As the Kansas City Royals head to Chicago on Monday still in search of anyone who can pitch effectively in relief, they probably will glance wistfully over at the White Sox bullpen and long to have Kelvin Herrera back in the fold.

Now a linchpin in the Chicago relief corp, Herrera was just one year ago the anchor of the Royals’ late-game plan.

Herrera, remember, was the seventh-inning specialist in arguably the greatest bullpen in history. He was one third of the famed “HDH” triumvirate of Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland. After Holland succumbed to injury, Herrera’s workload increased. He eventually became the team’s closer in 2017.

There was never a question that Herrera would be traded at some point in 2018. He was much too valuable to waste away in the bullpen of a losing club. So, sentimentality be damned, the Royals dealt away one of the last remaining pieces of the 2015 championship club mid season. To the Royals’ largely depleted farm system, he brought three highly touted prospects in return.

But as their current relief corp seems to dump gasoline on a fire nightly, the Royals now are in search of someone – anyone – who can replicate what Herrera used to provide.

Herrera’s allegiance is now with the White Sox, who host the Royals for a three-game set April 15-17. But he will never forget the accomplishments, and relationships, from his time in Kansas City. After spending the second half of 2018 in the National League, Herrera returned to Kauffman Stadium for the first time opening weekend.

“It’s great to be back,” Herrera said during the opening weekend in Kansas City. “I have a lot of great memories here. This is where everything began for me.

“I felt it when I was driving from the hotel to the stadium and I saw the lights, and I just had that emotion that this was such a special place for me, where we did such special things.”

As a Central Division opponent, he will face the Royals 19 times this season. During the opening weekend against his former teammates, he pitched a scoreless seventh inning in a Royals’ victory March 30. He gave up three hits and a run the next day, but the White Sox held on for the win.

The nine-year veteran admitted it was strange to pitch to players with whom he’d so recently shared a clubhouse.

“I’ve never been in that situation before,” Herrera said about facing the Royals. “It’s a little bit strange. But once you’re on the field, you aren’t thinking about that. You put that aside, because I know I have a job to do.”

For their part, the Royals will take the same attitude toward their old friend.

“It’s not awkward. It’s actually kind of cool,” Terrence Gore said about facing Herrera. “We like doing it. It’s competitive. We know each other so well. It’s like your big brother pitching to your younger brother.

“We’ll always see him as part of what we accomplished (in 2015) We all came from the same team. We will look at him as a brother, no matter what. So we wish him the best, as I’m sure he wishes us the best.”

Much as the players feel like brothers, baseball is, above all, a business. That reality sent Herrera to the Washington Nationals for a few months, then brought him to Chicago as a free agent in the offseason. He said the transition of moving his wife and two children to Chicago happened quickly: “But that’s part of baseball. We know that is just part of it.”

Recognizing that trading players nearing the end of their contracts for prospects is the quickest way to build for the future, the Royals acquired three minor leaguers for Herrera last June.

Rated #14 in the list of Royals’ prospects, Kelvin Gutierrez is the closest of the three to the majors. Gutierrez is playing third base in Omaha and should get at least a taste of the big leagues this season. Eighteen-year-old pitcher Yohanse Morel is years away from the majors, but he ranks #20 in the farm system based on his raw potential. Blake Perkins, rated #23, has moved slowly through the minor leagues, but is an advanced centerfielder and a switch hitter.

So while the Royals are mired in a long-term rebuild of their bullpen, Herrera serves as a key building block for the White Sox relief corp.

“I feel pretty good about being in that role,” Herrera said. “I saw that happen in KC, where I was one of a lot of young players, and we developed that into a winning team. I see that opportunity here, to provide leadership to this team. Anything the other pitchers need, I will do it to help them develop.”

“He’s been awesome, especially to me, a younger guy who hasn’t had a lot of time to get his feet under him at this level,” said Ryan Burr, a 24-year-old rookie reliever for Chicago. “He’s made it very apparent to us younger guys that he’s someone we can go talk to.

“I really look up to him. I remember watching him pitch during those years that the Royals went to the World Series. So obviously he has incredible amounts of talent, but also knowledge that he can share. He’s really taken that leadership role in the bullpen. He’s taking me and some of the other younger guys under his wing and really showing us the ropes.”

The 24th Annual Baseball in Literature and Culture Conference at Ottawa University had a greater emphasis on philosophy than in previous years. Aside from Eisenreich’s personal testimony, I was most entertained and interested by a presentation about Jack Kerouac’s creation in the 1930s of an elaborate fantasy baseball game. The author of On The Road took this hand-crafted game with him on his travels to entertain himself. He created teams and players and even wrote newspaper reports and newsletters about the games, teams and seasons. Perhaps most shocking is that he allowed almost no one to know about his hobby! As far as researchers can tell, he played the game alone, purely for his own enjoyment, and didn’t involve others.

