R’s: Dead Tired But Joyous
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This couldn’t happen. The team that wasted opportunities, that was full of guys who failed to fulfill their potential, that maddeningly clung to out-dated ways of playing the game, that team was not supposed to do this. Maybe win a game, perhaps two, sure. But not sweep out the Best Team In Baseball. Not by…
The Craziest, Best Game Ever
Man, where to begin? How do you write about a game like that? Do you write about all the ups and downs, all the twists and turns, the nearly five hours of mood swings first? Or do you try to put it into context, attempting to compare it to other games over the years, across different sports, to figure out…
Game Day
We’ve been waiting on this day since October 28, 1985, the day after the last Kansas City Royals post-season game. On that morning, I went off to school, two months into my freshman year of high school. There was a buzz in the air from the Royals winning the World Series the night before. We were putting the final touches…
Love And Hate And Love Again: Me And The Royals
It goes back to 1978, I believe. Football was the first sport I discovered, but baseball followed soon after. We lived in southeast Missouri at the time, in the heart of Cardinals country. But on a trip to Kansas City that summer, my uncles and the boyfriend of one of my cousins introduced me to the Royals. I still remember…
Sports Whiplash
I have a whole mess of sports thoughts piled up, so let’s kick it off by running through probably the craziest 10-15 minutes of sports I’ve lived through in awhile. Last night I had to multitask for my sports. I had the Colts-Eagles game on TV. And because the Royals were playing the White Sox, which are blacked out in…
R’s: Down The Stretch They Come
Sadly I didn’t get to this before Monday afternoon’s disaster in Comerica Park in Detroit. But still, the Royals are one game into their biggest regular season series since that epic series with the (then) California Angels in September 1985. The big differences are that Angels series was in KC and during the final week of the season. When the…
R’s: Magical
Wow. It was almost exactly a year ago that I wrote about a weekend series in Kansas City between the Royals and Red Sox, wondering if we would look back on it as the high point of the season. The Royals drifted, then climbed back to the periphery of the Wild Card race, staying in it until the final week…
All Star Game, 2014
As has become custom, I settled down just a few minutes after first pitch to watch Tuesday’s MLB All Star Game. I was pretty sure it was on Fox and first pitch was in the 8:30 EDT range. Our program guide even said that the ASG was to air at that time. Instead, though, the MLB Tribute To Derek Jeter…
Tony
What a week. Late last week, former MLB pitcher Bob Welch died. He wasn’t an icon of his era, nor one of my heroes. But for kids who grew up watching baseball in the late 70s through the 80s, his passing was noted. Then Casey Kasem. And just as I was posting my thoughts about Casey on Monday came word…
Reporter’s Notebook
I was back on the diamonds last night, watching a game in the county baseball tournament. It was your average 21-0, 5 inning blowout. WHS scored four runs on four hits, two walks, and three wild pitches in the first. Then they went down 1-2-3 in the second. I went from thinking it would be a blowout to wondering if…