Twenty-three days before he signed with the Dodgers, Louis Coleman flew into Kansas City and checked into a downtown hotel. He was scheduled to sign autographs at a convention center during the final weekend in January with the rest of the World Series champion Kansas City Royals, a group he had watched from afar in October.
Coleman wondered why the organization tendered him a contract over the winter after stashing him in the minors for almost all of 2015, but the phone call he received the next morning still stunned him.