I was inspired to learn more about the 1919 New York Giants, a team that danced with the devils gambling and game-fixing, but avoided the fate of the 1919 Chicago White Sox.

Interestingly, we heard another speaker discuss Jim Thorpe’s disappointing baseball career. Thorpe was on that 1919 Giants team, but probably wasn’t a significant enough player to be involved in any gambling fixes.

It’s always amazing to see the diversity of topics people are working on. I always come away from this conference inspired to keep digging into the topics that interest me.

Years ago I was struck by the family lines that connected the Negro Leagues and the major leagues, so I wrote Legacy to tell those stories.

Watching a player named Jerry Hairston, Jr. play sparked a conversation between O’Neil and Posnanski about the number of fathers and sons in the major leagues. It just so happens I was blessed to interview Jerry Hairston, Sr., Jerry Hairston, Jr., and Scott Hairston for Legacy. The Hairstons are one of four families I featured – the others being the Giles, Tiant and Weeks families.

Here is a short excerpt from the Hairston chapter that illustrates the strength of their family bond, which extends from Negro League star Sam Hairston to five ball-playing descendants:

The league that had rejected black players for decades had opened its arms wide by the 1960s, and Sam’s second son, John, was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in 1965. John would play just three games in the big leagues in 1969, but in doing so became the first African-American father/son duo in big league history.

Sam’s oldest son, Sam, Jr., played one season in the minors in 1966, as did Sam’s much younger brother Jack, who was actually a rookie-ball teammate of nephew Sam, Jr.

Up to that point, the Hairston’s integrated league careers had been short and unremarkable. But in 1973 – 22 years after Sam’s cup of coffee with the White Sox – a Hairston finally earned a long-term spot in the big leagues. Sam’s third son, Jerry, broke in as a 21-year-old outfielder on that same White Sox roster that included Sam for four games. He would play 14 seasons, almost all of them with the White Sox.

“I was very happy to get drafted by the White Sox (in 1970), to get to live out the dream my dad had,” Jerry Hairston Sr. recalled. “It was a real source of pride to follow in his footsteps not only as a player, but to do it in the same organization.

“To play on the same field that he did, and to go to many of the same places that he did and see firsthand where so many of the stories took place that he’d told me growing up… I know he was proud, too.”

Now a third generation of Hairstons is playing in the major leagues that once rejected their grandfather. Jerry’s sons Jerry Hairston Jr. and Scott have had long and successful careers.

The Hairston family has certainly benefited from integration. They’ve come a long ways from the Negro League salaries their grandfather earned. The grandsons have each made several million dollars during their playing careers.

“Baseball has been very good to my family and I am very privileged to have the Hairston name on my back,” said Jerry Hairston Jr. “My brother and I understand what a blessing this opportunity is.”

Jerry Hairston Jr. understands that he grew up with a rare perspective – he is a product of both racist oppression, and social and economic privilege.

“Having a grandfather who (was kept out of the white leagues) because of his color, and then having a father who played in the big leagues for a long time, I was kind of able to see two different sides of the history. I never saw my grandfather play, obviously, but hearing the stories and tracing down the line from my uncles, my father playing, and now me and my brother, I can definitely trace the history of how integration played out.”

“I’m very proud that I’m kind of like the bridge that went all the way from the Negro Leagues to today, and to have my sons carry on that legacy,” said Jerry Hairston Sr. “My father passed that joy of the game on to me and I was able to pass it on in my sons. It’s a special thing that my sons are carrying on what was so important to my father.”

The third generation of Hairstons understand all that has been passed down to them, and the men who made it possible.

“Probably more than most anyone, our family knows how we got where we are and who made it possible,” said Scott Hairston. “From the time I was a kid, this is all I ever wanted to do. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been at the ballpark, watching my dad, and watching guys play, being in the clubhouse. This is all I ever wanted to do, and now I have kids of my own, two boys, and they love baseball, just like I did. That doesn’t just happen by chance. My grandfather loved the game first, and he passed that down to our family. And it was always for the love of the game. It was never about money or showmanship or pride. My grandfather, with all the stories he told… who wouldn’t want to play baseball after hearing all his stories?”

“We’re very proud of who we are,” added Jerry Hairston Jr. “We’re not the Griffeys. We’re not the Bonds. We never were superstars. But we’re guys that loved the game of baseball and worked extremely hard at our craft. We brought our lunch pails to work. Come to work every day, give it everything you have, and hopefully that is enough. That’s basically the legacy of our family.”

The Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library is sponsoring a community read of The Soul of Baseball, and has dozens of copies available. I will participate in a group discussion of the book on Feb. 16. Then Posnanski will be at the library on Feb. 17 to talk about O’Neil, the book and his experiences.