Opening Day!
Today, we wake up. Baseball begins again in Kansas City, which means we stop dreaming about the unbelievable run of last October, wondering if Alex Gordon could have scored or waking from nightmares about Madison Bumgarner. Now, all of that is truly part of the past. We have new games to watch! Which is kind of a shame. Because I…
R’s: Wrapping It All Up
I’m glad I was not alone. I heard from many of my friends who are Royals fans last Thursday. The common theme was we all felt like garbage following game seven of the World Series. I was able to shake off the funk by late in the day, as I began to see the big picture again. It sucks that…
R’s: The End
I was nine years old when the Royals made their first World Series. We had moved to Kansas City less than three months earlier. Just three weeks earlier my parents interrupted me listening to a Royals-Mariners game to tell me that they were getting a divorce. I was dealing with a lot of shit, as Kevin Costner might say. When…
R’s: Game Seven
I don’t think I’m getting much done today. It’s not yet 9:00 am as I write this and my hands are already jittery, my stomach an unsettled mess, and overall anxiety level is too high for this early. Game Seven is supposed to be one of the best phrases in sports. But it’s doing a number on me today. I…
R’s: How Quickly The Tide Can Turn
The ebbs and flows of the baseball postseason can be tough. Between the long series, travel days, the breaks between innings, and the gaps between pitches and at-bats, there is so much time for the emotion of the situation to ferment, turning into something more potent than reality. For example, after Friday night’s Royals win, I think most Royals fans…
All Even
Twenty-four hours can make a huge difference in the mood of a sports fan. Wednesday morning I think most of us Royals were down. Not because the Royals dropped game one to the Giants. I bet a lot of us figured it would be a tough task to beat Madison Bumgarner. But James Shields getting rocked early wasn’t in the…
Here We Go
Well, here we go. The series that was never supposed to happen is about to begin. The Royals will play for the World Series championship over the next four-to-seven games. Wildest dreams, Cinderella story, “…tears in his eyes, I guess…”, etc., etc. I’ve read a couple posts already this morning that spoke of how surreal this is. Even after a…
R’s: Is This Real?
Once again, I’m at a loss. How did any of this happen? How did they go from losing four straight after the All-Star break, falling to 48–50, to this? How did they go from reasonable people screaming that they should be trading James Shields at the trading deadline to this? How does a manager who is routinely, almost daily, mocked…
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…