Frank White played his entire 18-season career for the Royals, spent years after that coaching and broadcasting their games, and has a statue in front of Kauffman Stadium.
Yet last month the team fired White as their part-time television announcer and yesterday he took a new job on the independent league Kansas City T-Bones’ coaching staff, revealing a few more details about his ouster from the Royals.
White told Sam Mellinger of the Kansas City Star that he’ll never come back to the organization:
I’m just glad I’m not there anymore. I’m healthier. My blood pressure is stable. I’m laughing a lot more, I’m having more fun. This is good. This is good for me. It’s hard to go to work when the people there don’t see you as an asset, or someone who can help make the team better. When you’re the guy everybody messes with. When there’s nobody there to say, “This is Frank White, this is what he’s done for us, don’t mess with him.”
White, who the Royals paid around $300,000 last year, told Mellinger that owner David Glass fired him because of critical comments he made that supposedly did “irrevocable damage” to the team. And in fairness to the Royals according to Mellinger they got reports from other teams that White was badmouthing them privately.
Whatever the case, it sounds like the 40-year relationship is going to be very difficult to repair. Or as White put it: “I’ll tell you the most disappointing thing in this. Nobody stood up for me. Even when I was making sense to them, or thought I was making sense, nobody stood up for me. Nobody.”
