We have something a little different for you guys today. Usually we feature an interview with a ballplayer or coach, but today we go up the chain all the way to the GM’s office. I had the privilege of spending some time with Royals’ GM Dayton Moore the other week and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do an interview for you guys. He was fresh off of the James Shields deal and nice enough to take time out of his day to go on camera with Next Level Ballplayer.
I met Dayton at the Royals’ Dominican Academy while the Kansas Jayhawks were playing the Royal’s Dominican team. I was working with the Jayhawks for the week and brought along a few Dominican boys (12-14 years old) that my wife and I lived close to (and loved like our own) in our year of living in the DR. These boys, like the majority of Dominican boys, are constantly either playing baseball on the local field or stick ball (“Vitilla”) every free moment of the day.
While KU was taking pregame infield, I looked around and noticed the 5 boys we had brought with us were nowhere to be found. I asked my wife where they went and she pointed over to an infield on another field. There was Dayton Moore, the General Manager of the Kansas City Royals, pitching to our small group of kids and teaching them how to bunt properly. They had no idea who Dayton was, just that they were having a blast playing the best sport in the world.
It says a lot about Dayton Moore as a person that he was willing to take a good half hour out of his busy day to play with these kids he’d never met before. Many thanks to Dayton for also taking the time to do this video interview and talk about how he got started in the game of baseball, what his first job with an MLB team was, what most people don’t know about his GM job, how the James Shield trade came about, how he views the draft, and more.
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