Tag: Kansas City Royals (Page 6 of 14)

R’s: Oh No

July 9, 2015 / DB

Each of the past two Augusts, I’ve written about a Royals series against contending teams that came in front of big, loud crowds and wondered if that would be the high point of the season. It likely was in 2013. Last year, though, things got about a kazillion times better over the next two months.

I mention that because I can’t help but wonder if last night was as good as it will get for this year’s version of the Royals. The crowd wasn’t as big or boisterous as those crowds for the Red Sox and Giants series. It was a cool Wednesday night against Tampa, who are good, but not exactly a big draw, even with Chris Archer on the mound.

But the Royals were coming off a dramatic sweep of a double header on Tuesday, and won Wednesday with flair and mid-innings drama. At the end of the night, they were 16 games over .500 and 4.5 games up in first place. When you consider just that, it seems like a pretty great moment in a season that has been mostly very good since Opening Day.

Ahhh, but there is always a rub. And the rub last night was Alex Gordon going down with a fairly serious injury that will cost him, at minimum, a month of games, and likely multiple months.

I don’t know if Alex is the best player on the Royals. Lorenzo Cain can make an awfully good case for that over the past 12 months. And Eric Hosmer, despite his terrible slump, probably has more raw talent than Alex.

I don’t know if Alex is the most indispensable player on the Royals. He’s definitely in the conversation, but given his streaky bat at Jarrod Dyson’s defense, it feels like you can find a way to fill Alex’s talent void better than if Salvador Perez was to miss a month.

I don’t know if Alex is the clear leader of the team. Again, I think that’s a role he shares with Perez.

But if you think about all the ways that Alex contributes, about how he gives the team great at-bats even when he’s scuffling, about how anything hit to left field is likely an out, about how he shows up every day even when nicked up, I think he becomes the toughest guy to lose.

It’s not insignificant that he is likely the most popular player on the team, too. Losing him is a psychic blow to the fan base that has watched him go from brightest prospect in the game, to complete bust, through the process of totally overhauling his game, to becoming one of the most well-rounded and valuable players in the game.

Oh, and there’s the specter that, if this is a three-month injury, he may have played his final game for the Royals. Even with a nasty injury, he’s almost certainly priced himself out of the Royals budget. Unless he’s a way better guy than everyone thinks and willing to give up $4–5 million/year to stay in KC. And he’d be an idiot to do that.

The Royals are already fighting injuries and slumps all over the diamond. There’s always the hope, though, that the other injured guys will be back soon, and the guys who can’t hit their weight over the past month will get it turned around. Alex being out until the late part of the season, though? Man, that feels like almost too much to overcome.

Given the Royals place in the standings, and how many injuries, suspensions, and poor performances they’ve had to dodge this season, it’s kind of a miracle that they are still in the lead in the division and have one of the best records in baseball.

No, you know what it is? It’s a testament to Ned Yost and Dayton Moore and how they’ve managed and constructed this team.

Wow, things I never thought I would say for $400, Alex!

No one in the majors wanted Christ Young. He’s been the Royals best starting pitcher over the first half of the season. Joe Blanton may be turning back into a pumpkin, but he filled in nobly a couple nights, including the evening he out-dueled Felix Hernandez in Seattle. Kendrys Morales has been fantastic when everyone else thought his career was over.

Yes, Alex Rios has been a complete bust. And Omar Infante looks like a terrible signing with two-plus years left on his contract. But not everyone is perfect.

The Royals are in first place despite big, consistent holes in their lineup and three-fifths of their Opening Day rotation spending significant time on the DL.

Props to the guys who are running the team.

Now comes the real test. Can Dayton find someone to plug into Alex’s hole. The Royals already needed another bat badly, and were apparently looking (smartly) at adding one over going after another arm for the rotation. Now they need two bats.

The good news is Mike Moustakas should be back soon. The odds are that Eric Hosmer isn’t going to be a disaster at the plate the entire second half. Get Moose back and get Hosmer going, and that helps the offense a lot. But I think it’s going to take more than Ben Zobrist to give the Royals a chance to not only get into October, but keep it going deep into the playoffs. Be bold, Dayton!

