After decades of being the butt of every baseball joke imaginable a new game is afoot…
At the risk of hopping on (and later perhaps off) the bandwagon that is this year’s Kansas City Royals, let’s assume for a moment that the baseball fervor sweeping this city is the real deal. That the Royals are a good – possibly great – team with a bright future ahead.
Can this town actually handle it, let alone sustain it?
Right now, almost every direction you turn Royals baseball has taken the city by storm.
And I’m not just talking about the jock sniffing usual suspects. Nor long suffering, true believer wannabes like Brandon Leftridge. You know, folks who got a taste of baseball greatness somewhere way back in their childhoods and never fully accepted the ensuing awfulness of being a baseball fan trapped in Kansas City.
The opposite was the case for me.
I grew up in an era where professional baseball in Kansas City was a joke.
I just didn’t know better.
There was no paradise lost, it baseball here had always been bad. But it was all we had. So I dutifully collected baseball cards of the local team and rounded things out by collecting the cards of star players on the other teams.
I went to a few games here and there with my dad, ate the bad hotdogs but thought they were good, drank the Kool-Aid and worshipped at the altar of a sports mascot named Charlie O. the Mule.
What I didn’t do was lose myself completely in consuming each and every trivial detail and statistic imaginable about the players and the game. Because even at the age of 9, 10 and 11, I had what passed for a life.
I did normal stuff like read monster magazines, hang out with the family dog, terrorize the neighborhood and tease my older sisters.
Then along came the 1970s Royals and those heady years when players like George Brett and Amos Otis transformed KC into a something called a baseball town.
And like many locals, I convinced myself that what happened at Royals Stadium – before Greg Hall renamed it The K – was really important.
But let’s flash back even further for a minute.
When I interviewed former Kansas City Chiefs head dude Jack Steadman a couple years ago for a local magazine, he talked about being the point man for former Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt and helping bring the team here from Dallas.
And one of the biggest obstacles they faced back then was Kansas City Athletics owner Charlie Finley who did not like the idea of having to share Municipal Stadium with the Chiefs.
Because as Steadman told me, Finley saw Kansas City as a baseball town (not a football town).
Think about it for a minute.
Finley was right.
Because saps like me thought the world of KC’s last place A’s and could care less about dudes like Y. A. Tittle and other so-called NFL stars that our parents watched on tiny black and white television screens. Hey, my baseball cards were in living color.
The $64 million question: Can Kansas City become a baseball town again?
Can this city sustain the sort of rampant energy coursing through its veins now – day in, day out – for seven long months?
Face it, 160 games is a lot to love.
It’s a lot easier for the average bear to get it up just once a week on Sunday than to maintain that focus through however many slow moving, long lasting baseball games every week. That’s time consuming and takes a lot of work.
Especially when we’ve got Netflix, Game of Thrones, The Americans, a presidential campaign, kids, girlfriends, wives, video games, porn and the WWE to keep us busy.
Baseball simply takes too much time, and that doesn’t even account for the compulsive statistical addiction many of its followers (addicts?) suffer through.
I used to have friends who got hooked on what they call Fantasy Baseball.
Talk about a terrible name, what Walter Mitty in his right mind would fantasize about spending half a year pouring over sports stats day in day out as if they mattered.
That’s not what being a baseball town is about – it’s what not having a life is about.
So yes, it’s early in the season and if the Royals lose 20 games in a row, you can bet the farm Craig Glazer will be here for us with a newly minted, “I told you so,” to help everyone through the depression.
Because Kansas City’s really a football town, right?
And once a week sports fixes fits our short attention spans better.
I think the true litmus of whether Kansas City can become a baseball town again is when we start hearing stories about the outrageous exploits of the team’s star players.
Like when George Brett allegedly got hammered in Brookside before a big game. Or the time I busted Joe Montana for going on a bender the night before an away game in Seattle. A game Montana played so poorly in the Chiefs lost. Oh, and the team lied to television announcers by telling them that he had a touch of the flu.
Yeah, right.
