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Swan song for 'Swanee,' Royals PR man who made like Forrest Gump in fascinating career

Kansas City Star - 6/27/2021

Jun. 27—NEW YORK CITY — The montage would include photos of the Chiefs' practice facility at Swope Park back in the day, and perhaps Hank Stram, Willie Lanier and Bobby Bell. Then it would reel in images of legendary announcer Keith Jackson, college campuses across the nation, snippets from the earlier years of Monday Night Football and six Super Bowls.

It would feature Doug Flutie's Hail Mary pass at Miami in 1984 and Michael Jordan'sNCAA championship game-winner in New Orleans in 1982 and Jim Valvano running around the court in Albuquerque in 1983.

Then it would scan approximately 58 Major League Baseball stadiums and capture moments such as President George W. Bush throwing out the ceremonial first pitch of Game 3 of the 2001 World Series at Yankee Stadium, weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks.

And there would be Randy Johnson's perfect game for Arizona in 2004 in Atlanta and Game 5 of the 2015 World Series with the Royals in New York ... and a couple of trips to the White House.

To say nothing of hundreds of other fascinating scenes and thousands of meaningful interactions, many of which could make for entire stories unto themselves. Maybe we can get into the actual name-dropping some other time.

Somehow, there's a common denominator in this tapestry of sports in America over approximately the last half-century.

Before there was "Where's Waldo?" or Forrest Gump showing up everywhere, there was Royals vice president of communications and broadcasting Mike Swanson, who was at, and invested in, the aforementioned events in one capacity or another.

And he's particularly appreciative of it all as he prepares to retire at the end of the season after 43 years in Major League Baseball.

At Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, when well-wishers visited his seat all game in the wake of the recent announcement made on Twitter by his daughter, Rachel, he paused to consider how he'd seen the world through sports — primed by traveling with the Chiefs as an equipment staff assistant in 1971.

"To think that I've lived all that now, and it's about to be a part of my past is overwhelming, to say the least," said Swanson, 67, known all over as "Swanee."

In the span of his work life, handling PR for the Padres, Rockies and Diamondbacks before returning home before the 2007 season, many came to see him as the very best at the delicate and dwindling art of media relations. (That was formally recognized as far back as 2002, when MLB gave him the Robert O. Fishel Award for public relations excellence.)

We won't linger on this, because maybe it's what they call "inside baseball." But that reverence is in large part because he still sees the job as being a liaison to the press instead of adversarial ... even as his top priority unfailingly is the team brand. Enjoying substantial relationships with everyone from players to umpires to staff, including a strong trust with general manager Dayton Moore, he's been an essential part of the Royals organization.

And you might want to know that he's funny, both at his own expense and also in that sweet spot of knowing just how to bust your chops. And he's sentimental ... even if he'd probably rather you think he's a curmudgeon.

All of that helps explain how he became a Kansas City institution, uniquely entwined with the DNA of both the Chiefs and Royals since their inceptions. His unique path was improbable and natural all at once.

Channeling Lou Gehrig while at Yankee Stadium this past week, he said, "You can't be any luckier than I've been; you just can't."

As that pertains to what would become his life's work, it starts with his mother, Betty, being a secretary for the Kansas City Athletics and at times bringing him to work and games at Municipal Stadium.

Sometimes, legendary groundskeeper George Toma babysat. And he'd spend time with any number of players.

Not long after she got fired (because Charlie O. Finley fired everybody), the Dallas Texans moved to Kansas City to become the Chiefs in 1963 and needed office staff. Her former boss, Bob Wachter, became the first person hired by the Chiefs in their new city, according to his obituary, and he immediately hired her.

Other than a few years in Miami when Swanson's father, Bob, was transferred there, and a stint with the Royals just before their 1969 debut, she'd stay with the Chiefs until the mid-1990s.

You've just about never heard anyone speak about their mom with more admiration (not to mention the love he has for his late father, and how he gushes about his wife, Renee, and daughter Rachel), and their connection soon would include sharing an employer in the Chiefs.

It started with the teenager who loved sports and stats (he had a giant chalkboard at home that he made to look like the old Muni scoreboard and updated during games) typing a letter to Wayne Rudy, the longtime Chiefs athletic trainer, telling him he hoped to work at training camp at William Jewell in 1969.