The rest of the American League Central has been kind of awful this year. Everyone keeps saying the Twins are going to fall back to earth. But they haven’t yet and, honestly, feel a little like last year’s Royals. Detroit will likely spend some money and make an effort to get back in the race. Cleveland still has better starting pitching than anyone in the division, and will always be a threat even if they field about as well as my daughter’s softball team. And I can’t believe the White Sox are as bad as they’ve been through the first half.

In other words, the Royals are going to have to win this thing rather than coast through the second half assuming the rest of the division is garbage.

Losing Alex doesn’t kill that dream. But it sure as hell makes it a lot tougher.

R’s: Patience Is A Virtue

June 11, 2015 / DB

I’ve been thinking about my next Royals post for a couple weeks. In the interim, they had a slow and steady descent into their first extended cold spell of the season.

It began with concerns about pitching, as each member of the starting rotation had at least one terrible start and both Jason Vargas and Danny Duffy landed on the Disabled List.

Soon, though, the Same Old Royals appeared at the plate. The entire team began hacking at the first halfway decent pitch and kept hacking with no concern for working the pitch count. Each night, as the game rolled into the middle innings, the Royals’ starter would be sitting in the 60s or 70s in total pitches, while his opposing number was still comfortably in the 40s. There were far too many single-digit pitch innings for whoever the Royals were batting against.

But the pitching has steadied[1] The offense might be waking up, although with this team you never can tell. And the defense, as always, has been pretty rock-solid.

So despite their worst stretch of the season, the Royals are back in first place and go to St. Louis this weekend to face the best team in the National League sporting the best record in the American League. Perhaps most importantly Detroit has been playing terrible of late and are 4.5 games back. And Cleveland, the team that could be the biggest threat in the AL Central because of its starting pitching, is 7.5 back and four games under .500.

Even when they were losing nine of 11, I kept thinking the Royals were good enough to get the offense rolling again. They were just stuck in the inevitable bad stretch that every team encounters in a 162-game season. They may not match their 7-game winning streak that began the season. But there was every reason to think they could rip off a 9–2 streak to balance their recent scuffling. I don’t know that they’ve started that yet, but a four-game winning streak isn’t a bad thing.

I just wish they could figure out a way not to have every bat go cold at once. Although it’s going to be fun if they can get every bat hot again in the next couple weeks.

I love, LOVE, all the hang-wringing about Royals fans stuffing the virtual ballot boxes for the All-Star game. This opinion is not original, but you never hear complaining from the national media when the rosters are filled with Yankees and Red Sox, or when guys five years past their primes keep getting voted in as starters.

The All-Star game has always been a popularity contest. That’s why they let fans vote on the starters. The Royals are just one franchise in a league of 30 teams. There are 29 other cities that can go overboard for their players just as easily. Or, join forces to make the “right” decision to vote in the best statistical player at each position.

I also loved the Royals using their first two draft picks on pitchers from the Indianapolis area. Ashe Russell is from the school where my wife and her siblings went, and where our daughters are most likely to go. Nolan Watson likely grew up pretty close to S’s office. I didn’t see either kid pitch this year, but knew both of their names from hype before the season began. Never thought that the Royals would pick one, let alone both, of them. It would be awfully cool if both sign with the Royals and are pitching in Kansas City in 4–5 years.

It was never as bad as some claimed. There were a number of individual bad starts sprinkled in there. But it’s not like the whole staff was suddenly giving up 5 earned runs per nine innings. ↩

R’s: Stuff And Nonsense

April 21, 2015 / DB

In the bad old days, I would think the Royals were cursed.

How else to explain getting off to a hot start – they’re currently tied for the second-best record in the bigs – yet still looking up at Detroit? The baseball gods hate the Royals, right?

But these aren’t the bad old days. This is the brave new world where every roster move Dayton Moore makes works out, every in-game decision that Ned Yost makes turns to gold, and the team gets clutch hits from the bottom of its lineup late in games to pull out wins.

The Royals, it seems, are actually good.

As much as I loved last October, I chalked a lot of it up to the flukey/luck-driven nature of the playoffs. Their pitching was solid, they got some huge hits in important moments, and caught everything that was hit. For 11 of 15 games, they played damn near perfect baseball, or at least in each game’s biggest moments they were perfect. In July, that’s just a nice little run. In October, that gets you to game seven of the World Series.

