It’s really quite surreal watching playoff baseball and seeing dudes with the words “Kansas City” etched across their chests….
I can’t think of any sport – with the possible exception of curling or log rolling – I’ve watched less of for the past however many years than Kansas City Royals baseball. And frankly, I know I’m far from alone.
That said, I was supremely disappointed yesterday to learn that the Royals-Orioles game had been cancelled and can’t wait to watch tonight’s game…and tomorrow’s and as many more this dream sequence allows.
And as good as the Kansas City Star‘s coverage of the team’s playoff run has been – and it’s been damn good – my curiosity got the best of me, wondering how the former Twin Towers of Kansas City sports were handling the Royals ascension.
Former Star sports scribe Jason Whitlock has been tweeting some about the team, but of little of consequence or interest, other than to confess he’s not much into baseball (big surprise) and that he stumbled onto a new word – apocrypha – to dubiously imply that former owner Ewing Kauffman named the Royals after KC’s Negro League’s Monarchs.
Other than a couple handfuls of forgettable tweets and a column about the Royals win over Oakland, Whitlock’s contribution has been minimal at best.
More interesting is how he characterized what it’s like being stuck living here:
“In flyover country, in cities where we settle down and choose family over ambition, our teams fuel our self-confidence and say to the world we still want to be the very best even though we’ve made career decisions that suggest otherwise. Our sports teams — more than fancy cars, trophy wives — keep us young. We collectively live vicariously through Eric Hosmer, Alex Gordon, James Shields and Lorenzo Cain. They remind us of when we thought we might conquer the world.”
Surviving KC is mostly made bearable by “fancy cars and trophy wives.”
Seriously? No wonder he left.
On the other hand, former fellow Star columnist Joe Posnanski – although he’s been fully eclipsed by the rapid rise of Sam Mellinger – has offered up some gems.
In writing about the “afterglow” of the Royals entry into post season play, Posnanski began by “trying to remember the low moment, the moment that summed up all of what it meant being a Kansas City Royals fan the last 20 years or so,” noting that, “The Royals did things so mind boggling that the postseason seemed as far away as flying cars and trips to another galaxy.”
When Posnanski recalls the Royals he knew, “I think of a Royals player falling off first base like a cut down tree, and I think of another climbing the centerfield wall only to see the ball bounce off the warning track in front of him, and I think of two Royals players jogging to the dugout, each thinking the other would catch the ball which landed softly and happily in the grassy area they had left behind. I think of a player not wearing sunglasses, losing a ball in the sun and having it hit him in the face — he wore sunglasses on the plane right home to cover the shiner. I think of a pitcher so frustrated that he complained to the press that he can’t even get no-decisions.”
“Yostify”
On much maligned Royals manager Ned Yost:
“Yost, I sometimes think, manages a baseball team the way the rest of us build Ikea furniture. He’s looking at the diagram, looking at the parts, looking back at the diagram, looking back at the parts, and then shouting, ‘It says to use a 3/16 inch screw but I don’t have any left!’ ”
And that the secret to the Royals success is embracing the team’s weaknesses:
“No power? Well, let’s steal lots of bases. No great starter? Maybe not, but let’s put together five really good ones and build a legendary back of the bullpen. Kooky manager? Maybe, but remember a manager can only hurt so much and, anyway, sometimes the nutty stuff will work. No depth? All right, have Alicedes Escobar play all 162 games at shortstop and Salvy Perez catch more games in a season than any Royals catcher ever.”
On a Royals inexplicable success against the California Angels:
“In a general way, there are two ways to perform magic for people. The first way you might call the David Copperfield way; another term for it might be ‘confident magic.’ The magician is always in control. Missing cards appear, minds are read, assistants emerge whole from dangerous predicaments – and the magician acts like he knew it was going to happen all along.
