On Ned Yost’s first day as Royals manager, Eric Hosmer was a 20-year-old first baseman in Wilmington, N.C. Mike Moustakas was 21 and destroying opposing pitchers in Northwest Arkansas. Lorenzo Cain was 24 and a center fielder in Huntsville, Ala., plying his trade in the Milwaukee Brewers organization.
Nearly eight years later, Cain is back with the Brewers and Hosmer and Moustakas are at home, still waiting out a slow free-agent market, but on Wednesday morning Yost was still here, sitting behind his desk in a sparsely decorated office on the first day of spring training.
He is 62 years old now, 20 pounds lighter after a winter of inactivity following a harrowing fall on his farm in Georgia.