Royals veteran Salvador Perez is still going strong in the MLB playoffs

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Before every game, Salvador Perez, the 34-year-old catcher for the Kansas City Royals, lathers his entire body with an icy balm to wake up his muscles. “Knee, shoulder, groin,” he said. “Everywhere.” He fixes his body parts—differently each night, depending on what's sore—slides neoprene sleeves over his thighs and prepares for another night of baseball's toughest job.

“I’m not 25 anymore,” Perez said this week.

That was a magical age. It was 2015. The Royals won their first World Series in 30 years, a series in which Perez earned MVP honors by hitting .364. He loved this postseason — the pressure, the pageantry, the stakes, everything — and dreamed of great performances in October.

Just a week ago, the Royals finally returned to the playoffs. Perez has waited eight terrible seasons, and now he's back at Kauffman Stadium to conjure up more magic, this time in the deciding Game 3 of their American League Division Series against the New York Yankees. Of all the fantastic consequences of Kansas City's baseball renaissance this year – the resurgence of a fan base jaded by defeat, the rise of Bobby Witt Jr. to superstardom, a turnaround from a 56-106 record to 86- 76 – What satisfies the organization's veteran staff more than any other is the end of Perez's postseason drought.

It came as no surprise to any of them that Perez found himself in the middle of the Royals' series-tying triumph at Yankee Stadium on Monday night. Even at 34 years old and with nearly 1,300 career games as a catcher, he is still one of the best at the position. He's the Kansas City captain, the cleanup hitter and, in Game 2, the author of a home run that kept Yankees starter Carlos Rodon's tongue in his mouth after a celebratory joke in the first inning.

Perez has made it his mission to spoil the pitchers' good times. He made his ninth All-Star team that season, hit 27 home runs, drove in 104 runs and managed to play in 158 games, 91 of them as a catcher. He spent the winter changing his catching style to make pitches better and had great success at reinventing himself. He's approaching 11,000 innings pitched and 300 home runs batted in, the kind of gaudy numbers that are the domain of those inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. And when Matt Quatraro was named coach two years ago, Perez was the first player he contacted. He wanted to hear what Perez thought about the Royals' present and future.

“A big goal of ours,” Quatraro said, “was to get him back to where we feel he rightfully belongs in the game.”

This is October. “This is what he lives for,” said Cole Ragans, the winning pitcher in Game 2 of the ALDS. Ragans learned this last year as he grew into an ace under Perez's tutelage. Even though Perez's body barks at him and tells him that men in their mid-30s aren't designed to catch regularly in the big leagues, he overcomes the physical challenges because he craves the mental ones.

“I love thinking about the game,” Perez said. “I want to be in charge. I tell these guys: Give me all the pressure. I've got it. I want to think about fastball, slider, curveball, like we got it out last at-bat, what we're doing now,” what he's looking for. That's why I love catching so much.

For years, teams approached Royals general manager Dayton Moore and inquired about a trade. The Royals couldn't move Perez. He is Salvy, progenitor of the Salvy Splash, owner of the number 13, which will one day be retired. But at the end of last season, Royals GM JJ Picollo asked Perez if he would like to play somewhere else. Picollo believed the Royals were on the verge of a turnaround, and owner John Sherman promised to spend money, but he didn't want to keep Perez if Perez didn't believe in Kansas City's future.

“I talked to JJ about this last year when we lost a lot of games,” Perez said. “A few teams wanted me, but I don’t want to leave. This is my second home.”

He's serious – after 13 years in Kansas City, Perez is the type of guy who'll see a Whiffle Ball game in a neighborhood and stop to play a game with the kids. Perez is receiving love from the city, which remembers his walk-off hit in the 2014 AL Wild Card Game as if it were yesterday and will fill Kauffman Stadium in the hope that the Royals can do what they want they did the last time they faced the Yankees in the postseason, 1980: Win a five-game series.

When asked Tuesday about Yankees third baseman Jazz Chisholm's comments after the Royals' 4-2 win in Game 2 – “You got lucky” – Perez abandoned his cavalier norm, became terse and refused , to say something. There is no time for nonsense in October. It's time to go home – after spending 17 days on the road to finish the season and eliminate Baltimore in the wild card round, Perez had to do his own laundry at the hotel for the first time in his life – and show his teammates how postseason games play at Kauffman Stadium.

“'What will it look like?'” Perez said they asked him. “‘What will it be like? How loud will it be?' We have the best fans ever. Even in the bad moments they were there for us.

They will be there Wednesday and Thursday. Playoff games across the parking lot at Arrowhead Stadium are old hat, but in the K? They are special and without Salvador Perez, the heart of his team, they would not be comfortable. So he'll arrive early, do his routine, prepare his body, jog onto the field at 7:06 p.m. and hunker down in his second home, his city, the only place he wants to be.