SURPRISE, Ariz. — He returned home one recent evening to his parents’ house. They live in Surprise, about a mile and a half from the Royals’ spring training facility. When he walked in the door, they asked how his day had gone.
“I was working with Salvador Perez,” he told them.
They tilted their heads as if to say: Come on, stop.
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“No way,” his mother said.
He nodded.
“He knows my name.”
His name is Logan Porter. Yes, he promised, his parents do indeed still live in Surprise. Yes, he swore, he truly attended high school at Valley Vista, which is directly across the street from the Royals’ facility. Yes, he maintained, he was actually once a towel-folding clubbie inside the clubhouse that now harbors his Royals bat bag, his catcher’s gear and No. 98 powder blue jersey.
These days, teammates know Porter only as the 26-year-old undrafted catcher who last season posted a .819 OPS at High-A Quad Cities, good enough for the Royals to invite him to big-league camp. Several players have heard storybook tidbits making the rounds, even if they find them improbable. One of them said to Porter: “There’s no way this is real.” Porter laughed. “I’m not lying to you,” he responded.
“If you would’ve asked me in 2011, ‘Would this ever have happened?’ I would say you’re crazy,” he said on a recent chilly morning after big-league camp. “This is crazy.”
Let’s start in the summer of 2011.
Porter was a sophomore in high school and taking a fire science course at Valley Vista. The school is a right turn off of North Parkview Place in Surprise. Turn left instead, and you’ll enter the Royals’ spring training complex.
Anyway, the fire science course required community service hours. Porter, who played club baseball, had little time. Fortunately, he had an idea: Why not ask a family friend Darryl Kennedy, who was then a Royals staffer, if he could work at the facility to log some hours?
Kennedy put Porter in touch with Royals employees, Will Simon and Nick Leto. They signed him on as a clubbie for the club’s Arizona Rookie League team.
Porter watched pitchers such as former Royals farmhand Carter Hope. Witnessing the pro ballplayer life shaped Porter’s aspirations.
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“He was like, ‘This is what I want,’” his mother, Heidi, said recently.
Porter had loved the game from an early age, back when the family lived in Poultney, Vt., a town of about 3,300 people in 2018. The town’s website features a slogan: “Home of the Good Life.”
Porter adored the New York Yankees, especially catcher Jorge Posada, who covered his bats in pine tar. Among the perks of living in the Northeast, watching the Bronx Bombers ranked highly. The cold? Not so much.
It put a damper on the good life.
At age 7, Porter and his mother flew to Arizona to visit friends for a weekend. She dropped him off at a private batting lesson. Afterward, he had a question for his mom.
“So I could play baseball year-round out here if we lived here?”
Heidi laughed.
“Dude,” she said, “You could. But I don’t know if you’d want to play ball when it was 115 degrees.”
Porter didn’t seem to hear the heat message.
“Do we have to go back?” he asked.
She laughed again. Porter’s father, Pete, and brother, Cameron, remained in Poultney. That’s where Heidi’s job was, too. So, yes, they had to go back.
“I laughed it off,” she said.
Six months later, a position at Phoenix Children’s Hospital opened up. The family decided to move. They landed in Surprise, thus beginning the road to the fire science course and the clubbie job.
“The stars and the sun just aligned,” Heidi said.
Logan Porter, right, loved baseball from an early age and his favorite player was Yankees catcher Jorge Posada because of the way he put pine tar on his bat. (Courtesy Porter family)Throughout middle school, Porter played shortstop due to his soft hands and smallish build. He did not make the varsity team his freshman year of high school. The next year, he asked the coach what he could do to earn the coach’s trust. The coach mentioned that the team could use a catcher, so Porter spent days after practice with coach Enrique Cotto. Each passed ball meant 25 push-ups.
“He would come home,” Heidi said, “and his legs were black, blue, green and purple.”
