On a crisp September night last year, the Royals’ Double-A minor league affiliate won its first championship in more than a decade. A strikeout sealed the title for the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, turning the mound into the primary address for a dogpile.

As a pitcher raised his arms skyward and infielders whipped their gloves into the air like graduation caps, big No. 44 came barreling into the fray.

Vinnie Pasquantino, an oversized lefty first baseman with light-tower power, had been a late arrival to this group — not just its final celebration — but a funny thing happened once he did land in Northwest Arkansas. A middling team became one of the league’s tougher ones to beat, and eventually its very toughest. He’d started the year with High A-level Quad Cities.

Although he’d been an 11thround pick, his ascension began to correlate more similarly with an early-round prospect.

He was engrossed in the championship celebration on that evening last September, fittingly so for a significant contributor with 11 home runs and 42 RBI in just 55 games. But after it thinned, he returned to the clubhouse and sought an update on another game. Quad Cities was playing in its own championship series, and Pasquantino would soon learn his former team had won that same night, forcing a deciding Game 5.

He grabbed his phone, opened his contacts list and found Chris Widger, the Quad Cities manager, who happened to be sitting in his office next to Royals general manager J.J. Picollo.

Pasquantino fired off a text.

Hey, I’m jumping in my car. I’m coming to play tomorrow so we can win another one.

A catapult through the minor leagues

Half a year later, on Monday afternoon, Pasquantino started up his 2015 Ford Escape and cruised south down Interstate 29. It was a surreal trip to Kansas City, both figuratively and literally.

He was doing laundry and taking out the garbage when told of his promotion to the bigs. If you ask a roommate, Pasquantino says you’ll learn it was his first time disposing of the trash since they lived together in Omaha. His body, Pasquantino says, went numb upon learning the news.

There has been little typical about his route here. An 11thround pick cracked MLB’s list of top-100 prospects in less than three years, and one of those years was wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic. Pasquantino was not even a participant at the team’s alternate training site during the pandemic season of 2020, instead finding pick-up games to stay fresh. He’d never played above rookie ball before last year.

His production became so impossible to ignore — a .950 OPS or better each full year as a pro — that the Royals’ front office began to worry not about whether he’d make it in the majors, but rather if he had enough plate appearances to justify a call-up. Because all of the numbers suggested it was past due. He was the only player in Triple-A’s International League with at least six home runs and more walks than strikeouts.

Yet if you ask someone within the organization about him, they’ll talk about his personality before mentioning any of that. The story we’ve already shared — a desire to demote himself just to help a team win a minor-league title — is told because, well, it’s not usual.

After he was drafted, some said he couldn’t play first base well, and so he quipped to Royals director of hitting Alec Zumwalt that he’d be a better first baseman than Eric Hosmer, the former Royal and owner of four Gold Gloves. Zumwalt grew such a liking to Pasquantino the person that he brought his family to Pasquantino’s first game in Kansas City this week.

When you ask Zumwalt how this kind of climb could happen so quickly, he shares one of his favorite stories. In 2019, the same year Pasquantino was drafted, he played for Burlington in rookie ball. In one particular at-bat that must’ve lasted nearly a dozen pitches, Pasquantino took a full-count offering off the edge of the plate, but the umpire rung him up anyway. It was a key at-bat in a game Burlington would eventually lose.

Zumwalt spotted Pasquantino in the clubhouse the day after the game, “and you could just tell he was wearing the loss of that game on his shoulders.”

Zumwalt asked him if the pitch was a strike.

Pasquantino had not looked at the video, he said, but he still shook his head.

“You’re right,” Zumwalt responded, as he recalled in telling the story this week, “That should have been a walk. So don’t swing at that.”

It was a process-over-result conversation that Zumwalt has since called a turning point. Trust yourself. Trust the results will come on a grander scale.

“We’ve given him the freedom to be himself,” Zumwalt said. “He wanted to learn. He asks a million questions, which I love. He wants to know our why. I want to know his why.”

From the outside looking in, you might wonder how baseball’s 319th overall pick rushed his way to the majors

I know I did.

But now?

Let’s try this instead: How did a guy who rushed his way to the majors — without merely a blip in the route — ever make it to 319?

The draft story

The Pasquantino family watched the 2019 MLB Draft from the Mellow Mushroom, a pizza joint, in Virginia.

They were optimistic — they’d been told Pasquantino could go as early as the third round. So they grabbed a table, ordered some pizza and waited for his name to be called.

And waited.

And waited.

Ten rounds had passed by the end of that second day, and he was still on the board.

“It was like one of those NFL guys on TV,” his father, Dennis, said. “That was not a fun day — let’s just say that.”

Dennis coached his son for much of his Little League career. He actually still coaches both a high school and showcase team back home. Just can’t help it. Like his son, there’s a love for the game that just won’t leave.

Each time they stepped into Wal-Mart, Pasquantino’s older brother would dart toward the action figures ... and Vinnie would sprint to the sporting goods section. The family living room turned into a baseball diamond by the time Vinnie was 2. His mother insists his first word was “ball.”

