In the backyard of Eric Hosmer’s childhood home in Florida, his uncle poured dual concrete batter’s boxes for Hosmer and his brother, Mike.
That was complemented by what was known as a Tony Gwynn SoloHitter contrivance, through which four chords connected to a baseball would reset the ball to its waist-high starting point after each thwacking during all hours of the day.
Often, the scene was animated by something further: Hosmer’s narration — a relatable notion for those apt to broadcast their lives at that age. As Hosmer would step up onto the concrete box, he had a tendency to proclaim the quiet part out loud:
“‘Now batting, the first baseman, Eric Hosmer …’” Hosmer recently recalled with a laugh in a phone interview with The Star. “The crowd would go wild. ‘And Eric Hosmer stands up to the plate.’
“Those were the moments.”
Moments that morphed into a stellar MLB career, particularly during seven seasons with the Royals: Hosmer became the franchise’s career postseason RBI leader (29), was named MVP of the 2016 All-Star Game and indelibly etched himself into club lore as one of KC’s most pivotal and popular players on the back-to-back American League championship teams that won the 2015 World Series.
As it happens, though, the adolescent Hosmer was inadvertently rehearsing for another phase of his future: joining the Royals.TV broadcast team as an analyst this spring.
The Royals’ new TV broadcast lineup
Along with the addition of Bridget Howard as a host and sideline reporter, Hosmer is joining a group otherwise returning its members from last season. Hosmer will share duties with Rex Hudler, Jeremy Guthrie and Jeff Montgomery.
Beyond his informal youthful work, Hosmer’s previous broadcasting experience includes co-hosting a podcast and pre- and postgame host duties for Apple TV.
But for those of us who covered the Royals of his era, his comfort with taking on such a role and inclination to do so seems natural enough: The charismatic Hosmer emerged as the most consistently accessible voice of those teams, no matter what the circumstance.
As much as it seemed to be within his personality to do so, Hosmer credited the priorities of then-general manager Dayton Moore and longtime media relations executive Mike Swanson with instilling that consistently speaking with the media — and thus to the fans — was a vital part of the job.
In his new capacity, Hosmer, who retired in 2024, said he expects to be in the booth with Ryan Lefebvre for 30 to 40 games this season. But he added that he also intends to be engaged in about every game via a remote setup from his home in Connecticut.
While he joked that it might be easier for him to be in the booth than “hit one of these fastballs nowadays,” Hosmer said he relishes the challenge, is eager to learn and determined to prepare “just like a player” would.
One element of the job Hosmer already is conscious of working on is restraint, a topic that came up when I asked him about how he might have called his (apparently) mad dash home from third base on a fielder’s choice in Game 5 of the 2015 World Series. The run against the Mets tied what became the clinching game, won by the Royals 7-2 in 12 innings.
Although it didn’t meet the eye in the moment, plenty of scouting informed Hosmer’s decision in New York — something few could have known as it unfurled.
“The thing for me is not reacting in real-time — and understanding I have a microphone or a headset on,” he said, laughing and adding, “Because if I would have called my play at home plate, it would have been, ‘Hoz, what the heck are you doing?’”
Straight into “‘Oh, my God, that worked greatly. Thank God you did that. I believed in you. There was never a doubt.’”
He added, “So that’s going to be the hardest thing for me, is not reacting like I’m in the dugout just watching the game, talking to myself.”
Why Eric Hosmer is well-suited to this job
The flip side, of course, is the deep background Hosmer brings to the job.
Not just in terms of obvious baseball savvy, but through an intimate understanding of the organization, its history and its relationship to fans and a city that continued to follow him fondly after he went to the Padres in free agency.
By way of example, Hosmer remembered playing for San Diego at a random stadium elsewhere and locking eyes with a fan in the stands who was wearing a Royals hat. The player and fan exchanged taps on their hearts to one another.
Hosmer knows about the transition from perennial losers to the top of baseball. He lived the downs and ups from 2011 to 2017 and sensed the broader connectivity of it all.
“I really, truly believe that after we made that run in (2014), it was a team (and) a city just really finding out what they’re capable of,” said Hosmer, who alluded to three subsequent Super Bowl victories by the Chiefs and added, “It just felt like we kind of unlocked that confidence together: our group, the fans. And then from that point on, there was no looking back.”
Speaking of looking back, Hosmer naturally will have in his arsenal plenty of that — including his ongoing friendship with Salvador Perez, a frequent source of marvel on a group chat from those 2014 and 2015 teams. While he expects Perez to “wear me out, in a fun way,” he also will take pride in getting to call part of his legacy.
But Hosmer hardly is doing this for nostalgia or merely to relive the glory days, either. Among other components of a pitching-rich team, he is exhilarated by what the Royals have been building around Perez and Bobby Witt Jr. — whose prospects of earning MVP recognition Hosmer believes will be enhanced by the organization’s offseason decision to move in the fences at Kauffman Stadium.
Never mind that Hosmer was playfully jealous that it didn’t happen when he was here. He expects the move will be a mental boost across the board to Royals hitters as the club seeks to return to the postseason after falling short in 2025.
Lived experience and bridge to KC’s future
So, yes, tales and lessons of the past will be part of what Hosmer brings to this season’s broadcasts. But what he’s most anticipating is the chance to chronicle today’s teams and the future with insights he’s absorbed over the years.
In the process, he also hopes he can provide some translation.
Not so much in the sense that Hosmer, whose mother is Cuban, understands a good deal of Spanish — though that should again be helpful in the clubhouse.
But more in the context of the lexicon of the game, which Hosmer felt changing around him late in his career as analytics-speak became more common.
“It really is a different language,” Hosmer said.
By way of example, he reflected on a conversation with Padres teammate Jake Cronenworth about an opposing pitcher. Coming back into the dugout after a plate appearance, Crone described what he’d seen something like this:
“‘Man, this guy’s horizontal break is really getting to me.’”
To which Hosmer said, “professionally, of course, ‘What the (heck) are you talking about?’”
It was a then-newish term for what Hosmer would call a fastball cutting. Understanding that the term reflected not different verbiage, but an emerging wave of how metrics are used, Hosmer reconciled that he needed to learn the lingo both to keep up and to be a good leader and teammate.
So he hopes to be a “bridge guy” between old school and new wave.
Something he’s experiencing in its own way with his young son, Jack, the oldest of his three children.
Jack was only a few months old when Hosmer in 2023 was released by the Cubs. He still thought he could play.
Whatever frustration he might have felt about that, he said, “Jack saved me with that transition” — including helping him prep for this one with a full-circle twist:
When Jack steps up to a tee and swings the bat, Hosmer tends to find himself reciting the moment.
“‘There’s a high drive by Jack …’” he said.
Laughing as he thought about the parallel, Hosmer added, “That was something I always pictured as a kid. So now it’s going to be fun, it’s going to be different actually being up there with the headset on and being a guy that’s actually calling that stuff.”
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Vahe Gregorian has been a sports columnist for The Kansas City Star since 2013 after 25 years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He has covered a wide spectrum of sports, including 10 Olympics. Vahe was an English major at the University of Pennsylvania and earned his master’s degree at Mizzou.