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Yet he stuck with it. He loved it. Darryl Kennedy, the Royals staffer who connected Porter for the clubbie job, knew that Porter was available to catch if need be at the facility. One day, a first-round pick, Kyle Zimmer, was throwing a bullpen. Porter was asked to catch.
The experience was paramount. He hoped to at least play college ball. Kennedy continued to work with him.
“If it wasn’t for that guy,” Porter said, “I would not be here. To this day, I think he put in the best word for me. Something like, ‘Give this kid a chance.’”
Colby Seibert, now the maintenance and operations supervisor for the city of Surprise, met Porter the summer before their high school careers at Valley Vista.
“He always grinded more than everyone else,” Seibert said. “Stayed late. Took extra reps. Crazy work ethic. He picked up catching within an offseason. You just always had that certain special feeling about him.”
Mark Flatten, their high school coach who had previously scouted with the Toronto Blue Jays, noted similar qualities when he took over their school’s baseball program as they entered their senior years.
“That guy would bring the same energy and focus and intensity every day,” Flatten said. “You never had to worry about anything. You were going to get Logan’s best effort.”
Porter’s ability interested junior college coaches, but Flatten suggested NCAA Division II school Northwestern Oklahoma State as an option. He knew the coaching staff and believed they would offer Porter a scholarship, which proved true.
In 2014, Porter’s freshman year, he caught and played shortstop, posted a .423 on-base percentage, batted .340 and was named Northwestern’s freshman athlete of the year. The next year, Porter batted .321 with a .396 OBP. Ahead of his junior year, during an intrasquad game in 20-degree weather, Porter found himself trying to finish off a runner trapped in a rundown on the turf field.
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The catcher pump-faked. Ran the runner back toward third. Tagged the runner. Planted his right leg. Twisted. Thought he hurt his hamstring. He hit the next day, but his leg still hurt, so he visited the doctor, only to find out that he’d torn his ACL.
Heidi, who still works in healthcare, was on the phone when the doctor told her son the news. She was distraught but also interested in finding out everything she could about the doctor who would perform the surgery.
“A worried mother does better research than the FBI,” she said, laughing.
Her recon checked out fine. Porter underwent surgery, performed by Dr. Stephen Brantley of Oklahoma City, then began his rehab. After the 2016 season, many of the coaches Porter had built relationships with left. Though his girlfriend (and now wife, Alex) attended the school, he wanted to return closer to his Surprise home. So he pulled out his computer and Googled: “Closest D2s to here.”
Dixie State University, a school in St. George, Utah, popped up.
“It looked cool,” he said. “They were really good.”
He knew because his research would include watching every baseball game that they’d played.
“He didn’t even get to the campus until the day before classes started. Didn’t know anybody. Drove up there once to look at the field. Didn’t know where the classes were,” Heidi said. “But he knew the team really well.”
Porter, who had been a captain at Northwestern, was now a walk-on. Dixie State’s coach, Chris Pfatenhauer, told him in his first exit meeting in the fall, “Hey, you’re probably not going to play.” Porter’s thought was: “Well, we’ll see how this goes. I’ll bet on myself.”
Spring approached, and he was neither catching nor playing at all. Then, before a road game against California State University, San Bernardino, he was tabbed as the designated hitter. Heidi booked a flight at the last minute. In Porter’s second at-bat that day, he hit what Heidi described as “a moonshot.”
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“Some scout for Texas came up and said, ‘I’ve never seen a ball hit that far out of this field,’” Heidi said.
Two weeks later, a baseball crashed against Dixie State’s first baseman’s shin. His leg broke. Pfatenhauer needed a first baseman. One day at practice, Mike Aviles — a former Royals big-leaguer, because of course — was training with the club. He noticed Porter’s hands and recommended Pfatenhauer play him at first base.
The coach obliged. Porter stayed there the whole year, hitting .376 with 18 doubles, 10 home runs, 72 RBI (a single-season school record) and earning a nod as one of the 14 finalists for the Josh Willingham National MVP Award.