When he’d come home from middle school, and then high school, or even from practice, he’d set his things down on the table, turn to his dad and ask, “Wanna go hit?”

He was an All-America honorable mention in high school, where his career slugging percentage was nearly 1.000. Played in some showcases. Went the college route to Old Dominion. Dominated there, for the most part. Hit 16 home runs in 56 games as a junior.

But the call didn’t come on Day 2.

They couldn’t figure it out. They’d decided to ignore the next day of the draft, Vinnie included, until a friend texted him.

Dude, you just got drafted.

Vinnie didn’t have much time to read the details. He was next in line at the drivethru for McDonald’s. His dad had asked for a double-cheeseburger.

‘You could see it’

This week, I called Jim Farr, the man who scouted Pasquantino for the Royals, basically trying to ascertain an answer to the same question his family had wrestled with on draft day.

I don’t understand it. How could he have fallen so far?

Old Dominion, located in Norfolk, Virginia, can a bit of a pain in the you-know-what to travel to, Farr explained, but you could already tell he was searching. There are tunnels, and traffic can get backed up, and, well, midway through all of this, Farr couldn’t help but acknowledge the obvious.

“Of course,” he said with a laugh, “that didn’t stop them from coming to see Justin Verlander.”

Farr knew of one other potential reason, a much more plausible one. Pasquantino suffered a back injury during his sophomore year. When he returned as a junior, after an extended period of rehab, his mechanics were out of whack, and he struggled. In fact, his father had mulled urging his son to consider returning to college for his senior season.

Briefly. Pasquantino lit it up in the second half of the year and still hit 16 home runs in a park that, a few years ago, was not the launching pad it is today. His 16 home runs accounted for 31% of his team’s blasts that season.

Apparently the resurgence came too late for some scouts. It’s not like they were rushing the gates by the dozens to see him initially, but by the time his junior year concluded, Farr could sense only his and the Cubs’ interest.

And Farr couldn’t quit the kid.

His link dated back to high school, fostered through a connection to some of Pasquantino’s high school and summer coaches. He even worked with him in the cage one afternoon before Pasquantino’s senior year. He’d stuck with him for the duration. In particular, he remembered a 6-for-6 game that Pasquantino had as a sophomore at Old Dominion.

“Used the whole field — drove the ball,” Farr said. “You could see it — he was getting an approach, a little bit of an idea beyond just trying to pull the ball out of the ballpark.”

Farr made his recommendation during a meeting a couple of weeks before the draft, and the Royals’ front office and scouting department popped in the tape.

“Immediately, you could see the power,” Royals general manager J.J. Picollo said. “And then I also recall him hitting against left-handers. That showed he had a pretty good feel of the strike zone and just having a good approach.”

Farr later heard that maybe only a half-dozen teams still had Pasquantino on their draft boards that year, but the Royals were intrigued. As the third day of the draft began, Danny Ontiveros, now the organization’s scouting director, called Farr.

Tell me about his makeup.

“Wherever he goes,” Farr replied, “He’ll run for mayor there.”

A home in KC

On Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Pasquantino had been penciled into his first majorleague lineup, he held court in front of his locker.

First with the media.

And then with his new teammates.

They weren’t exactly strangers before the week began — Pasquantino had spent spring training with this group. The conversation picked up like they hadn’t spent the ensuing three months apart. They quickly debated which nickname would fit him best — Italian Breakfast (which he doesn’t seem to prefer, though his massive breakfast routine has gone mini-viral), Italian Nightmare or maybe Italian Sausage. Bobby Witt Jr. held a portable door-frame basketball goal in his hand, urging Pasquantino to dunk one through the net.

“You’re going to see why everyone wants to be around him,” Zumwalt said. “They know he’s had to work for this. He’s not been given a golden ticket and a free ride.”

“When you talk to his teammates at Old Dominion, it was clear how they gravitated toward him,” Farr added. “He’s a heck of a competitor, but he’s a big teddy bear, too. He’s going to be a leader in any clubhouse he’s in.”

In Pasquantino’s initial 24 hours, Royals manager Mike Matheny made a point to tell him not to change who he is. He wasn’t simply referring to the approach in the batter’s box that’s fast-tracked him here. Pasquantino’s personality — the wit, the passion — is needed inside a Royals clubhouse that has tended to be on the quiet side of the spectrum.

“I think you need encouragement to let your personality show through,” Matheny said.

On Tuesday, hours before his first plate appearance, Pasquantino wandered into the dugout, alone, and walked to the top step. He hung his arms over the railing, scanning first the field and then the sections of empty seats before the gates opened.

It would be nice to say he had been motivated to make this happen after his draft-week snubs. It’s just not really the case. He brushed that off long ago. In his words, he “just worried about playing baseball.”

That’s all he ever wanted — back when he was 2 years old, walking through Wal-Mart with his dad, digging a plastic bat out of the bin.

No. 319 or No. 1?

A good story for us.

Inconsequential for its subject.

“None of that matters to me now,” he said. “I just wanna play the game.”