He got the gig, working for equipment manager Bobby Yarborough and beyond. Next thing you know, he's making Gatorade and washing jocks and shining helmets and stuffing thigh pads and knee pads into pants before home games for the team that went on to win the Super Bowl.

Stram took a liking to him and gave him the responsibility of taking his suit to the cleaners after every game.

And all of a sudden, he started being in the middle of things in a way that seemed to set the tone and trajectory for what was to come next.

Here he was taking warmup throws from quarterback Len Dawson and backup Jacky Lee, who threw nothing but bullets and dotted his chest with welts, and catching punts for Jerrel Wilson and holding for Jan Stenerud and becoming the tee-picker-upper for his game kickoffs.

At the Governor's Cup game at St. Louis that preseason, he showed up in a picture at Busch Stadium right near Stram, Dawson and Jim Tyrer as Gov. Warren Hearnes handed over the trophy. On either that occasion or perhaps the next year in St. Louis, after setting up the locker room before the game, he poked his head into the Cardinals' dugout and bumped into superstar Lou Brock.

Even out of place as Swanson obviously was, Brock asked him his name and if he was a baseball fan. Then he took him over to the bench and introduced him to teammate Curt Flood and told him he could stay in the dugout for the game if he wanted.

By 1971, he was traveling for every game, including a Monday Night Football game at San Francisco during which TV cameras caught him alongside Elmo Wright long enough that it was all the talk at Raytown High the next morning ... when he was right back in school despite landing at 6 a.m.

Cool as it all was, he also was getting a different sort of education in many ways. In California before that game, he'd been asked to join players for dinner and showed up wearing a Chiefs sideline jacket. Some combination of Lanier, Bell and Jim Lynch scolded him for being a "billboard" and sent him back to his room to change.

Then there was that time in the locker room in Swope Park during summer workouts. He'd just played golf at a beautiful Kansas City-area course and was talking to Lanier and Emmitt Thomas, among others, telling them they really should play there.

Thomas stunned Swanson by saying, "What? ... Look at me!"

Lanier told Thomas, "Take it easy on the kid. He doesn't understand."

Time that he learned, Thomas said. And that was the first time Swanson got a harsh dose of understanding racism after years spent in a locker room notable for how progressive it was for the times.

Those Chiefs were among the many second fathers he felt blessed to have along with his own.

And those sorts of figures kept steering him in ways he may not have otherwise considered.

Since he also was under the tutelage of Toma to mow the practice field at 63rd Street, that led to a "what do you want to do with your life?" conversation in which Toma nudged him to the Royals in 1973.

A few weeks after landing what he now calls a "six-year internship," he was keeping the official scorebook and writing game notes he'd furnish as his English papers at junior college. Soon came a chat with Royals broadcaster Fred White that led him to attend Kansas, where literally on the first day of school this happened:

While sitting in the office of sports information director Don Baker, a secretary entered the room and said she had a phone call for Mike Swanson. Written on the old pink "while you were out" slip was the name of ... Keith Jackson.

Swanson figured it was a joke but asked to be excused to return the call. It was, in fact, Jackson, one of America's best-known sportscasters. It turned out Swanson had made an impression with the notes that went to Jackson during the 1976 American League Championship Series.

Jackson needed a personal statistician and spotter for football, and that became a ticket to a galaxy of amazing events over the next few years ... starting a few days later with a Top 10 matchup of Notre Dame at Pittsburgh.

He looked at the bumps on his arms and maybe misted up a bit as he thought of it now and all he learned and all the places that would ultimately take him — including TV work at the 1984 All-Star Game that led him back to baseball in San Diego, and ever since.

There's a lot more to all of this, of course. And we're figuring there's a more Royals-centered chapter for another time for us ... and hoping he writes a book to really do it justice.

Meanwhile, there's these next few months to savor before whatever the next adventures will be with family and beyond.

"I can't give this game any more than I've given it, and I really don't want any more out of it," said Swanson, stressing that this was purely his choice and that he'd enjoyed his relationships with new-ish owner John Sherman and manager Mike Matheny.

He added, "I consider these 43 years the front nine; I want to see what the back nine has for me."

Here's hoping it's another fine chapter in what only seems like nine lives lived already.

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