KANSAS CITY, Mo. —When the news broke Friday that Alex Gordon will be inducted in the Royals Hall of Fame in June, it instantly conjured up a mental montage of snapshots that defined one of the ultimate Royals.

Like the ol’ hat-glove look and blowing bubbles in the middle of a play. Or the enduring image of the left fielder swooping two rows into the stands in Chicago for a catch, and the poetry of him throwing out 102 runners who shouldn’t have dared him.

And so often caroming off outfield fences and being left splattered that Gordon’s then 4-year-old son Max was known to declare, “Here goes Alex Gordon,” and run face-first into a wall, fall and lie there a few seconds. Any prospective statue of him, Gordon joked upon his retirement in 2021, should depict him sprawled before the left-field wall.

Maybe resonating more than anything else, though, was the electrifying game-tying home run in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the 2015 World Series, underscored by his truly statue-worthy gesture pointing skyward as he rounded first base.

The sort of moment that was all-consuming and unforgettable for anyone watching … but that he mostly remembers by going blank.

“I didn’t really feel anything until maybe I got back to the dugout, and I started celebrating with my teammates,” he said via Zoom Friday afternoon, pointing more specifically to hugging Eric Hosmer and adding, “It’s moments like those that you kind of remember.”

The honor is all the more stirring since Gordon spent his entire 14-year career here, a notion best-put by then-general manager Dayton Moore when the Royals signed him to a contract extension in 2016.

“I don’t know what other uniform he could possibly wear,” Moore said then. “It just wouldn’t have felt right. It wouldn’t seem right.”

But there’s something else to remember in moments like these, Gordon knows: the journey and the trials on the way to being a three-time All-Star and eight-time Gold Glove winner and, best of all to him, a 2015 World Series champion with teammates he loved.

In a certain way, that’s the best part of the story.

None of that would have been possible without what really epitomizes Gordon’s legacy — a symbol of hope and pillar of resolve after a once-promising career was stranded at a crossroads.

The would-be savior of the franchise, a third baseman drafted No. 2 overall in 2005 and popularly billed as the new version of his childhood hero, George Brett, was spiraling so much as of his fourth season with the parent team in 2010 that he was demoted to Triple-A Omaha for nearly three months to learn to play outfield.

At the time, he was batting .194 and had come to feel “almost … like a defensive liability at third.”

Even though Gordon had been sent back to near where he grew up and played in college at Nebraska, there wasn’t much that felt like home to him any more.

In fact, he initially felt like he was “kind of an island. You’re all alone.”

Never mind that the Royals made it clear he wasn’t on his own between the attentiveness of Moore and working with outfield coaching guru Rusty Kuntz. And that he had the reassurance of manager Ned Yost upon his return in late July 2010 that Yost didn’t care if he struck out four times or made three errors as long as he gave his best.

“Going into 2011, there was just a lot of uncertainty for me,” he said. “I was thinking this wasn’t the path for me.”

Even so, he embraced the mission.

With a fervor that is another aspect of his ongoing meaning to the franchise — a legendary work ethic that remains the model.

After all, Gordon wanted to make good on what the Royals had invested in him and how they conveyed their commitment even in the hard times. And particularly to come through for Moore, whom Gordon said “probably believed in me more than I believed in myself at times. So I thank him for this and for everything.”

The resolve that makes his story at once relatable and exceptional stems from his origin story: the parents who set such an example for him when he was growing up in Lincoln, Neb.

When I spoke with Gordon about the influence of his father, Mike, weeks after his death in 2018, Gordon said he wouldn’t have been where he was without him — and quickly added the same about his mother, Leslie.

Among other things we talked about, Gordon described how his father loved to pitch to him and his three brothers in a nearby park even at the end of long workdays.

And even after he’d routinely get pelted with comebackers.

“He’d get right back up and say, ‘Hey, here we go,’” Gordon said in 2018.

All of that helps explain how Gordon got back up in 2011 with 45 doubles, 23 home runs and 87 RBIs to begin a five-year stretch as the best left-fielder in the game — as quantified by FanGraphs’ and Baseball-Reference’s measures of Wins Above Replacement.

On Friday, Gordon also spoke about another force that helped him find his way: Kevin Seitzer, both as a hitting coach and for his role in Gordon becoming a Christian in 2011.

“I started looking at baseball a different way …” Gordon said. “Everything wasn’t about baseball. There’s more to life than just performing on the field.”

Not all of that, of course, can fit in the montage.

But all those highlights come not just from his considerable gifts but from what he still had to overcome — a story that paralleled the improbable rise of those Royals themselves and make the 31st to enter their Hall of Fame the epitome of them all.

“If you could make a mold for a baseball player, Alex Gordon would be it,” Yost said in 2016. “I mean, the perfect player.”

With the imperfectly perfect backstory.

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