As I said in my preseason picks, I did not expect that luck to carry over. And I think I was right. Sure, the Royals have caught some breaks here-and-there in the first few weeks of the season. But they’re mostly winning because they are playing with a whole different level of confidence. Getting to the final game of the baseball season seems to have transformed the roster. Now they expect to find a way to work a walk when they need a base runner. They expect someone to come up with that key hit to bring the tying/go-ahead runs home. They play with a looseness that comes from being absolutely certain that if they can squeeze out one more run than the opponent sometime in the last three innings, a win is guaranteed.

What has impressed me most is how the off-season acquisitions have begun the year. Yes, we’re still in the extreme, small-sample-sized days of April. So we shouldn’t get too excited. But Edinson Volquez has been flat-out awesome through his first three starts, pitching better than he’s ever pitched in his career. Kendrys Morales looks completely rejuvenated. And Alex Rios seemed locked-in before he took a fastball to the hand that landed him on the DL.

Again, it’s early. Rios is already hurt and Volquez and Morales are both over 30 and more liable to break down than they were in their younger days. For now, though, I’m going to love every Volquez change up that makes a batter look silly, and every Morales double in the last third of the game that gets the winning run home.

Right now, the Royals are an absolute joy to watch. I’m not going to take a second of it for granted.

For the most part, I thought what went on at the K over the weekend was nonsense. I’m not big into retaliation in baseball. I think there’s generally too much at risk to throw at a guy, especially if it’s your #1 starter or a key member of your bullpen doing the throwing. Winning is the best payback, not putting a fastball in somebody’s ribs. (Or sailing one behind their head.)

That said, I understood the Royals’ frustration. They had been plunked with impunity through the first two weeks of the season. Rios is on the DL because a rookie couldn’t control his fastball. So when Brett Lawrie made an awful slide Friday night that Alcides Escobar was lucky to only limp away from, I knew it was going to be a long weekend.

Which is fine. But the way Yordano Ventura and Kelvin Herrera went about “paying back” Lawrie was all wrong. Ventura didn’t need to take steps toward Lawrie and yap at him. Herrera didn’t need to throw behind his head, or then point at his own head, no matter what message he was trying to send with the latter gesture. You have to be smarter than both of them were.

The Royals are built around young guys who are new to winning and play emotionally. That is mostly a good thing. But they need to learn to contain that emotion. Teams are going to start goading them into future altercations, knowing that umpires and the league office will not give the Royals much leash when things get testy. If it’s not already a distraction, it soon will be.

I kind of hate that I agree with long-time Royals broadcaster, and general grump about most things, Denny Matthews. But he was right when he said the Royals need to calm down, turn the other cheek, and just beat people. Let the scoreboard do the talking.

Oh, and that title? From an old Split Enz song. Here’s a version from 2001 featuring Eddie Vedder and Tim Finn.

Hot Sports Takes

December 18, 2014 / DB

Back again to fill in a couple hot sports takes between favorite songs entries.

Bill Self Issues a Fatwa Against Mock Drafts

Last Saturday KU coach Bill Self, after responding to a question about how well Kelly Oubre had played against Utah, railed against the numerous mock NBA drafts that dot the Internet. He said they hurt more people than they help by building unrealistic expectations for young college players.

Which I think we all would kind of agree with, whether you like Self or not, or think his rant was reasonable or not. Mock drafts are silly. I don’t know that they actually hurt people, but we probably put way too much weight into them.

A couple college hoops writers, one of whom puts out his own mock draft, took Self to task for his comments.

Which I understand, too. Mock drafts weren’t causing Kelly Oubre to play awful basketball in the first 4–5 games of his KU career. And if the mock drafts did not exist, people would still be wondering why this top ten recruit was struggling so mightily to get on the court.

I found the defense of mock drafts equally silly, though. These are made up lists based on guesses and the heat of the moment. If a kid has a couple bad games, suddenly his draft stock is “plummeting.” Go get a couple double-doubles back-to-back and your stock is instantly rising.

