BOSTON--Kyle Schwarber remembered walking into the Red Sox clubhouse in 2021, wondering how he'd be received.
Boston acquired Schwarber at the trade deadline while he was on the injured list with a strained hamstring, dealing for one of the hottest hitters in baseball at the time despite knowing he could not immediately help.
Schwarber mashed 25 home runs in 72 games with a Nationals team drifting toward the bottom of the standings five years ago. But upon arriving in Boston, the slugger admitted something else consumed him.
"It felt like the first day of school again"
"It's going to be weird when you're trading for a hurt guy," Schwarber said. "What are they going to think about me when I walk in?"
The question was fair. At the time, Boston sat atop the American League East. The clubhouse still featured established stars, including Xander Bogaerts and J.D. Martinez.
Then Schwarber saw Kevin Plawecki. The two barely knew each other beyond overlapping Big Ten roots. Plawecki played at Purdue. Schwarber starred at Indiana. They remembered competing against one another years earlier.
After the trade, then-Nationals hitting coach Kevin Long -- who helped revitalize Schwarber's career in Washington and has been Schwarber's hitting coach with the Phillies since 2022 -- offered simple advice:
"Go introduce yourself to Plawecki."
Schwarber listened. Plawecki, despite serving as Boston's backup catcher, was among the most respected and well-liked players in the clubhouse. But Schwarber quickly became the most popular guy in school.
He helped push Boston to within two wins of a World Series appearance. The moonshots played. So did the edge. Red Sox fans saw a slugger with a rugged beard and October in his bloodstream.
Inside the clubhouse, Schwarber's impact stretched deeper than tape-measure home runs and postseason theatrics.
"I can't say enough good things about Kyle," said Plawecki, now serving as the Padres' catching coach. "He's a special individual. You have to be around him to know it."
A beloved figure across cities
He was loved by Cubs fans in Chicago long before the homers arrived consistently, when injuries still defined much of his career.
In Boston, Schwarber received cheers from the Fenway faithful this week despite not having played there in nearly five years. He homered in his first Phillies at-bat in 2022 and has not stopped endearing himself to the Philadelphia fanbase since.
Schwarber is easily one of the most beloved figures in baseball -- in the stands and in clubhouses.
A stabilizer and connector
This really isn't about leadership in the cliché baseball sense. The word gets thrown around too loosely. Loudest voice in the room. Alpha energy. Manufactured accountability. That wasn't Schwarber.
This is about something harder to find: a stabilizer. A connector. The rare star capable of making everyone else breathe a little easier around him.
"He's been through it, man," said teammate Bryce Harper. "He's been through the wringer. He was [non-tendered]. He went through ups and downs. First-round pick, to playing in the minors, raking in the minors, going to the big leagues, playing great in the postseason, gets non-tendered and then comes back, and he's an absolute machine."
The non-tender and comeback
You might've forgotten that part, didn't you? The non-tender.
After a down 2020 season (.188/.308/.393 slash line in 59 games during the COVID-shortened season), Jed Hoyer, the Cubs' president of baseball operations, decided to wipe his hands clean of Schwarber, the slugger the organization drafted and watched help end a 108-year championship drought.
But that became part of the story. Part of the teammate. The stabilizer.
The failures. The demotion. The uncertainty. The feeling of baseball telling you maybe you weren't who you thought you were. All of it hardened Schwarber.
There was no deathly blow. It instead became a piece of the makeup that teammates now gravitated toward.