• Curse Breaking Season

    Welp, here we go. In about a week, either the Chicago Cubs or the Cleveland Indians will be World Series champions. A week after that, Donald Trump could be the president-elect of the United States of America. Y’all know I’m not a religious man, but if you believe in signs, I think those could be the first two of the…

  • Tuesday Notes

    A few assorted tidbits for Tuesday. Here’s the thing about Indian Summer: you never fully appreciate it. Sure, you can talk in wonder about it being in the mid–80s in the back-half of October. You can take a long lunch, leave work early, or just take the day off to get outside. But as good as these days feel, we…

  • MLB Playoff Predictions

    Well, the MLB playoffs are here, a bittersweet time for me – and many of my readers – for sure. There is a sadness that the Royals aren’t part of the festivities this year. The last two Octobers were so much fun, even if they were intensely stressful. I imagine my blood pressure will appreciate watching games more casually this…

  • R’s: Put A Fork In Them

    Last Sunday, as I often do, I turned on the American Top 40 replay from the 1980s on our local soft rock station. The countdown was from this week in 1985, and I caught it just in time to hear the #1 song from that week, John Parr’s “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)”. First thing first, whether you approach…

  • KC Trip Wrapup

    Once, summer trips to Kansas City were the norm for me. Just about every summer I would sneak away for a weekend that, famously, included the four B’s: baseball, Boulevard beer, barbecue, and buddies.[1] But as the girls got a little older, it became more difficult to get away. Buying a lake house where we spent most of our summer…

  • On @BotStove

    We are deep into baseball’s silly season: the 7–10 days before the trade deadline. In the era of Twitter, fake “insiders,” who create accounts with names that look very similar to real “insiders” like Buster Olney and Tim Kirkjian, claim to break made-up deals that get the webz a buzzin’. That made it the perfect time for this “profile” of…

  • R’s: The End of the Good Times?

    It’s been awhile since I wrote about the Royals. The biggest reason for that is because the last time I wrote exclusively about them, they went in the shitter for the next week. My life without superstition would be empty and meaningless. But here we are on July 21, the trade deadline is 10 days away, and the Royals sit…

  • ASG Notes

    Well, that was a pretty good All-Star Game. I mean, it wasn’t the total Royals takeover from last year. But Ned Yost was still making the lineup and calling the shots, Kelvin Herrera had a nice 1–2–3 inning in relief, and Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez had the two biggest hits of the night. Off former Royal Johnny Cueto for…

  • Summer Vacation

    Summer got off to a quick start for us. The girls wrapped up school last Wednesday. Thursday afternoon we were flying to Boston for our summer trip. This was my third trip to Boston, but first one that I would be spending most of my time in the city proper. Overall, we had a fantastic vacation filled with several firsts…

  • R’s: This Is When The Magic Happens

    I realized last week that I hadn’t documented my thoughts on the Royals season since early April. Which isn’t much of a surprise given it took me awhile to get into this season. There was missing the first week of the season while we were on spring break. There was the coming home to four nights a week of practices…