“Yeah,” Porter said. “Crazy.”
Logan Porter and his wife, Alex. (Courtesy Porter family)The summer before his senior season, he played for the Peninsula Pilots in the Coastal Plains League and, to his delight, earned the starting catching spot. His third game there, he sat atop brick in the dugout. A foul ball came screaming toward him and smashed his finger. The broken bone required three pins and for him to miss the rest of the season.
“Welp,” he thought then, “there goes catching.”
Porter returned to Dixie State and wanted to catch, but his right knee wasn’t bending correctly. That year, in 2018, he did not catch. He also struggled a bit at the plate, to the point that no Major League Baseball club drafted him.
“Which kinda sucked,” he said. “Um, actually, it really sucked. It didn’t kinda suck. It really sucked.”
He spoke to Kennedy, who told him to keep hitting. A couple of weeks later, the Royals signed him as a player but envisioned him primarily as a bullpen catcher. Kennedy told Porter he was not sure if he was ever going to play. But he’d at least remain a part of the game.
“I’m like, ‘Hell yeah, let’s do it,’” Porter said.
He told Flatten, who by that point had become a scout with the Pittsburgh Pirates and had lobbied for the Pirates to sign him. Seibert saw the news on social media, before running into him at the Royals’ complex in Surprise. Porter lived at home. In the mornings, he would drive the mile and a half to the facility. He would make a left turn on North Parkview Place, watching the high school kids turn right into the Valley Vista parking lot.
The first pitcher Porter ever faced in live at-bats was Angel Zerpa, who debuted for the Royals last year. They squared off on the back fields during workouts for the Arizona Rookie League in 2018.
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“I got a hit off him and I was like, ‘I can hit in pro ball!’” he said.
The Royals, though, did not thrust him into the lineup. He didn’t play in a game for the first two weeks.
“I’m like, ‘It’s fine. I know my role. I’m just here for a good time and not a long time,’” he recalled.
An injury to a first baseman in Short-Season Burlington propelled the Royals to promote the Arizona Rookie League’s first baseman. That left a spot open. Porter arrived at the field one day, checked the schedule and saw he was hitting in the No. 9 hole and playing first base.
“Our manager, Tony Peña, said, ‘I heard you played first in college. You’re in,’” Porter said. “I’m like, ‘What? You’ve got to be shitting me.’”
They played the Dodgers’ rookie league team that day on George Brett Field. The Dodgers started Yadier Alvarez, a Cuban-born pitcher whom they had signed for $16 million. Porter recalled that Alvarez drove up in a Maserati. He stepped on the mound and threw 98 mph.
“I’ve never seen 98,” he said. “I loaded, and by the time I loaded, the ball was in the glove.”
This is custom for Porter. He’ll joke about himself, but he knows he’s going to compete. The next pitch Alvarez threw, Porter hammered a double to the fence in right-center.
“I remember hitting it, like, ‘Oh my God. What just happened?’” Porter said.
Porter played the rest of the season — which Flatten scouted on behalf of the Pirates — and finished with a .915 OPS, 19 walks and 22 strikeouts. He still wanted to catch, thinking that if he could prove his value behind the plate he could extend his professional career. But in 2019, the Royals started him at Short-Season Burlington as a designated hitter.
He homered the first day. He hit another the next as a first baseman. His swing had not changed much since college, but his attention to game planning never wavered. Halfway through the season, he was told he was going to catch. But before it happened, a ball hit him in the thumb. He couldn’t bend it.
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“Right as I thought I was getting the chance to catch again,” he said, “I broke my thumb.”
Still, he posted a 1.129 OPS in 44 games with nine homers, 37 RBI, 34 strikeouts and 31 walks. That offseason, the Royals informed him they wanted him to focus on catching. Because his knee still hurt, he decided to visit a doctor. An MRI showed a cyclops lesion, which essentially is a mass that arises as a complication of an ACL reconstruction. Doctors removed it, and a couple of hours after surgery, Porter was beaming.
