By C. Trent Rosecrans, Stephen J. Nesbitt and Sam Blum

One night earlier this summer at Kauffman Stadium, Bobby Witt Jr. came to bat in the ninth inning with one player on base, one out and his Kansas City Royals trailing by one run. He then hit a triple to tie the game for his third hit, ran home on a walk-off grounder and only stopped running to give an on-field interview. Witt, still catching his breath, grinned at the home crowd chanting his name and said, “What do you think? Pretty funny?”

Witt, the 24-year-old All-Star shortstop, is having a sensational season. He leads the majors with a .352 batting average, is considered the game’s fastest man and best defender, is the only player other than fellow American League MVP favorite Aaron Judge with a WAR over 8 this season, and has started at shortstop and batted second in every Royals game this season.

Additionally, Witt has been historically good in Kansas City: He is on pace to become the first major league player in 20 years to hit a .400 batting average at home. After hitting 3-of-5 on Tuesday night, Witt has a .405 batting average in 281 batting appearances at Kauffman Stadium this season.

Ted Williams posted a batting average over .400 at Fenway Park in 1941, 1951 and 1957. Since then, only nine hitters – four of them from the pre-humidor era in Colorado – have posted a batting average of .400 in at least 275 at-bats at home: Joe Cunningham, Rod Carew, Wade Boggs, Kirby Puckett, Andrés Galarraga, Eric Young Sr., Larry Walker, Jeff Cirillo and Barry Bonds.

Witt could soon join that short list.

“He’s as complete a player as you could imagine,” Boggs, who twice posted a batting average under .400 at Fenway Park, said by phone this week.

“Plus power and super speed,” said Cirillo.

“He’s become a really great player in a really short period of time,” Carew said.

---

The stadium itself is a factor in Witt’s quest for .400, just as it was with Boggs and Fenway’s Green Monster, with Puckett and the Metrodome’s AstroTurf, and with the mile-high Rockies. Kauffman Stadium has the second-largest outfield in the major leagues after Coors Field, which suppresses home runs but provides extra space for singles, doubles and triples. The stadium helps maximize the batting ability and speed that contribute to Witt’s high average, but it also dampens his home run number.

In Cincinnati on Friday, Royals infielder Michael Massey estimated that Witt would hit 15 more home runs if he played every game on the launch pad at Great American Ball Park. Later that evening, Witt hit his 25th home run of the season, a second-deck hit that would have never been hit in any major league stadium. Massey was incredibly close. Witt’s estimated total home runs in Cincinnati – 39 – would do wonders for his MVP chances.

“I would take Bobby in any stadium,” said Royals manager Matt Quatraro.

But Kansas City is his home. Witt will take the hits however they come. He said his only focus is to have the same routine and preparation at home or away. “If I have that, then I feel like I’ll be the same guy every night.”

Witt’s batting average is 106 points better at home than on the road this season. That’s on par with the home/away splits of Puckett, Boggs and Bonds, and a far smaller difference than the Rockies’ .400 batting average. Players are more comfortable at home. (There’s a reason only one player in the last 75 years has a .400 away batting average: Ichiro Suzuki had a .405 away split in 2004.)

“When you’re at home and you’re hitting well, everything goes more perfectly,” said Eric Young Sr. “You have your own bed and you can cook for yourself. It’s great.”

Boggs didn’t realize until this week that he would ever reach a .400 batting average at home. But he wasn’t surprised. “I kind of knew it was going to be extremely difficult to get me out at Fenway Park,” he said. Boggs has the highest career batting average at Fenway Park: .369. He did it by being “completely absorbed” by the left outfield wall.

“When the wind was strong, I was always confident that I would get two hits that day,” he said.

Cirillo also didn’t know he would hit a .400 batting average at home, but he remembers hitting really well in the last series at Coors Field in 2000.

“I’m glad I got a few hits so we could talk,” he said.

Cirillo was the fourth Rockies hitter to reach a .400 batting average in the franchise’s first decade in Colorado, and he admitted it wasn’t just due to his good reflexes and luck when hitting balls.

“We did it at Coors Field,” he said. “That might come with a little bit of an asterisk. What (Witt) is doing is absolutely incredible.”

