'Is this real?' Ex-Wildcat Scott Kingery still grappling with big leagues

A week before Scott Kingery hit his first career big-league grand slam, which came precisely one day after he hit his first big-league home run, the fog was just barely beginning to lift.

By the time he got to New York City last Tuesday for a matinee against the Mets, the only thing cloudier than Kingery’s mind was the city itself.

The Big Apple was in a blanket, the fog so thick on that early April morning, it was as if you’d have to chew through it. Felt like mid-September, the gusts of wind were so strong.

You know that kind of fog? Heavy, depressing, gray, dull. It enveloped Citi Field like a quilt of glum. This is not baseball weather. At least baseball that doesn’t feature Charlie Brown.

It took only a few hours for the fog to lift from New York City.

It took only a few weeks for the fog to lift from Kingery.

Is this for real?

On this crisp New York morning, with the Mets hosting Kingery’s Philadelphia Phillies, the game will be delayed nearly two hours.

Perfect. All the more time for Kingery, the former Arizona Wildcats star, to go to work.

He dips into the Phillies clubhouse around 10:35 a.m., but just for a few minutes. With no batting practice today — the tarp will stay out an hour after what was supposed to be game time — he still wants to get a few hacks in. He darts off, a red flash, covered head-to-toe in Phillies’ red. Even the socks. Even the cleats.

He returns a half-hour later breathing heavily but contented, ready to talk about the tornado that has been his life for the last month. Contracts and signatures and millions and millions of dollars and promotions and the big leagues and grand debuts and first hits and, whew, give this kid some time to breathe.

He is not yet 24 years old, but Kingery just received the largest contract given to a Major League Baseball player with no service time.

“There are times during the day where it’s like, is this real?” he says, shaking his head, as if he can’t believe it.

Standing in front of his locker stall in the visitor’s clubhouse at Citi Field on a day the Phillies’ newest supersub will get just one nondescript at-bat, Kingery describes the last five weeks like a man describes his wedding. The little details are a blur, but he sure remembers the big moments, the ones that would change his life, forever.

He was hopeful but realistic when he got to Clearwater, Florida, for spring training.

Last season, his third in the minors after being drafted with the 48th pick of the 2015 MLB Draft, Kingery tore through spring training and pushed himself into the Phillies’ long-term plans. In 2015, he batted .250 for the Single-A Lakewood BlueClaws in 66 games and combined to bat .281 a year later between the High-A Clearwater Threshers and the Double-A Reading Fightin’ Phils. Last season, after his terrific spring training, Kingery batted .313 in 69 games in Reading before getting the promotion to Triple-A Lehigh Valley and hitting .294 in 63 games for the IronPigs.

Even as he rolled through the opening weeks of this year’s spring training, one word loomed large in his mind: arbitration. The math was simple: If the Phillies were to start Kingery down in the minors for a couple weeks, they’d have one more year of his services before having to talk bucks. He had his bags packed in his mind, ready to head to Lehigh Valley, where, he hoped, it would be a short trip.

“Making it to the big leagues was always the goal,” he said. “No matter where you’re playing. For me, going into spring training, it was more about doing what I did the spring training before, when I had no chance of making the team. Every time I stepped on the field, I just wanted to prove what I could do, prove that I belonged there.”

With one stroke of the pen, the Phillies proved they thought Kingery belonged.

On March 25, Philadelphia inked their infielder to a six-year, $24 million contract with three additional club options, a record for a player with no major-league experience, shattering the $10 million in guarantees that Jon Singleton got with the Houston Astros in 2014. Kingery’s contract could be worth as much as $66 million.

At the time, Kingery was batting .392 in spring training with four home runs, but the new contract included no stipulations about roster spots or playing time.

“I was told nothing,” he said.

The next day, Kingery got a call to the manager’s office.

