“And I’m thinking, ‘What does she know that I don’t know?’ ” Yost said last week in his office at the Royals’ training complex here. “Then I started getting nervous.”

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Which is, of course, the opposite of how Alex Gordon makes the baseball fans in Kansas City feel. He is the world champions’ security blanket, the best defensive left fielder in the game whether you judge with your eye or your calculator, a homegrown Royal who knows what it’s like to be labeled a bust for a franchise that lost at least 90 games each of his first four seasons. He is of the people who surrounded him at that parade — “The personality of the people of Kansas City, he fits it perfectly,” longtime teammate Eric Hosmer said — both a Nebraskan and a Royals fan by birth, so much so that his younger brother is named Brett, after a certain third baseman who used to wear the crown.

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Yet here he was, standing before the crowd at the championship parade, knowing he would decline the option he had on his contract to remain in Kansas City for 2016, an option worth $13.25 million.

“I guess the good thing is we won everything,” Gordon said, “and if I was going to go out, it’s a good way to go out.”

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Shudder at the thought, Kansas City, even as Gordon has returned to the comfort of the newly refurbished Royals clubhouse at Surprise Stadium for yet another spring. “He’s our clubhouse pillar,” Moore said, and he establishes that status with his maniacal, down-to-the-minute daily routine. He sat in front of the locker at the end of one row last week, post-workout sweat dripping from his face, wearing a batting glove on each hand, holding a Muscle Milk protein drink, a green smoothie, and the security of a four-year, $72 million contract that makes him the highest paid player in franchise history. No one in there begrudges him one cent.

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“I just couldn’t see Alex putting on another uniform,” Yost said.

“I always felt like we’d get last say,” General Manager Dayton Moore said.

Such is the clubhouse the Royals have created, which houses the largely homegrown bunch that have won back-to-back American League pennants and returned the World Series trophy to Kansas City for the first time in 30 years. But such, too, is Gordon, whose Royals experience is seared into his being, from being the second overall pick in the draft to being sent to the minors and forced to change positions.

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“To see where it was and where it is now, that matters,” Gordon said. “I want to enjoy the success we have now, and the fun we have with all these guys. I’ve got a lot of friends on this team, and a lot of coaches, that I’ve gone through a lot with. It’s just a more comfortable thing to come back here with all those relationships I have.”

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Put another way: These Royals simply aren’t these Royals, who have transformed a city’s relationship with a sport, without Gordon. And Gordon isn’t the version of Gordon who arrived here this year — different-size bank account, same-size ego — without all he went through wearing the uniform of one franchise.

In 2005, the first selection in the draft was a high school outfielder from Chesapeake, Va., named Justin Upton. The second selection was a third baseman from the University of Nebraska named Alex Gordon, who, because he was drafted by Kansas City, instantly became “The Next George Brett.” That same first round turned out to be legendary, producing 26 big leaguers and a slew of all-stars, Troy Tulowitzki and Andrew McCutchen and Ryan Braun and Ryan Zimmerman and Jacoby Ellsbury among them. When Gordon made his major league debut on Opening Day 2007, 41,257 people at Kauffman Stadium rose to their feet for his first at-bat, which came with the bases loaded against Boston’s Curt Schilling. He struck out. His first 22 major league at-bats yielded one hit.

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“Tough label to have, when you’re compared to a Hall of Famer of the caliber of George Brett,” said Rusty Kuntz, the Royals first base and outfield coach. “Not fair.”

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He mostly struggled for two seasons as the Royals third baseman, was limited to 49 games after hip surgery in 2009, and began 2010 on the disabled list with a broken thumb. In May, when he was hitting .194 and struggling at third base — four errors in 10 games, movement hampered by his hip surgery — he was sent to Class AAA Omaha, with a twist: move to left field.

“I lost my confidence,” Gordon said. “I kind of knew something was coming, maybe a send-down, but I didn’t know the position change was going to happen. I was thrown off.”

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The Royals believed Gordon’s exceptional feet and quick release could make him a stellar left fielder. What he brought to the move was more than that. At the time, Kuntz was a roving instructor in Kansas City’s minor-league system. Moore, Kansas City’s general manager, sent him to Omaha to begin the transition. On the first day, Kuntz arrived at the ballpark around noon for a 7 p.m. game. Gordon was already on the field, stretching.

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“He told me, ‘Well, I’m not going to get better sitting at home,’” Kuntz recalled.

Kuntz said he quickly ran out of information for Gordon to absorb. “There are players who are rocks, and there are players who are sponges,” Kuntz said. “He was a sponge.” The Royals called him back up in late July. He hasn’t played a game at third base since.

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Four Gold Gloves and three all-star nods later, Gordon is a rarity, a player who can change a game on defense from a defensive position that is considered an afterthought. Since 2011, his first full year in left, Gordon leads all major league left fielders with 94 “defensive runs saved” — an advanced metric that includes range, arm accuracy and home-run saving catches. No other left fielder has saved more than 60 runs. It’s to the point in which Hosmer and Pedro Grifol, a Royals coach, joke daily about him.

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“We’ve never seen a left fielder impact the game every single day as much as he does,” Hosmer said. “You really don’t see the difference until somebody else goes out there. I’ve never heard [opposing first base] coaches fear an outfielder as much as they fear him, because it’s almost like if you see the ball hit toward him, you just stop where you’re at.”