The young man is in that precarious place between flash and stardom, the wide open space into which many before him have disappeared and some have risen. If the men building the Royals are right, Adalberto Mondesi will be the biggest star of the next championship push.
That’s a bold bet, for reasons we’ll get to here, but one made on more than simply physical gifts as complete and outrageous as anyone who currently plays baseball for a living.
That bet is made for moments like 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon, some 17 hours after a four-hit game, Mondesi wearing a grey hoodie and sweating through one of the most mundane hitting drills possible — two-strike practice, against a machine, muscle memory created in front of a coach or two and virtually nobody else.