Man, what a ride. I have a feeling, when we look back on this season, we’ll look at last weekend, when the Royals hosted Boston, as the high point. Big crowds, including the first August sell-out since 2003. Exciting games, including the great, six-run sixth inning Friday night. And a feeling that the Royals mattered again. MLB.TV was acting up much of the time, so I listened more than watched. What struck me were the roars from the crowd. Those were roars that I grew up on. In the 90s, those roars were fewer and fewer. Aside from Opening Days and the first two-thirds of 2003, they largely disappeared over the past decade. But for one weekend they were back.
The numbers still don’t look good for the Royals. Despite all their winning they’ve barely gained ground in either the division or Wild Card races. It’s going to take the miracle of sweeping five games in four days in Detroit next weekend to bring the division title back into the realm of the possible. Winning less than three games could be disastrous for the Wild Card race. They survived Salvador Perez’s injury. Now Miguel Tejada and Lorenzo Cain are both on the DL, Mike Moustakas might be injured. But they keep finding a way to crank out wins.
We can worry about all that next weekend, though. For now, I prefer to bask in the afterglow of last weekend while enjoying another solid game against Miami Monday night.
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