But Donnie’s body did not know or care about Buckner or Boone or bigger paychecks or bellhops, so despite giving its all on every pitch, his body threw fastballs and split-finger fastballs that came out of his hand slower and more hittable than the ones Boone caught back in ’85, when Donnie’s stuff hissed in the mid-90s and his elbow and shoulder and lower back weren’t shot. He got pounded.”ĭonnie had expected to be up there by now, reunited in the Royals’ clubhouse with Bill Buckner, his old teammate from the Cubs, whose path had crossed Donnie’s many times since then, and Bob Boone, who caught Moore in Anaheim and had recommended that the Royals take a chance on him back in the spring. “You’re like, ‘I can’t get these guys out?’…The last few times got hit so bad it tore him up. “When you’ve pitched in the big leagues, every hit you give up in the minor leagues is hell,” says Laskey. Their teammates lived in short-lease apartments, but Moore and Laskey wanted to be able to leave Omaha the moment Kansas City called one of them up. and Grover in Omaha-their home since mid-May. It was after midnight when they rolled into the Ramada Inn at 72nd St. Moore and his teammate Bill Laskey, a 31-year-old righthander who was clawing to get back on a big league staff as desperately as Donnie, made the two-hour drive from Des Moines to Omaha that night in the mid-size rental they had been sharing since the beginning of the summer. His earned run average for the season now stood at 6.39. Moore gave up another earned run in the seventh. The onslaught finally ended when 24-year-old catcher Joe Girardi, who had led off the inning, popped up. Their 170-pound shortstop hit an RBI double. Iowa’s number-nine hitter smacked an RBI single. Wearing number 9, one of an embarrassing rotation of jerseys the former big-league All Star donned that summer for the AAA Royals, Moore threw a wild pitch to the first Iowa Cubs batter he faced, a 26-year-old who hit an ensuing pitch for a two-run double. The 35-year-old Moore-the oldest guy on the Omaha Royals’ roster by more than three years-entered the game in the sixth inning, facing loaded bases, a 5-0 deficit, and a fraction of the 3,678 fans who had been there in the first. The last game Donnie Moore pitched in took place on a drizzly day in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 11, 1989.
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