Bubba could start something big with the Royals

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Bubba Starling can change baseball in Kansas City forever, and if that sounds like an unfair burden to put on an 18-year-old kid, that's too bad, because it's also reality.
The movie script can happen in real life now, and it can alter the course of an entire major-league baseball franchise. A boy named Bubba can grow up in a small town hitting 500-foot home runs and throwing 95-mph fastballs and even catching the biggest fish you ever saw, and then get millions to star for his hometown baseball team.
This is the dream, and those are his words.
This is just as big for the Royals, too, because they may have just drafted the franchise's most important player since George Brett.
If you need to read this sentence again, please do, because it's not thoughtless hype but the staggering possibility being talked about in baseball circles of a kid from Gardner Edgerton (Kan.) High someday becoming an All-Star center fielder as the Royals finally begin winning again.
It's the kind of thing that can reshape how a region follows a sport and how an entire franchise operates.
Actually, it's happened before.
Almost from the moment he arrived in Kansas City as general manager five years ago, Dayton Moore has said over and over that the Royals would "scout this region like it's the most productive place in the world."
That's more than a gimmick, more than a marketing ploy. It's also a sound baseball strategy that Moore saw work in his days with Atlanta's front office.
The Braves in 1990 were a sorry-sack franchise that finished in last place for a third consecutive year, but that summer used the first overall draft pick on a kid from northern Florida named Chipper Jones.
The Braves went worst-to-first in 1991, winning the first of what would become 14 consecutive division titles, and in Jones' rookie year won the World Series.
By then, Braves scouts saw an obvious upgrade in high school talent in the Southeast, something that became known as the "Chipper Effect" to some, a generation of kids growing up wanting to be the next local superstar for the Braves.
The franchise drafting locally became something like the Braves' mantra, and it worked beautifully. Brian McCann and Jeff Francoeur and Kevin Millwood and others eventually helped win division championships, the whole thing feeding on itself and helping to drive a perennial loser to one of the greatest runs of sustained success in professional sports history.
Jones is by now an almost certain Hall of Famer who has helped lead 12 playoff teams and a region's baseball resurgence.
There are few things in sports as unpredictable as the success of major-league draft picks, but scouting is better than it's ever been, the careers of the highest selections more bankable than ever.
So with that in mind, it's not a giant stretch to imagine this year's consensus best athlete becoming a star and helping a long-struggling franchise find better footing both in the standings and at the gate.
The Royals' baseball future is the best it's been in years with a loaded farm system, but there is still just one winning season since 1994, and if this works out the way so many are envisioning, maybe this is a moment we'll remember as a turning point.
All that needs to happen now is for a kid acting on the advice of the toughest negotiator in sports to sign a contract.
This is the part that is more complicated or simpler than you might think, depending on your perspective.
Bubba Starling put on a terrific performance in his teleconference with Kansas City media on Monday night.
He said he was excited, but also mentioned his "options," even saying he liked football and baseball equally while committing to nothing other than talking with his family and super agent Scott Boras, who is serving as Starling's adviser.
The most common narrative is that the leverage is Starling's, but that's only true to a point. Yes, he can play quarterback and center field at Nebraska and, barring major injury, be in line for another big bonus from baseball in three years or explore a pro football career.
But it's also true that he can have an enormous payday right now, most likely the biggest bonus in Royals history - $6 million to $8 million sounds realistic.
Boras has predicted that baseball's television revenue will soon jump, meaning more money for players, but if Starling doesn't sign, it means hoping the next collective bargaining agreement will be as favorable for draft picks.
The other part of this is that if there is pressure on the Royals to sign the hometown kid, there is also pressure on Starling to sign with the hometown Royals for life-changing money.
Before it became reality, Starling called this exact scenario his "dream," being drafted by the team he grew up rooting for, and if that's still true, then he'll be as motivated as the Royals to get a deal done.
Business is business, and both sides will spend the next few months posturing.
But this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for both team and player. They each have too much at stake to pass this up.