I get what Self was doing. He had said for a couple weeks that Oubre was doing fine, he just needed to stop thinking so much and then the light would go on.[1] He was tired of hearing questions about why one young player wasn’t getting very many minutes when people were ignoring the fact that A) that kid hadn’t settled into the system yet and B) he was losing minutes to two other guys who are going to play in the NBA eventually. Self was just protecting his player.

I also think he was trying to nip a bigger story in the bud. KU had three players leave the program between their season-ending loss to Stanford last March and the first game of this season. If Oubre is buried behind Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk and Brannen Greene in January, you can bet the rumors would pick up about him wanting out of the program, too. And then come the articles wondering, “What is wrong with Kansas?!?!” I think Self wanted to crush that before it ever got started.

That said, I think he chose his words and tone poorly. He came across as whining, at least when you read his comments. But I guess you can get tired of saying, “Kelly will be fine,” and people insisting that maybe he isn’t.

I think this “controversy” gets to two bigger issues.

First, the expectations that players come into college with. We’ve read about them since they were in the ninth grade. We’ve watched them on ESPN playing against other elite players. Freshmen aren’t novelties anymore. They come with gaudy resumes and the expectation that if they’re as good as everyone says, they’ll spend a quick year in college before moving on to the next level.

Which ignores the reality that every player adjusts to the college game in different ways, and every year’s ratings are different. I think a lot of people expected Kelly Oubre to make an immediate impact the way Andrew Wiggins did last year. Oubre was a terrific high school player, and I think he’s going to be a very good college player before he’s done. But he’s not Wiggins. Same for Cliff Alexander, who I think some people expected to be a Julius Randle-type player. He may well be before the year is over, but he’s a different kid and will get there by a different path than Randle did at Kentucky last year.

Second, I think a lot of people confuse the hype and expectations that come with lofty recruiting rankings and high slots in mock drafts as a representation of current reality. Those mock drafts are based on looking out to the future three, four, five years. Who is going to be an NBA All-Star vs. who will be in Europe after a year? We forget how much development must take place for even the best of these players to get to that level.

Royals Free Agent Signings

I’m really struggling with what the Royals have done over the past week. They signed Kendrys Morales to a two-year, $17 million deal. Alex Rios to a one-year, $11 million deal. And Edinson Volquez to a two-year, $20 million deal. A lot of money for three players who are aging and have not been at their peak for several years.

I want to hate the moves. I want to shake my fist in the general direction of Dayton Moore and wonder what the hell he’s thinking.

But the thing is, I think he’s earned some leeway. He’s made some bad roster moves, but lately most of them seem to work out. Maybe not always with wild success, but enough to help the club.

Each of these players is a high risk signing. But maybe Morales is completely healthy and in shape again, and can be the everyday DH for the next two seasons. Maybe Rios is healthy and can take advantage of Kaufman Stadium’s deep gaps and start lining doubles again. And maybe Volquez has enough left to take advantage of the K’s spacious outfield and the Royals fine defense and can be a solid, back of the rotation guy for two years.

I wish they had signed Melky Cabrera instead of Rios. Jake Peavy instead of Volquez. Just about anyone instead of Morales. But I’m not ready to kill Moore for them. Yet.

I do also wonder if there’s another big move ahead. A payroll of $110+ million seems awfully high for the Glass family. I wonder if Greg Holland or Wade Davis will be traded for prospects to slice a chunk of that cash off before spring training.

But, hey, it’s nice to be talking about the Royals, the defending American League champions, in December!

Which may be what has happened over the last two games. ↩

R’s: Wrapping It All Up

November 4, 2014 / DB

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 one game can wipe out many of the good feelings built up in the 14 (or 176) games that came before it. Usually I’m lamenting this focus on the last game of the year in March. I wasn’t sure how to handle it in October. I hate that that’s how we judge sports these days. You’re only as good as the last game of your season. Good, even great teams, are shat upon if they have a bad night at the wrong time of the schedule.

But I got over it. Mostly. It’s easier now to look back on what was a fabulous run and enjoy it for what it was. Unexpected. Unexplained. Exhilarating. Amazing. Sure, they came up a little short. That run, though, was what we had craved since 1985. And we got it, disappointing end or not.