“I’m pain-free!” He told his mom. “I can move my leg. I’m going to the gym.”
Heidi was aghast.
“Dude,” she said, “you just had surgery.”
“I’ve never felt so good in my life,” he responded.
“Well, son, you’re probably under anesthesia,” she said.
Turns out, he did, in fact, go to the gym.
That winter, as he prepared for 2020, he watched the MLB playoffs and noticed Minnesota Twins catcher Mitch Garver receiving pitches on a knee. It baffled him, so he recorded the Twins’ games and studied Garver’s positioning, and how he shifted in different counts and with men on base. He learned quickly that a deficiency in posture or mobility could be counteracted with a knee-down approach. He thought this could help.
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the minor-league season, Porter — who had moved to Tampa, Fla., where his wife was working on her residency — reached out to Pittsburgh Pirates catching coach Colin Wilbur, who spends his offseasons in Bradenton, Fla.
For months, on the days he did not work a job as a hitting instructor for kids, Porter visited Wilbur.
“He’s taught me so much,” Porter said.
Finally, in 2021 at High-A Quad Cities, Porter was catching weekly. He also continued to hit, bashing 14 home runs, including a walk-off in Game 4 of the High-A championship series to force a Game 5 that the club would ultimately win.
(David McLelland / High-A Quad Cities)It was the same recent chilly Arizona morning before another day of big-league camp, and Porter was swiveling in his chair. He turned to his left and pointed at a building beyond the fence: Valley Vista High School. He swiveled back and pointed at the adjacent George Brett Field, and the fence he reached with his double against the Dodgers’ flamethrowing Cuban, Yadier Alvarez. He swiveled to his right and pointed at the facility.
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“Every time I walk in here, I’m like, what is happening?” Porter said. “It’s crazy. My grandpa told my dad after my senior year, ‘Welp, baseball is over, time to get a career.’ Now he’s my biggest fan.”
A few months ago, Porter was worried. He hadn’t received an invite to minor-league camp, so he called one of his buddies, Vinnie Pasquantino.
“Have you heard anything?” Porter asked.
“No,” Pasquantino said.
Porter thought Pasquantino would be headed to big-league camp. The fact that they were in the same boat made him wonder: “Wait, am I going to big-league camp?”
Porter called Royals senior director of player development and hitting performance Alec Zumwalt and, as he recalls it, wound up having a memorable conversation.
“Hey man,” he said, “I don’t want to bug you, but I didn’t get an invite to minor-league camp.”
“Do you know why you didn’t get an invite to minor-league camp?” Zumwalt asked.
“Did you guys forget to send the email?”
“No, you’re going to big-league camp.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. All the hard work. The journey. The whole story.”
That’s when Porter had the reaction so many of his Royals teammates experience when they hear his background.
“I was so convinced it wasn’t real,” Porter says.
Until the lockout ended, he still worried it might be a mirage. But then he arrived and met Salvador Perez, who now knows his name. Porter, who wants to one day become a coach, has relished the chance to sit alongside big-leaguers and watch them from the dugout this spring. That said, his big-league playing aspirations remain.
“He’s not done yet,” Porter’s father, Pete, said.
Last week, Royals manager Mike Matheny needed a pinch hitter in a big-league game against the Dodgers. Poetically, he tabbed Porter, who grabbed his bat, which was covered in pine tar the way Posada would appreciate, and walked toward the plate. His 2021 teammate, Nick Loftin, who is among the many Royals prospects who have visited the Porter household for Heidi’s home-cooked meals over the years, videoed the at-bat. Porter popped out to first.
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But later that night when he walked into his parents’ house, they asked how his day had gone.
“At least I didn’t strike out,” he said, the smile on his face describing what it means to still be playing the game he loves.
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