Kiermaier brothers see Rays-Cubs series at Wrigley Field as a family affair

CHICAGO — The Kiermaier brothers have been together at Wrigley Field a few times before as kids on family trips from their Fort Wayne, Ind., home.

There’s one rather colorful story they both tell, going back to their grade school days in 2001. A foul ball hit by the Cubs’ Fred McGriff, the Tampa native and former Ray, eluded the grasp of an obviously drunk fan and struck him in the face.

Kevin, the younger of the two, was always extremely squeamish at the sight of blood and saw enough to vomit right there in the stands, with enough exit velocity to splatter Dan, 18 months older.

“I don’t know if there was too much brotherly love that day,” Dan recalled.

There will be plenty next week when they reunite at the venerable ballpark for the baseball version of a family business meeting.

Kevin will be in town doing his job playing centerfield for the Rays. And Dan will be doing his work as the head groundskeeper for the Cubs.

“Having one Kiermaier in the big leagues was crazy with me making it, but let alone two,” Kevin said. “I’m so proud of him. And just crazy how everything has kind of come to fruition for us in the baseball world.”

The Kiermaiers have been looking for this opportunity for a while.

The Rays visited Wrigley in 2014, the year before Dan joined the Cubs’ ground crew. They came back in July 2017, but Kevin got hurt a few weeks earlier and didn’t travel with the team. The Rays were scheduled to come back in 2020, after Dan was promoted to the top job, but the trip was wiped out due to the pandemic forcing an abbreviated season.

“So this has been a long time coming,” said Dan, 33. “It’s a dream come true to have him come here and play. Both of our careers kind of collide at this point. It’s just going to be a really cool experience.”

The Monday-Wednesday series will be somewhat of a family affair, with Kevin renting a stadium suite for the three night games. Their parents, Chris and Jim, are coming in from Fort Wayne. Younger brother Steve is trying to get time off from a new job to join them. Kevin’s wife, Marisa, is flying up from Tampa with their two sons. Dan’s wife, Kristy, is going to bring their two kids at least one of the nights.

“It’s going to be incredible,” said Kevin, 31. “I’m going to be on cloud nine all three days. I know he’s excited, and I’m excited. …

“Special is the word that that comes to mind. It’s just going to be very special for the whole Kiermaier family, but especially for me and Dan, just to be on the same field with each other. His field. I’m looking forward to it so much.”

Brothers in the big leagues

Kevin’s challenging path to the majors has been well documented.

A 31st-round pick in 2010 from a small junior college, he worked his way to the majors, then into becoming one of the best defensive outfielders in the game, with three Gold Gloves and a $53.5 million contract to show for it.

Dan had a first-hand look, citing examples such as the Christmas break days they spent doing drills at the Fort Wayne minor-league team’s indoor batting cages.

“I’ve seen all the work that he’s put in to get to this level, and to have accomplished all those things,” Dan said. “It was a lot of long hours, hard days. And he worked his way up from the absolute bottom.”

Dan also had to put in his time, and for a career he didn’t know he’d have until after a few semesters of college.

The boys grew up playing just about all the sports they could at the family house on Gathings Drive: baseball, basketball and lots of football tossing outside, the occasional living room wrestling match. Dan and Kevin, because they were only one grade apart, teamed up on a number of youth league and high school teams.

And, like brothers also do, they sparred often.

“We had our battles,” Kevin said. “We were so competitive. … But he was always bigger, stronger than me. I was a little bit more athletic. But, man, we had so many battles in the driveway playing basketball and brotherly fights ever since we were young kids. He’d always get the best of me.”

The balance shifted as Kevin had a growth spurt as a high school junior, and his athleticism at least made pro baseball a possibility, however slim.

Dan had some small college baseball offers, but opted for college at Purdue, where he’d always wanted to go. But what to do? He sampled different areas of study, including a couple semesters exploring physical therapy as a way to stay in sports, but decided it wasn’t for him.

A buddy told him about the turf management and science program, and Dan was intrigued. He liked cutting lawns as a kid, helping their dad take care of some neighbors’ yards for extra spending money, and figured tending to sports fields could be fun.

“You’re outside, you’re working with your hands, and you’re not sitting at a desk — those things kind of just correlated with me,” Dan said. “Kind of the rest is history, man. I kind of lucked into this career path.”

Internships with the Staten Island Yankees minor-league team in 2011 and the University of Michigan led to a job at the Dodgers/White Sox spring facility in Arizona, then with the Reds youth academy in Cincinnati.

Champions all around

In 2015, passing on an offer from the Dodgers, Dan joined the Cubs, where the next year he got something his brother is still chasing — a World Series ring after Joe Maddon’s team won it all.

“It’s similar to a player; you just have to work your way up through different levels,” Dan said. “There’s only so many of these positions. To get to the big leagues, for me, that was my ultimate goal.

“Never in a million years that I think I’d be running the show here at Wrigley. If you’d asked me 10 years ago, what my dream job was, I’m working it right now.”

The hard work continues. The brothers share an old YouTube account, and Kevin said as he is looking for videos of specific hitters, he’ll see in the search history Dan was checking out the work of other grounds crews.

“My dad just always instilled in us when we were young, you’ve got to work for what you want in life. Nothing was ever handed to us,” Kevin said. “Knowing how much pride I take in doing what I do, I know (Dan’s) the exact same way.

“He always sends me pictures of Wrigley just out of the blue just because he’s so proud of the field, of what he and his crew are doing.”

Dan and Kevin plan to get together Sunday night for some fun, knowing the game days will be busy — and cold. Kevin has been joking about asking Dan to tailor the field to his benefit and threatening to complain if it isn’t to his liking. Dan offered only a “We’ll see” when asked if he had any surprises planned for his brother.

“Standing out there during (batting practice) and seeing my brother walking around or fixing the field or whatever, it’s going to be so weird,” Kevin said. “But so awesome at the same time.”

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