160 / 162. 220 / 221. Whatever it takes.
Mr. Mom is Da Bomb.
Hearne the city IS A BASEBALL TOWN NOW. They supported a bad team for 3 decades fairly well. Often crowds of 30,000 plus on weekend games when the Royals were in last place. Now they have a ‘real’ team. One that might be baseball’s best today. This 7-0 start is no fluke. Even PTI last night was calling them ‘great.’ They already have one kinda important injury to one of the new ‘hitters’ Rios. That isn’t a good thing, but the rest of the club looks solid on offense with or without him. There is no weak spot. To have a hitter like Sal Perez in the 8 spot of our hitting attack speaks in volumes.
This weekend the games will be sold out or close. Hey I was down on these guys as much as anyone til they showed up in the post season. They have made me a believer.
True football is still the bigger attraction. However in Kansas City a winning pro team is major. They love it. The Royals are the talk of the town, no question.
Yep.
I went to the 3rd home game, and shed not one tear over the loss of Shields.
Whatever we did in the off-season, it was definitely an improvement.
It seems the month of May has been our ball-buster [pun font on] the past 2 seasons.
I’ll hold my say (nay or not) until June 1st, but I wont contain my excitement over our boys in blue.
i’ve never been a huge baseball fan. and while i can’t remember when the A’s moved to KC from Phillie, i certainly remember when charley finley moved them to Oakland and how angry this town was… and how excited they were when we got one of the expansion teams.
as craig pointed out, this town supported the A’s in mostly bad times, supported the Royals early on, then through the glory years, and on and on.
i think that makes KC a baseball town from the first day professional baseball got here.
(and in that case, we might as well go back to the Monarch’s who enjoyed quite a bit of success in KC, too.)
Short answer? Nyet.
KC HAS BEEN A BASEBALL TOWN.
TO HARLEY AND THE 19-24K PEOPLE WHO ATTENDED ROYALS GAMES
WIN..LOSE OR DRAW.
SITTING INTHE GEORGE BRETT SUITE AND STADIUM CLUB WHEN NOONE
WAS THERE.
WAITING OUT RAINOUTS WHILE WE DRANK RUM.
GETTING BALLS FOR THE KIDS FROM THE PLAYERS SO THEY’D HAVE
A SOUVENIR OF THEIR TRIP TO THE K.
BEING IN VEGAS WITH MR. AND MRS. K…DRINKING WITHTHEM…
WATCHING THEM LOSE A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY…THEN FLYING
HOME!!!!
WATCHING GEORGE BRETT LEAVE THE GRANFALLOON WITH A
DIFFERENT GIRL EVERY NIGHT!
CLINT HURDLE SERVING US FREE DRINKS IN WESTPORT DURING THE
STRIKE.
MEETING AND GREETING GREINKE AND HIS LOVELY WIFE MANY TIMES
AT DEAN AND DELUCA.
BEING PISSED WHEN THEY LOST.
BEING EXCITED WHEN THEY WON.
REMEMBERING GAME 7 AT THE K IN ’85 WHEN THEY WON IT ALL
AND STAYING FOR 3 HOURS AFTEER THE GAME AND GIVING HELL
TO GEORGE TOMA!
HASSLING THE FIRST BASEMEN FOR THE OPPOSING TEAM AND
THE UMPS!!!!!
this has always been a baseball town. Maybe they didn’t show up in person…
but people loved this team.
And now that they’ve improved it will be even bigger.
As I said in August of 2014…when the days were darkest…
NEVER…NEVER GIVE UP…AND TOLD GLAZE TO RECITE THE WORDS
“its over its over its over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Hearne…get with it. We are kc….and we havealways loved our teams!!!!!
It’s you and glaze who thought they knew more than the pros!
GO ROYALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Take your meds and take the damn caps lock off you long winded boob.
Amen
I thought it was a reasonable post. Well thought out and coherent. Don’t know what admin out the dude are complaining about
NOTE: that was George’s actions BEFORE he got married. Havent seen him
much since!