I don’t know that I can write much different from what I’ve already written. So I’ll clear out the notebook with some things I jotted down during the last glorious month of baseball.

How did this run affect me? Well there’s one very clear way of measuring it. I gained at least five pounds since the playoffs began. I’m generally a one beer a night guy. With that beer often comes a handful of pretzels or mixed nuts.

For the last month, though? Most nights were 3–5 beer nights. And I don’t drink watered down “lite” beers. Theses are full-bodied, full-caloried craft beers. I also kept the can of nuts or jar of pretzels close and worked through them as the game progressed.

What’s frightening is I was quite active through most of the month. I was taking at least one long bike ride each week.[1] I also began running on a local cross country course, something I had never done before. Throw in a couple strength training sessions each week and I was certainly burning calories. I hate to see what the scales would show had I not been working out.

The morning after game seven I was explaining to S. what happened in the bottom of the ninth. I used the term “Little League home run,” which she quickly shouted back at me. “LITTLE LEAGUE HOME RUN?!?!” I laughed and broke it down for her.

That reminded me of one of our favorite moments from when we were dating. We were watching a Royals game at her apartment in Kansas City. Or, rather, I was watching a Royals game and she was probably doing something productive next to me. Joe Randa hit a shot down the line at Fenway and I shouted “STAY FAIR!”

S. looked at me and asked, “STATE FAIR?!?! What the hell does that mean?”

She also was confused when I yelled “WOLF!” at the TV during basketball games.

Little League home run definitely goes on that list.

Credit where due. I’ve been one of the knuckleheads who has slagged Ned Yost often over the past few years, when his decisions seemed to be holding back a team that was ready to contend. He wasn’t perfect in the playoffs; few managers are. But I think he did a very solid job during October. Sure, a move here or there got questioned, but for the most part he was on point. He seemed to enjoy the moment, which I think rubbed off on his players.

The concept of chemistry is a tough one. Good teams always have good chemistry, right? To whatever extent a manager can affect a team’s chemistry, I think Ned helped the Royals in this post season. And while perhaps he should have pulled Jeremy Guthrie an inning earlier, Ned did not lose game seven for the Royals.

I don’t know that I had a favorite Royal when the season began. I wanted it to be Eric Hosmer, but by August I was on the verge of loathing him. It was probably Alex Gordon, but Alex’s streakiness at the plate drives me bonkers.

I know I’m not the only one who fell in love with Lorenzo Cain through the playoffs. He was the team’s best, and most consistent hitter in the regular season. He played great defense from April through September. And he played hard.

Then he took all that to a completely different level in October. He was a freaking man all month long. He made a career’s worth of highlight catches. He could somehow be both aggressive at the plate and work long at-bats. He seemed to always find a way to slash the ball into an open spot in the defense.

That dude played his ass off on the playoffs. I hope it was not an aberration but rather a sign of things to come for him.

I thought back, after the World Series ended, to how this season began. We were in Kansas City over St. P’s spring break. When the Royals and Tigers began things in Detroit, we were eating lunch at Oklahoma Joe’s. Somehow I ended up sitting facing away from every TV, so I my head shot around each time there was a roar of cheering for a Royals hit.

As the game progressed, we took the girls to a few sites around the city and I followed the game on my phone. During the game, I bought the Royals hat I’ve been wearing all season. We were just pulling into the parking lot at our hotel when Wade Davis and Greg Holland combined to blow the game. It wasn’t a promising start. Amazing how far they all came from that first game.

Finally, among all the memories of the last month, one of my favorites will always be how I shared this with friends. The Royals run got me to check, and post to, Facebook more than once a week. During most games I was frantically sending iMessages back-and-forth with people in Kansas City, people who were often inside the stadium.

I became a much bigger Royals fan the summer we moved to Indianapolis. It wasn’t just their crazy run that put them in first place for two months of that summer, although that made them interesting. Rather it was how the Royals allowed me to stay in touch with a wide swath of friends. My KU friends and I would always have the Jayhawks to send emails and texts about. But the Royals brought in friends who went to other schools, or who had no strong college affiliations. Since I’m not a Chiefs fan, the Royals were my best way of showing my hometown pride as well.