Larry Walker hit a .418 batting average in 1998, a .461 batting average in 1999, and a .406 batting average in 2001. A humidor was installed in 2002 to dampen the offense. Since that change, no Rockies hitter has hit a .400 batting average at home, although Todd Helton came close in 2003 with a .391 batting average.

On his way to the clubhouse before games in Colorado, Cirillo walked through the vast outfield at Coors. It seemed to him like a links golf course where you hit on expansive fairways.

“When you used the midfield,” he said, “you were never really in a slump.”

Kauffman Stadium never felt like that. Cirillo had a .234 batting average in 32 road games in Kansas City. “It was always really hot, so your legs felt like squishy in the box,” he said. He finds Witt’s performance remarkable, especially given the speed of today’s game and how technology can help uncover hitters’ mistakes.

Boggs loved hitting in Kansas City, not because of the size of the field, but because of the artificial turf that was there until 1994. Boggs not only achieved a .336 batting average at Kauffman Stadium, but also hit his only home run inside the stadium.

“It was like billiards,” Boggs said. “If you hit the ball two or three steps to the left or right of an infielder, it would go through. It was that fast.” But now it’s a grass field, and even with the artificial turf, no one at Kauffman hit a .400 batting average. When Hall of Famer George Brett hit a .390 batting average in 1980, he hit “only” .392 at home.

---

In the summer of 1977, Rod Carew wanted to be left alone. By early July, he had an overall batting average of .411, and reporters flocked to Minneapolis and the Twins’ away cities to talk to him. Carew had so many journalists calling his hotel rooms that he began changing the name of his reservation. He asked journalists to show up at the ballpark especially early if they wanted an interview. When they refused, he had Twins manager Gene Mauch repeat the request.

“I didn’t want to take that .400 thing out on the field,” Carew said.

At one point, Carew stopped speaking to reporters altogether. But the attention was inevitable. Carew’s batting average dropped to .374 by August 25, and although he batted .441 the rest of the season, he was still 12 points short of a .400 season. At home, however, he hit .401.

Carew no longer minds reporters’ questions. He likes Witt, who was born 15 years after Carew’s last major league game. The Hall of Famer has seen some stars emerge with hitting styles that remind Carew of himself, guys like Brett, Suzuki and now Witt. They have the speed to knock out infield singles. They wait for fastballs but adapt to do damage on off-speed plays.

There aren’t many reporters who ask Witt about his .400 batting average, but he doesn’t have much to say. “You just have to go out there and throw good at-bats,” he said, “and whatever happens, happens.” The numbers speak for themselves, and they show that Witt’s season-long hot streak in home games is anything but a sham. He doesn’t hit bloops and bleeders. He hits balls and finds gaps.

Witt has had 17 three-hit games in Kansas City this season, including a July streak of six of seven home games. Hitting average is tougher today than it has been since 1968. The league-wide batting average is .244; .245 at home; .259 at Kauffman Stadium. Witt is in another stratosphere.

Playing against Witt’s father, pitcher Bobby Witt, along with a handful of other hitters during his career, Young hit .400 home runs, and watched Bobby Jr. grow through the game and develop into a superstar.

“He’s on a different level mentally than a lot of kids in his class,” Young said. “That’s special because he can see, play and perform a little quicker than the other guys.”

In an away game on Friday in which he had three hits, Witt became the third Royals player, joining Carlos Beltrán and Bo Jackson, with 25 home runs and 25 steals in consecutive seasons.

“It’s unbelievable,” said recently signed Royals starter Michael Lorenzen. “You see it every night on the MLB Network and you kind of get sick of it, honestly, because he’s on there every night with his highlights. And then to play with him, it’s the real deal. There aren’t many people you can say that about. You can say that about Bobby. It’s the real deal.”

Witt is on pace to post 11.6 fWAR, more than any shortstop in history except Honus Wagner (11.8) in 1908. As the Royals recover from a 106-loss season and battle for the AL Central crown, their shortstop, the franchise’s flagship product, is putting on one show after another for the home crowd.

What do you think? Pretty funny?

(Top photo of Witt: Ed Zurga / Getty Images)