just might like what God has on the other side.