Since we moved I’ve been back for one KU basketball game, and that was in Kansas City. I’ve been to one KU football game. But I’ve been back for close to 20 Royals games in 11 years. That said, it’s been two years since I’ve been back to the K. That needs to change next season.

Anyway, it just made all this extra special that I was able to go through this run with so many friends back in KC. I’m jealous of everyone who got to go to games, but thankful for them sharing their experience with me.

The longest was 19.5 miles. ↩

R’s: The End

October 30, 2014 / DB

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 Willie Wilson struck out to end the World Series in game six, I burst into tears.

Make fun of me if you want, but I can not deny that I shed some tears late last night when the Royals fell to the San Francisco Giants 3–2 in game seven of the World Series.

Despite all the joy they had brought to us over the last month, I was a bit overwhelmed that the season had ended. Of course, I had been drinking, which may have had something to do with my emotional state. But there was also the realization of how close they came to pulling this off. A freaking infield single by an overweight man that has no speed ended up accounting for the winning run. He scored on an 0–2 pitch that broke Michael Morse’s bat. The Royals, who made every play through the first three rounds of the playoffs, were the victims of some fantastic plays by the Giants Wednesday. And, of course, Madison Bumgarner came in and threw five innings of two-hit ball to close out the game.

So god damn close. What if Bumgarner had not benefitted from a very favorable strike zone? What if the Royals batters had been able to lay off his high pitches after he got ahead in the count? What if Eric Hosmer doesn’t dive into first and beats the throw in the fourth inning? What if Joe Panik doesn’t make an incredible play on Hosmer’s grounder up the middle that kicks off the 4–6–3 double play? And the biggest what if, what if Alex Gordon keeps running with two outs in the ninth and forces the Giants to make two perfect throws to cut him down at the plate?

We’ll never know, which is both the beauty and the bitch of sports.

There were a lot of late nights over the last month. Until last night, they were always happy late nights. I’d tip-toe into bed at 1:00 or 1:30 or 1:45 and then lay there and stare at the ceiling for another hour (or two), still buzzing off a Royals win. Last night was the only sad one, which on balance seems like a pretty good thing.

This team made an amazing run. They shook off nearly three decades of history. They brought a city, and its ex-pats, together. They made it cool to be a Royals fan again. They made me proud to be a Royals fan again.

Will it happen again anytime soon? That’s where the pain comes from. Not from the loss itself, but from knowing how rare this opportunity was.

When KU losses in the NCAA tournament each year, I’m always bummed. If it happens early, and to a team they are more talented than, the loss is embarrassing and disappointing. I’m always in a funk for a day or two after. But the thing with KU basketball is there is always next year. I’ve been insanely lucky that, every year since I started college, KU has entered the season with realistic hopes of making the Final Four. Six times in those 25 years they’ve delivered.

The Royals? They might be really good next year. Or the year after. But that may not be good enough. They could win 93 games next year but still come up short in both the division and the Wild Card race. Or they could be on the wrong end of a dramatic comeback in the Wild Card game next time. These opportunities are rare. To come up one run short, because of a fucking infield single, and not knowing what the future holds….well, it just plain hurts.

More about game seven, and the last month of baseball, later.

R’s: Game Seven

October 29, 2014 / DB

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 would love a repeat of last night’s 10–0 Royals rout, where a 7-run second inning ended the game soon after it began. I would love a three-hour coronation rather than a four-hour nail biter where every pitch adds an exponential amount of pressure. I fear tonight is going to be a tense game that is not decided until deep into the night. And why not, that’s how this whole thing started, with three-straight extra inning games that kept me up to or past 1:00 am.

I should be chilled out. This wasn’t supposed to happen, right? Thus, isn’t this all gravy? Isn’t getting to the last game of the last series validation for this team? Won’t the memories of the last month outweigh any negatives that come from tonight? I keep telling myself all that but right now it’s not helping.

This has been such a fun month, and I’m trying to force my mind to think of it in those terms. I’m trying to hang on to the surprise and joys of the last four weeks. I’m trying to turn that stress and worry into excitement and anticipation. But that’s tough to do when there are no more tomorrow’s left.

