DETROIT -- You want to know Alex Gordon’s secret to holding the Royals’ club record for hit by pitches, now at 102?

“Don’t move,” Gordon said, smiling.

Actually, Gordon doesn’t have a better explanation as to why he has been such a magnet for pitched balls. He doesn’t really crowd the plate. And he doesn’t really lean into pitches, though he admits to using that practice in college.

“It was an on-base thing in college at Nebraska,” Gordon said. “I don’t really do that here. We were kind of big on diving over the plate in college.

“I think pitchers pitch in to me. And they don’t want to miss over the plate so if they miss, they miss pretty far inside.”

Gordon already has been hit three times this season, which again leads the team. His teammates are impressed that for all the times he gets hit, he never complains and he never misses playing time.

“It is impressive,” Whit Merrifield said. “In college, we were all taught to take [the HBP]. Up here, you want to hit, not get hit. And look, it doesn’t feel good to get hit with a 100-mph fastball. But he just seems to brush it off.”

On the recent homestand, Gordon got hit with a four-seam fastball right between the shoulder blades, close to his neck. Gordon went down to the ground and remained there for a bit, a scary scene that prompted manager Ned Yost and trainer Nick Kenney to come to his aid.

“It shocked me more than anything,” Gordon said. “I thought it was going to kill me. But it really didn’t hurt me that bad. It didn’t flush me.”

Once Yost determined Gordon was OK, he joked to him, “You must be getting old. You never buckle over like that.”

Gordon admits he may have milked the attention.

“I played it up a little more than I should have,” Gordon said.

The only time Gordon remembers getting injured by a HBP was in 2011 when a back-foot slider by a Rockies pitcher nailed him in his left knee.

“I don’t remember who the pitcher was,” Gordon said, “but that got me pretty good. It swelled up pretty bad. But I wasn’t going to play the next day anyway because we were facing a tough lefty. I was OK after about 48 hours and didn’t miss any time.”

Yost appreciates Gordon’s toughness in getting hit so often, and also how the result adds to Gordon’s on-base percentage.

“It’s a selfless thing,” Yost said.

Yost was never hit by a pitch in his Major League career.

“I was too easy an out,” Yost said. “Why would you hit me? There was a guy in the Minors, threw about 95, and he hit me and I stared at him and said ‘Are you crazy? I’m an easy out.’”