One pitcher who loves walks
Spending time with dogs helps Royals’ Duffy keep up his positive attitude
SURPRISE, ARIZ.— In a recent #AskThePadres Twitter Q&A, former Royal Eric Hosmer was quizzed about the best teammate he ever had. A: Danny Duffy. “He was always bringing in stuff for the whole team,” Hosmer replied. “He’s the pitcher always on the top step when he’s not pitching.”
There are many reasons for Duffy’s faithfulness and engagement and ongoing stature as the most real Royal there is, and none is more meaningful than being blessed to have nurturing parents and a naturally sensitive disposition.
But he’s also who he is because of ... dogs, without whom his parents may not have ever meshed and a noble parade of which have been by his side since before he can remember.
If you don’t like dogs, alas, you probably can’t relate.
If you are right-minded and love them, though, this is yet another way you might love Danny Duffy.
“They’re the best friends you’ll ever have,” Duffy said at spring training, where his dog, Sadie, is roaming for the seventh straight year — making her one of the veteran personalities here as the Royals turn over their roster. “They’re super loyal. You walk in, you have a bad day, they don’t care: They’re ready to greet you at the door.
“So as much as we save their lives, they save ours, too.”
Through it all: being bullied as a child, the extreme ups and downs of pro baseball and the dire and distressing circumstances of the last year.
That included the death of revered friend Yordano Ventura, elbow surgery, wildfires and mudslides near his off-season home in Santa Barbara, Calif., becoming the subject of trade speculation and being cited for a DUI on Aug. 27.
“The day after everything went down last year, the morning that I woke up, obviously, I was really kicking myself. And Sadie was right there next to me,” Duffy said. “I woke up, stood out of bed, and there she was. We went out on a walk, and the day got started and time goes on.
“Time doesn’t stop. It’s always nice to have that comfort when everything is going south for you.”
Which is virtually all he’s ever known, starting with the tone set in 1983 when his parents “met in jail,” as his father, Dan, put it when I visited them last year.
Deanna, who would go on to join the California State Highway Patrol, was working for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department when Dan was hired.
Upon seeing her, he thought, “Wow, who’s that?”
She had an equally powerful reaction: “I didn’t like him much.”
Until this: When he was unusually quiet one day, she asked what was wrong. He told her it was the anniversary of his father’s death.
When she asked if he had a picture, he showed her one in his wallet.
But she was struck by something else, too.
He also was carrying a photo of his dog, Taffy, the turning point in their relationship.
Suddenly, she was unfurling wallet pictures of her own dog, Heidi, thinking there “was something more to him.”
That begot what their only child would call “a zoo at my house” — one that at times included cats, rabbits, birds and then some ... but was made whole by dogs.
No wonder Duffy thought to say “fur sure” when he was in that bear suit talking to Fox Sports KC’s Joel Goldberg in the 2015 post-season.
Before Sadie and her three “cousins” (Tawny, K.C. and Scout) living back home in Lompoc, Calif., Duffy recalled, there were Kaiser and Molly and Baron and Sally and Champ, “my high school dog.”
Every one of them has a story, every one a place in the emotional IQ of Duffy, who among other related initiatives took part in promotional videos last year in support of a vote to finance a new KC Pet Project facility and was “stoked” when it passed.
Kaiser was “super-protective,” and one of the first true friends for an only child who by his own description “didn’t have too many friends.”
One way or another, he could say he received the same from them all.
But especially from Champ, a multi-talented Chesapeake Bay retriever who learned how to open a refrigerator and take out a Gatorade and bring it to him and fetched the newspaper every day.
Nearly four years after his death from cancer, even with three well-loved dogs currently under their roof, Champ still is actively mourned in Duffy’s childhood home.
And he is compellingly com- memorated in an artist’s portrait of a clay rendition of a photo of him in their backyard.
In it, he sits next to a rock the family still has that says, “I Wish That I Could Be The Person My Dog Thinks I Am.”
The artist commissioned by a relative wanted to know all about Champ and what Danny does for a living, which led to one of the great flourishes of the 2014 work:
At Champ’s front paws sits an imaginary future Lompoc Record, with the front-page headline, DUFFY AND ROYALS WIN THE WORLD SERIES !!!!!!
Add it all up, and it’s easy to see the correlation between man’s best friend and Hosmer’s best teammate ever — something encapsulated in wisdom Duffy’s mother shares with him from an unknown author.
“It came to me that every time I lose a dog, they take a piece of my heart with them,” it goes. “And every new dog who comes into my life gifts me with a piece of their heart.
“If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are.” A dog’s purpose. “They definitely are good at softening your heart,” Duffy said.
“And I wouldn’t have been the same without them.”