I helped C. carry a project into school this morning. The Royals-rooting librarian stopped me and introduced me to the wife of M.’s teacher, who grew up in Kansas City. She unzipped her jacket to show off her Royals sweatshirt that she still had from back in 1985. A dad, who is a Cardinals fan, brushed past us and teasingly told us there was no loitering allowed at St. P’s and we needed to break it up.

That was three of us in Indianapolis. I can’t imagine what the water coolers and break rooms will be like in Kansas City today.

So, one more game. One last chance for the impossible dream to come true.[1] One more day for one of the best sports stories ever to play out. I can’t wait.

Apologies to fans of the 1967 Boston Red Sox for stealing that description. ↩

R’s: How Quickly The Tide Can Turn

October 27, 2014 / DB

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 were ecstatic. The post-game show from the Power & Light district in KC sure made it appear that way. Fans were celebrating as if the series was over. Even for those of us who were more sober in our assessments of where the series was could not help but think ahead, knowing that the Royals were now just two wins away from a World Series title, and had four games to win those two.

That belief was even stronger at about 10:00 pm EDT Saturday night, when the Royals chased Giants starter Ryan Vogelsong and held a 4–1 lead midway through game four. It was impossible not to start counting outs until Kelvin Herrera would come in, knowing that when he entered the game, the Giants had no chance of coming back. Six outs to Herrera meant nine outs from winning the game and then just 27 outs away from clinching the series. The math seemed so easy.

The problem was what happened over those six outs before Herrera could come in. Everything fell apart. That 4–1 lead became a tie game, and soon turned into an 11–4 Giants rout.

In the back of my mind someone whispered something about counting unhatched chickens.

So tie series, no big deal, right?

Except Madison Bumgarner was on the hill for the Giants in game five. The guy who has been automatic in the postseason, the guy putting up some of the best numbers in the history of post-season baseball. Against a team that must always battle its offensive demons.

James Shields pitched his best game in over a month for the Royals. He was let down by three tough defensive plays that allowed two runs. Ned Yost made decisions that made no sense, which was kind of refreshing after a month of everything he tried working out. And the Royals went to the eighth inning down 2–0.

Which would have been an acceptable loss. Until Herrera put two on and Wade Davis gave up a shocking two-run double to Juan Perez that missed being a home run by about three inches. Those three inches didn’t matter as Perez came home a batter later to put the Giants up 5–0.

An understandable loss became a crushing one as the impenetrable bullpen let the game slip away. Twenty-six hours earlier we were thinking about a 3–1 series lead. Now we were tossing and turning in bed wondering if the bats can reignite with the return to Kansas City for game six, worried that the untouchable bullpen’s mystique may have been dashed, knowing the next loss means the season was over.

And now we get to stew about it for 36 hours.

Time to hit the antacid bottle.

History suggests teams that return home down 3–2 are in good shape. The last time the Royals were in the World Series they were in the same position and ended up winning. But after the last 13 innings, it’s hard to feel confident about their chances.

All Even

October 23, 2014 / DB

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 plan. The Royals returning to their early July flailing at everything mode of offense wasn’t in the plan.

And I was pretty damn nervous up until around 10:30 Eastern last night. The Royals missed chances to knock out Jake Peavy early and had suddenly seen ten straight batters retired, often on early swings. Even with the Royals bullpen involved, it felt like a game that could easily slip away.

But then it all clicked, at least for one inning.

Single. Walk. Single, run scored, and the Royals were up and the K was rocking.

Following a fly out, a crushed double that scored two by Salvador Perez and I was whooping and yelling.

Then Omar Infante jumped all over a fat pitch for a two-run homer to make it 7-2. Kids might have been woken with my yelling and clapping. They’re on fall break; I did not care.

Game, effectively, over.

Now, on a travel day, we’re feeling good about ourselves and the Royals’ chances over the next five games. Sure, Bumgarner looms in game five. And the Royals will lose Billy Butler’s bat because the archaic National League rules. But the Giants have to sit a bat, too. AT&T Park is a noted pitcher’s park¹, which should be good for Jeremy Guthrie and Jason Vargas. And then there’s turmoil in the Giants’ bullpen thanks to Hunter Strickland’s² ineffectiveness and general craziness and Tim Lincecum’s injury last night.

