With that in mind, Aikens told Redmond after her talk that she had touched him on a personal level. He, after all, had been granted clemency by the Royals for crimes he had committed, though mostly against his own career.

Aikens, 60, was once young and virile, a Royals slugger just hitting his stride when he lost it all to alcohol and drugs. He later surrendered 14 years of freedom after being convicted in 1994 on four counts of crack cocaine distribution and one count of use of a firearm in the process.

Released from prison in 2008, Aikens was hired by the Royals as a hitting instructor three years later to work out of the team’s training facility on sun-drenched fields about a half-hour’s drive from Phoenix.

“I’m at the lowest level of the minors,” he said. “I get the guys right out of high school and college. But I believe this is the most important level for what I can offer them, because they are beginning to go through stuff they’ve never experienced before.”

Redmond began her one-woman crusade against misogyny in sports with the formation of the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes in 1998. In a culture that celebrates male athletes, puts them in positions of affluence and power, the long-simmering issue exploded last year with the release of a video showing Ray Rice, then a Baltimore Ravens running back, knocking unconscious his then-girlfriend, Janay Palmer, in a hotel elevator. Rice and Palmer have since married.