“Then there is a second kind of magic show, one where the magician – maybe it’s Penn & Teller or Lance Burton – seems as befuddled as the audience does. Birds keep flying in, bottles of champagne keep popping up, the man’s watch isn’t anywhere to be found, and when it all turns out in the end the magician just kind of shrugs as if to say, ‘How the heck did that happen?’
“These Kansas City Royals are the second kind of magic act.”
Posnanski even coined the term “Yostify” to quantify the illogical explanations Royals manager Yost is infamous for:
“Yostify (yo-stah-fy), verb: to give an explanation that is more irrational than the irrational decision.”
So while the Star’s doing just fine in its sports section – unlike pretty much every other section of the newspaper – sans its former top guns, it’s kinda fun to check in on the ones-who-got-away.
“On a Royals inexplicable success against the California Angels”
– correction: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim… they haven’t been the California Angels since before Ronald Reagan forgot where and who he (and Nancy) was.
Chronological order: the Los Angeles Angels 1961-1965, California Angels 1966-1996, Anaheim Angels 1997-2004 & the Los Angeles Angels of [ wait for it ] Anaheim 2005 to date.
Wouldn’t want anyone confuse them with any their formers, their one winner (2002 ‘World Champions’, Anaheim) or their richer but even less successful brethren, the Los Angeles (deep pockets and never-ending ineptitude) Dodgers of Los Angeles.
SF vs KC ‘World Series’? Team of experience vs team of destiny, advantage GIANTS, their 3rd Championship in the last 5 years, Kerouac’s pick.
bet royals….this guy k makes glaze look like seth Rothstein.
I will be delivering my political picks and my sports picks along with
the biggest story about kcc soon.
HOld on seniors…change your depends…Harley is going uncensored!!!!!!!!!!11
hahahahahaha…
should bea fun series…
my brains say nl….but my heart is with the royals…in this one…I’m
with the royals…..I think this is the word from god….royals in 6!
Only because if royals win today and clinch…their streak will have to
end….law of averages…life is one big streak….
this one I won’t go with my brain…I’m picking my home team
THE ROYALS…
glaze…’ITS OVER…ITS OVER….ITS OVER…” PLEASE KEEP REPEATING
Gotta agree with that logic, SF can be bad for KC.
They announced the name of the team my last day of high school. As I remember WHB had a poll for a name and The Monarchs won the vote by an avalanche.
There were a couple of theories about why the ignored the fans. That the rights to Monarchs name was held by someone who wanted a lot for the rights.
The other theory running around was MLB did not want anything to do with anything from the Negro Leagues because it was still a sore subject with many people white and black.
With no internet back then it was amazing how much stuff circulated around town.
Are there other subjects you know and care so little about that you cover as much as sports?
RIGHT ON MR. J………………..
you hit the nail on the head…
AND TAKE GLAZE WITH YOU~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
he looked good with his family in the star! And no one makes
flower pot bread like the glaze.
give up sports glaze…take the flower pot bread on THE SHARKS…
you’ll be able to buy all the beautiful girls in kc…
and that’s your goal.
luv ya glaze…
Haarley
Your words, Mysterious.
Hey dude – You’re getting ready to choke! GO ROYALS!!!
The dude never chokes, he abides if he feels so inclined.
JoPo’s stuff, available on NBC Sports online, has been pretty good. I know that a lot of people rip him for being too saccharine, but I’ve always liked his stuff. he’s had two, maybe three, columns about the Royals this season, but the one from which you quoted above was the best.
Agree, Mike T.
Now that he’s not here choking out three or four a week, it’s a lot easier to take.
Maybe it’s because he has the entire sports world to cover now instead of being stuck writing over-and-over about the KC area teams.
The sports editor dude and columnist at the Lawrence Journal World is a textbook example of this. The poor devil has to choke out like three or so columns a week about sports in Lawrence.
He barely touches the Chiefs, Royals, Sporting, etc.
I’d kinda like to bag on him because his columns are seldom any good. But it’d be a nightmare for anybody to have to do what he’s doing.