As we’ve already seen, things can swing quickly in these intense, post-season series. But I’m much happier at 1-1 than I would have been down 0-2 with 48 hours to stew over it.

I wanted to keep score for the entire series. Tuesday I was working on getting the girls to bed and ran down just in time to catch the first pitch. I left my scorebook upstairs, so marked the first inning in a notebook with the idea of adding it to my scorebook after the inning ended. The Giants’ 3-0 start made me scrap that idea.

But I kept score last night. Which I clearly have to do every game now.

It gets a little messy in the midst of the Royals’ big sixth inning.

I must admit it was a little emotional watching the big crowds at Kauffman as Fox went live each night. I’ve said over-and-over one of my favorite things about the past two years has been hearing those loud, mid-season crowds on the radio feed when things have gone well. But seeing 40,000 people on their feet and roaring cemented how this is really happening. How after years of tiny crowds, often with significant chunks of fan rooting for the opponent, Kauffman was finally looking the way it looked when I first fell in love with baseball. Better, even, than back then thanks to all the changes that have been made over the years. For as big a ballpark as it is, with the new seats in the outfield and then the foul line stands completely packed, it has a much more intimate feel than the large, open, plastic-turfed ballpark the classic Royals teams played it.

Seeing it like this is a powerful reminder of how Kansas City was once one of the best baseball towns in the big leagues. It felt wonderful, but it hurt a little too. It hurt that it took so long for it to happen again. And it hurt not to be there. I’m jealous of those of you who have been able to go to games this post season.

Post season games always have a different roar. I’m not sure what it is, but there’s something about a line shot that could score a run in front of an amped, October crowd that sounds different than the same hit in June. After hearing those roars in the Bronx, Boston, St. Louis, Texas, and San Francisco during the HDTV era, it was wonderful to hear them echo through Jackson County, Missouri.

OK, one more. It’s great hearing Joe Buck call Billy Butler’s lined single, Perez’s rocket double, and Infante’s home run. Whether you like him or not, moments just feel bigger when the national voice of the sport is describing it to the world.

I wore one of my Royals jerseys out and about Wednesday. I got stopped by two people in five minutes at the mall who wanted to talk about the Royals. That’s never happened before. Good times.

25th toughest offensive environment in the big leagues this year, according to ESPN. ↩
Dumbass. ↩

Here We Go

October 21, 2014 / DB

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 week of rehashing how they got here, it’s still hard to believe that any of this has happened, and is continuing to happen. Last night I watched a show on MLB Network that showed the highlights, game-by-game, of the Royals’ first eight games in the playoffs. There have been so many big plays in this run that I kind of forgot about a few. Examples: Jarod Dyson’s throw to third in game two of the ALDS and Tim Collins freezing Josh Hamilton with a wicked curveball to end the inning in the same game. In other post-seasons those would be unforgettable moments. In this crazy one, they’re footnotes to legendary catches by Lorenzo Cain, Mike Moustakas, and Alex Gordon and late-inning heroics by Gordon, Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, and Salvador Perez. Oh, and the absolute dominance of everyone in the bullpen, anchored by Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland.

And, my goodness, the roars of the Kauffman Stadium crowds in the 12th inning of the Wild Card game and then in the clinching game of the ALCS when Gordon hit his three-run triple and Hosmer crushed his opposite-field homer. Non-fans are probably sick of hearing this description, but you would feel 29 years of bad baseball being released in those roars.

As a fan, I’m worried about what’s next. It’s one thing to rip through the first three rounds. But the World Series, after six days off, is another thing. Will the magnitude of the moment make what happens over the next week different than what came before? Has the magic drifted away during the break?

The thing is, though, I don’t think the players are concerned with that at all. This team, time and again, has picked itself up and charged back. They’re young, inexperienced, and maybe too naive and/or dumb to feel the weight of the moment. I think they’ll be fine.

Me, on the other hand? I’m expecting a lot of tense late nights over the next week. The equivalent of a long NCAA tournament run packed into a single week, with only a travel day or two to break the tension. I’m hoping the weather stays nice so I can get outside and burn off some of this nervousness and adrenaline.

I do not mean to be greedy, but I would not mind four more wins from the Royals at all, no matter how they get them.