SURPRISE, Ariz. — As he’s done virtually every year since being drafted by the Royals in 2007, Danny Duffy last month checked into the very spring training complex from which he’s launched nearly every season for half his life now.
As usual over the last decade, he’s been accompanied by his Alaskan Malamute, Sadie. He still takes those marathon therapeutic walks each day — even if he laughingly considers himself “too long in the tooth” to go much past a seven-or eight-miler now.
And he’s once more here at the behest of Dayton Moore, who 16 years ago made him the third-round pick of the first draft he oversaw as general manager of the Royals — the team for which Duffy became a vibrant part of back-to-back World Series appearances and the quintessential teammate and fan icon with his “bury me a Royal” mindset.
If this all sounds like some strange brew of deja vu, it’s actually more the stuff of the Bizarro world of opposites and reversals.
Because after two years of wretched arm issues that kept him from ever throwing a pitch for the Dodgers after the Royals traded him to Los Angeles in 2021, the 34-year-old Duffy is seeking a comeback not with the Royals but with … the Texas Rangers, who reside across the parking lot from the Royals’ facilities at the Surprise Stadium complex the clubs share for spring training.
If it’s not exactly full circle to enter the campus and go to the building opposite the one that was so familiar, well …
“It was a trip,” he said in the Rangers’ clubhouse on Saturday. “I’d never been on this side before.”
Unless you count one game in rookie ball, he remembered.
Just the same, he felt at home as soon as he walked in. And not just because he could look around and see people he’s known for years.
People such as former Royals teammate Chris Young, the Rangers’ head of baseball operations, and Moore, who became a senior advisor to Young weeks after the Royals fired him last fall.
People like bullpen coach Brett Hayes, a former Royal, and Triple-A development coach Josh Johnson (who crossed paths with Duffy in the Royals’ minor league system). And like former Kansas City farm system and Royals teammates Jake Odorizzi and Will Smith — whose locker is immediately next to Duffy’s.
Comforting as all that and other connections might be for Duffy, though, his mission here isn’t about nostalgia.
It’s about learning from those around him, including manager Bruce Bochy (“a legend,” Duffy calls him) and pitching coach Mike Maddux — who already strikes Duffy as “incredible” at his job.
And it’s about trying to get his groove back, starting with his health, to resume a career highlighted by a six-year run in which he averaged nine wins and 150 innings pitched for the Royals.
During that span, from 2014-2019, Duffy was 11th in the American League in total starts (150), 14th in ERA (3.84) and 15th in innings pitched (8,972). He was the opening day starter for the Royals in 2017, 2018 and 2020.
All while being about the most real Royal there could be.
When the struggling team sent him to the Dodgers at the trade deadline in 2021 — in part to enable him to be in a postseason chase with the team he had dreamed of playing for while growing up in California — Duffy had a 2.51 ERA.
But he had been on the injured list for weeks with an ongoing left flexor strain. And as he tried to work his way back with the Dodgers, he suffered another setback that ultimately would lead to what he called flexor surgery with a UCL brace.
At the time, according to the Los Angeles Times, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “Outside of any type of miracle, for him to impact us this year, it’s going to be tough.”
Tangibly, anyway.
But when the defending World Series champions clinched a return to the playoffs, Duffy was overwhelmed to learn he’d had an impact, anyway.
If you know his spirit, though, this won’t surprise you.
Roberts that day gave accolades around the clubhouse full of what Duffy called legends such as Albert Pujols and Clayton Kershaw. He called attention to the likes of Max Scherzer, who registered his 3,000th strikeout that season, and plenty of others.
Feeling like “Joe Schmoe” after not contributing on the field, he was startled when Roberts called out his name.
“I’m nobody, in my mind,” he recalled. “And he goes, ‘Danny Duffy. He may have thrown his last pitch in the big leagues.’ And I was thinking the same thing.”
With words that still give Duffy goosebumps, Roberts then spoke of Duffy’s relentless attitude toward trying to get back to help the team.
“ ‘Way to go, Duff,’ ” he remembered Roberts adding. “ ‘You were born to be a Dodger.’ ”
At his home in Lompoc, Calif., in fact, Duffy had a baseball inscribed by former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda at a pre-draft workout in 2007:
“To Danny,” it said, “a future Dodger.”
Alas, though, Duffy never threw a pitch for the team he was such a fan of growing up. Surgery prevented him from resuming pitching until August 2022, and his season ended abruptly after a few outings during a Triple-A game with Oklahoma City.
“It felt like a funeral when I blew it out the second time,” said Duffy, who abruptly couldn’t straighten his arm or even pick up a ball.
The injury, though, wasn’t structural. It was chronic inflammation, which after a few weeks he was told meant he’d be good to go but would have to work to build his strength back.
Coincidentally, he said, it was only days later that Moore texted and said he and Young wanted to do “everything we can to get you here.”
“Gosh, man, it’s like the stars are just aligning,” said Duffy, who signed a minor-league contract with a non-roster invitation. “I’m just thankful for both of those guys. Because I haven’t proven that I was healthy in two years and I’m starting to feel like I am again.
“I don’t feel pain. I can turn right in my car with my left hand. I can open doors.”
On Friday, Duffy said he had enjoyed the “best day of catch I’ve had in like two years.”
Tempting as it is for him to overdo it now, Duffy said he appreciates the “guardrails” the Rangers are enforcing.
“Which I need,” said Duffy, who has contended with numerous injuries in his career. “Because in the past I’ve always just tried to go until I can’t. The mentality has always been if I blow it out, I blow it out, and there’s no in-between.”
Including in his focus on the moment here.
He’s not dwelling on what happens if he can’t make it back, other than knowing he’ll stay in the game in some way.
And beyond the fact that he’ll always treasure the memories and fans in Kansas City, where he took out a full-page ad in The Kansas City Star to bid goodbye, he’s not thinking about his past with the team across the lot but his present with this one.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t still feel the same about him, as perhaps best-expressed by Moore when the Royals traded him.
“We truly love Danny,” he said then, adding that the time with him is “forever a part of our memory bank. And we’ll cherish those.”
And we’ll sure be rooting for him to make his way back in whatever uniform he’s wearing.