On top of that, he’s got a good old boy publisher and can’t wade into ANYTHING approaching a controversy.
Like he had a column leading up to the football season where he counseled readers not to be so negative about KU football. You know, look at the glass half full.
Half full of what?
KU football fans have every reason to wallow in their grief and express their angst in any manner necessary.
The Star spent most of the summer criticizing the Royals. They wanted get rid of Yost, trade more player, send more to the minors.
Some of their criticizing turned into campaigns. I only get to see the headlines on their site now — since I will not pay a dime for their sorry rag.
Hearne … it’s been years, you have to let go. Hate will consume you if you don’t.
Hate is the farthest thing from my mind, Jack.
Honest.
Did you see where I lavished praise on their sports department the other day?
Media criticism is a big part of alternative journalism and I excelled at it when I ran the Pitch for several years prior to the Star hiring me.
They are the Big Dog media in town – practically a monopoly still unless you go for inner city shootings, fires, etc on TV news – and as such they need a watchdog.
Because to a large extent, they are Kansas City’s watchdog.
No hate, wild man. None whatsoever, they’re just an easy target.
HERNIA….IF YOU HAPPEN TO SEE YOUR BUDDY TELL HIM HIS BUDDY
HARLEY SAID “please…please…please please”…
REPEAT THIS FOR ME……………
its over…ITS OVER….ITS OVER……….ITS OVER………….ITS OVER….ITS
OVER…………..ITS OVER……………ITS OVER…
after the royals got clobbered by detroitr….your sports non expert said ITS OVER
ITS OVER……and since then the royals have broken record after record…
defied every expert (except the right man Harley)………so please…
tell mr. glaze to repeat ….while he’s on stage…while he’s making the
dr. pepper ribs…..knowing at the dead crow….telling us about jj walker…
tell him we think he’s dy-no=mite….
as in without his jinxing the royals opponents we might not be in the
world series….
REMEMBER HERNIA…AND GLAZE…..its like voodoo majic….its like
the voodoo econmicsand game counting he uses….and please glaze…
THINK…EAT…BREATHE…REPEAT……
I T S O V E R!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THANKS..
your friend
HARLEY
HEARNE…YOU AND GLAZE SHOULD GO BACK TO DOING GOSSIP AND
HOTTIE STORIES..
sorry…this story lacks crativitiy and while all of us poked negative comments
on the royals over the years…no one was worse than scribe glaze.
Like the wind over the dusty roads of I 70 glaze blew north/south/east and
west (I’m sure wislun will have a joke there)
please….both of you should stopwriting about sports….that’s like
having you say mellinger has passed jopo and the big man.
Not quite. That statement is absolutely stupid. jopo is a national writer..
and the big man will have his own show and be big time.
REMEMBER…HARLEY KNOWS ALL….
thanks to all my fans/disciples for their emails…
GO ROYALS….
Harley is right on isis/ebola/and the royals……
wislun and glaze and mike t can’t stand it…
better be right! seenthe dudes house……seen his house? below section 8…hahahaha..
and the decorating….early American ghetto.~!
speaking strictly for myself, I’m immune to your insults and innuendos on what I can and cannot stand. (see what I did there, I used a big word, spelled it right, too.)
besides, it’s Wilson that OWNS you.
then why do you insult meal thetime.
I never refer to you first in a comment…you’re a chicken
sh*t liar.
no, I’m not a chickenshit or a liar. but you’re right Harley, I have absolutely no reason to insult you. I apologize and won’t engage in that again.
Geez, Harley…
Put it back in your pants. Small as it likely is, I’m sure there’s plenty of room for it in there.
Whitlock on a horse?!?!
I refuse to believe it. The only black cowboys are B.O.N.E. thugs from the Ghetto Cowboy video and the new sheriff from blazin’ saddles.
this should be a full length movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MZn6wL4H5U