“First of all, walking into that office, whether you’re being told you’re heading to a minor-league camp or that you made the team, it’s the same feeling going in. It’s a scary feeling either way,” Kingery said. “I went in there (with) fingers crossed. But when you get told you’re going to be on a major-league roster on opening day, that’s a pretty cool feeling.”

Walking out of that office, Kingery suppressed a smile. There were other guys in somewhat similar positions — somewhat, that is, because they hadn’t been given a $24 million contract the day before — and Kingery wasn’t about to rub it in their faces.

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Plus, it still hadn’t hit him.

“That first game, I had a chance to soak it in a little bit, and when the flyover happened, I was overcome with emotions,” Kingery said. “But it didn’t hit me that I was, like … there ... a major-league player … until I was standing on a major-league field, playing in a major-league game, the next day.”

For his new teammates, it wasn’t much of a surprise.

“I don’t think this is something that just happened recently. I think this has been a long time coming for most of the guys in this clubhouse,” said Phillies outfielder Rhys Hoskins, who finished fourth in last year’s National League Rookie of the Year voting despite playing just 50 games after a mid-August call-up. “We know what kind of player he is, what kind of talent he is. You see the daily preparation he goes through, the work ethic he shows — he’s just a prepared individual.”

Kingery is hitting .250 in 10 games and eight starts, including 36 plate appearances with seven RBIs and two home runs — one a grand slam. He hit a walk-off sacrifice fly Wednesday night.

‘College gave me a chance to mature’

Of all of Arizona’s myriad MLB success stories, few are as improbable as Kingery’s.

An undersized, under-recruited prospect out of Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix, Kingery somehow slipped through the cracks and drew little to no attention from colleges across the country. He had eight home runs and 36 RBIs as a senior after hitting .495 with 10 homers and 39 RBIs as a junior, but the only numbers college coaches focused on was 67.

As in inches.

Kingery was 5 feet 7 inches coming out of high school, and maybe, he guesses, 150 pounds. In a jersey.

Kingery decided to walk on at Arizona in 2013.

“There’s two sides to it: One is that I believed I had the talent to play at the Division I level,” Kingery said. “I was playing with guys in travel ball over the summer and they’re getting offers to SEC schools, Pac-12 schools, and I was like …him? I don’t know what the deal is. My numbers were just as good. For me, that was one side.”

The other side, Kingery said, was blind faith.

“I wanted to take my chances, but if baseball didn’t work out, if I didn’t make the team, I would’ve gotten an education at the University of Arizona and done something else,” he said. “I was completely OK with taking my chance there. Thank goodness it worked out for me.”

Worked out? Worked out?

Kingery earned a spot on the team, had 30 hits and 22 runs scored in 41 appearances as a freshman in 2013, batted .354 with 26 RBIs and 19 steals as a sophomore and led the team with a .392 batting average and 36 RBIs as a junior. The Phillies took him with their second-round pick in 2015.

“College gave me a chance to mature,” he said. “I was tiny coming out of high school and that’s a lot of the reason it turned a lot of recruiters off me. Five-seven, 150 pounds, something like that. But I thought I was a good enough player in high school, had good enough numbers to at least get looked at.”

Even today, Kingery isn’t the exactly hulking, and while fast, he’s not considered a speed demon. As he stands in the Phillies locker room, he does not cut an imposing figure.

As Kingery prepares to take his swings, he must cycle through a dozen bats in his bat bag before he settles on the right one. It’s a feel thing, it seems.

Finding the perfect baseball player is a lot like finding the perfect bat.

The weight has to be just right, the grain ideal. It’s a feel thing.

And so it is with scouting baseball players.

“You don’t have to be the best athlete in the room, you don’t have to be able to run the fastest, to jump through the gym,” Hoskins said. “Baseball is such an intricate sport, and the mental side takes over, and that’s what separates guys. He really is a student of the game.”

“He plays hard, as hard as he can, and the results find their way,” added young Phillies outfielder Nick Williams. “That’s not something you have to worry about with him. He’s always trying to pick up on anything; you can tell he watches and studies as he goes.”