George Brett pooped his pants in the lobby of the Bellagio. This fact is well-known to Brett enthusiasts and, perhaps, baseball-inclined gastroenterologists.  Underneath the world’s largest installation of Dale Chihuly blown glass, the (arguably) greatest-ever offensive third baseman stood rigid and motionless as blow-out diarrhea dripped down his pant leg.

George Brett recounted this story during the Royals’ 2005 spring training where he served as a special hitting instructor (fortunately, for posterity, it was surreptitiously captured on video and is available on YouTube). Apropos of nothing— in media res — Brett interrupted team stretching to tell others that he “shit his pants last night” and that he’s “good twice a year for that.”  This made Brett recollect his favorite incontinence story where, in Las Vegas, after a crab leg meal at the Mirage and making his way through the Bellagio lobby, he uttered a knowing and desperate “oh, fuck” and experienced convulsive diarrhea. With each step, his body emptied itself more until — with leather jacket tied around his waist — a friend found him new pants and escorted him from the luxury hotel.

Of course, this story is fascinating, well-told and intrinsically funny.  But, for our purposes here, what is most compelling is who he told it to and why he even told it at all. George Brett is the greatest Kansas City Royal of all-time and there is not remotely a close second. Indeed, Brett would be the greatest player ever on many, if not most, franchises. There are only four players in the history of baseball to record 3,000 hits, 300 home runs, and bat over .300:  Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron and George Brett. In 1980, he hit .400 until mid-September. In 1985, with Brett leading the way, the Kansas City Royals won their first World Series championship in the history of the franchise. Brett was an AL MVP, three-time batting champion, Gold-Glove winner and thirteen time All-Star. And he did it all for the micro-market Kansas City Royals. After he retired in 1993, he was elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot with a higher percentage of the votes than either Babe Ruth or Joe DiMaggio. And added on to these superhuman achievements, he was matinee-level handsome.

What does one do after that?  What follows being the most (save, perhaps, Mahomes) beloved icon in a small sports-crazed city?  It seems human and natural that one wouldn’t try to escape the centrifugal force of that level of success and adulation. He would always be George Brett – and never more so in Kansas City and while wearing a royal blue uniform.  So, it follows that Brett never really left.  He took a series of amiable jobs within the Royals franchise – helping to cultivate young talent, serving as a special instructor and teaching hitting.  And that’s where Brett was in the spring of 2006, in uniform, stretching at the Royals Arizona training facility. He didn’t have to say a word.  He was a king among a new crop of almost entirely unremarkable Royal hopefuls.  

And yet…

Without prompting, Brett excitedly told aspiring big-league catcher Scott Donachie that he had pooped his pants at the Bellagio.  Donachie was twenty-one at the time, meaning he was not yet born when Brett flirted with Ted Williams’ hitting record and one when he captured what was then Kansas City’s only World Series title. Donachie never had a major league at bat.  His minor league WAR may have not have been above zero — meaning teams would be better off if they simply replaced him with someone at random and forgotten. Donachie does not have a Wikipedia page; George Brett has a plaque in Cooperstown. It seems abundantly safe that the two men did not have a close relationship.  It is more likely that they had never spoken before.

And yet Brett wanted him to know of his incontinence.  

One can only grope at the combination of confusion, terror and pure surreality that must have washed over Donachie when George Brett insisted on telling them in graphic detail about his diarrhea attacks.  The power balance could not have been more stark.  If there were a category of harassment reserved for bowel issues, this would be the clearest case.  

There does not appear to be an official record of Donachie’s reaction, but the video itself gives the viewer a pretty strong guess.  At least twice, he tries to physically remove himself, walking away from a Hall of Famer and a man whose word, presumably, could singlehandedly advance his career in the Royals franchise. And in the act of walking away — and Brett relentlessly following them around — the minor leaguer flips that power imbalance.  Perhaps purposefully oblivious, Brett continues his story unabated, at points telling it to the back of Donachie’s jersey.  Here, it is Brett seeking the attention and the approval of a quasi-anonymous young man.

Why? Why would Brett follow him?  Why would Brett want him to know he pooped himself and does so multiple times a year? The easiest answer would be that having lived in an impossibly flattering spotlight for two decades, Brett would do anything to return there.  But, that doesn’t ring true to me. In a Kansas City Royals training camp, the spotlight would shine on Brett regardless.  Brett does not have to be funny or sensational to get attention. Nor does Brett have to (in this case, literally) mark his territory to prove himself the alpha. He is George Brett.  The fact that no one will ever wear the number 5 again in Royals’ history sufficiently marks his status.  Brett didn’t tell the story to differentiate himself, in my view, but to accomplish the inverse.  Perhaps more than a spotlight or to demonstrate his status, Brett wanted the very opposite: to disappear into a team.  

All men eventually age out of team sports and most men age out of teams of all sorts. And some age out of meaningful friendships altogether. They are replaced with partnerships and work hierarchies and parenting and obligations. Brett’s story would be common in an elementary school or in a college — and dangerous in an office — not ultimately because of its juvenile or scatological quality, but because of its real intimacy.  In other words, Brett needed to tell these two men that he pooped his pants simply because all people need someone to tell a comic story about how they couldn’t control their body. It is a feature of youth that a ready audience of friends is available to laugh and relate.  And a team substitutes for that. Donachie’s WAR is utterly irrelevant to the equation — he offered a moment wherein Brett could lay himself bare in the most intimate way without fear of repercussion or embarrassment.  Within baseball, within a team, George Brett was the alpha and just one of a collective at the same time.  Few middle-aged men have that conduit to youth and freedom.  

So why did George Brett tell Adam Donachie that he is routinely incontinent?  Because he wanted a time machine. 

by Kevin Blake