Category Archives: Sports

And as June marched on, its oppressive, triple-digit heat gripping Kansas City by the balls and roasting the flesh of the inhabitants therein, a curious thing began to happen to the city’s baseball team: they began to play decent baseball.

Despite pitcher Felipe Paulino’s groin strain that somehow morphed into an injury requiring season-ending Tommy John surgery, and despite the glaringly evident fact that Jonathan Sanchez is a useless pile of crap that needs to be jettisoned—and now—the Royals find themselves 6 games under .500 and only 5.5 games back in the lousy American League Central.

After April’s miserable origins, and an up and down May, the ROYALS ARE 5.5 GAMES BACK IN THE AMERICAN LEAGUE CENTRAL. It seems improbably, but I assure you, it is not.

And though Sanchez is as exciting as making out with your stepmom at the lake, and Jonathan Broxton will almost certainly begin to finally, spectacularly implode, finally losing his luck in the 9th inning heart-attacks for which he is so mystifyingly fond (a man of his stature can only wiggle for so long), there are players on this team who have made all of this winning possible. They are June’s Heroes, and they shall not go unnoticed.

Continue reading →

So this past weekend, the Kansas City Royals traveled down I-70 to play the Cardinals. We all know how this goes.

For the Cardinals and their fans, this weekend usually doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot. St. Louis is usually playing much better ball and doing that whole thing where they perennially contend while the Royals, God love ’em, are throwing out a bunch of washed up rejects and young kids who are apt to be gone once they fall out of affordability.

One of these latter types who we lost to the highest bidder—long since gone from our humble burg, now—was Carlos Beltran.

And now that the current Cardinals outfielder is fast cementing a Hall of Fame candidacy, this is particulary depressing. 

Continue reading →

Father’s Day is a crock of shit.

Allow me to explain.

There are two types of dads in the world, my dad and my cousin Brian.

See, my dad is great. He made me what I am today. When I was 14 and wanted a pair of Nike Air Force Ones, he did what any good dad would do: he said, “if you want $100 sneakers, goddamnit, you’re buying them yourself.” With this understanding, I did what any normal 14 year old does—I lied about my age and got a job bussing tables at a Japanese steakhouse.

Good fathers are always teaching, always fostering. They take their role as caretaker seriously, using small things like athletic footwear to impart life lessons.

Then there’s my cousin Brian.

Continue reading →

Let’s get the obvious, no-brainer statement out of the way right at the start: Drafting amateur players for professional athletics is an inexact science. Then, we’ll follow it up with another pretty evident one: Nowhere is this truer than in Major League Baseball.

Part of this stems from the fact that teams are drafting high-school kids, young men barely removed from the throes of puberty who would just as soon be playing Xbox with all of their derelict friends or trying to talk the wheelchair bound vet outside of the Gulp-N-Blow to buy them a six-pack of Mickey’s. High school kids are stupid, unpredictable antelopes living on hormones and energy drinks. And this is before you pay them several million dollars to do something that almost anyone else would kill to do: play a game for a living.

The other thing is, you just never know. High school baseball studs dominate. They bat .600 and average a homerun per game, or they strike out 20 while walking nobody. They are boys amongst men, post-apocalyptic warrior-children with aluminum swords, a sense of entitlement and just enough sagacity to not ruin their brains taking concussive hits in football.

College kids are a bit less risky. The competition is better, and their numbers (usually) less inflated by natural selection. Often, they’re a bit more mature and polished.

In true Royals fashion, the 2012 draft kicked off with a seemingly solid, low-risk pick.

Continue reading →

If the old adage about April showers begetting May flowers stands true, it would stand to reason that the gigantic golden shower that April took upon the early Royals campaign must have CERTAINLY led to a beautiful, vibrant rebirth over the past month, right? Well, not exactly. But there WERE some positive takeaways, I swear.

And like last month’s “April Recap,” I’m dedicated to finding them. It’s too easy to shit on a team like the Royals, but really, what good does it do to pile-on? Incessant Scribe complaints about what a failure Eric Hosmer is shaping up to be won’t make him any better. Similarly, thousands of whiny comments screaming about how “Walmart Glass” is ruining this team and should be burned alive (after being made to sell the team, of course), won’t accomplish anything.

What do we honestly think—that our wild internet complaints are going to cause a lot of introspection and soul-searching from the team’s heartless owner? That he’s going to read the astute observations from KCButtLicker6969 and say, “you know what? I AM cheap! I DO need to sign Johnny Fastball for $30,000,000 a year! What in the fuck was I thinking?! I should probably kill myself! La la la la la, I just shit my pants! OOPS!”

I mean, this COULD happen, but it seems highly unlikely.

So while we sit here, stewing in our own grotesque Kansas City baseball filth, let’s at least try to stay positive, at least for the next few paragraphs. It won’t kill us. It may even make us feel a bit better.

Continue reading →

When you’re a fan of Kansas City sports, the end of May and early June is a bleak time. The Royals are typically toast, the Chiefs are just starting OTA junk and collegiate athletics—the ones worth paying attention to, anyway—are stagnant. If you’re an NBA or NHL fan (LOLZ! at that last one!!!), this is an exciting time, though. Playoffs, baby.

In case you missed it—and let’s be honest, most of you probably did—the OKC Thunder ousted the Lakers, the Spurs steamrolled the Clippers, the Heat will probably dismiss the Pacers in short order (though it’s worth noting that the Pacers have made it a close series, at least) and the Celtics and the 76ers—wait, what? Are we sure it’s THOSE 76ers? It is? Well…okay, if you say so—are heading into a Game 7 showdown this Saturday.

So just who in the hell is watching this stuff? The Lakers Executive Vice Cougar, for one.

@‏JeanieBuss (EVP Lakers, Phil Jackson’s GF, Unbelievably sexy lady)
“Congrats to OK City #Thunder. 1st class organization starting at the top. OKC is OK with me – good luck through rest of #NBA playoffs.”

What a thoughtful, classy tweet from someone who is transparently passing along tidings of well-wishes and… whatever. I can’t do this. I didn’t even read whatever her tweet said. I just included her so I could post her picture. Where have I been? Where has SHE been all my life? How did I have no idea that the Executive Whatever in Charge of Holy Shit was so goddamned hot?! Wow. And she’s ridiculously wealthy? AND wears sexy business suits? I’m sold. And totally in trouble with my wife, now. Let’s move on.

Continue reading →

At this juncture, there’s no point in discussing just how abysmal this year’s Royals team is shaping up to be; everyone knows how unbearably awful they are and almost everything that is worth saying has already been said.

Continue reading →

Maybe it’s just my perception, but it seems like every year, NFL schedules are released earlier and earlier, and each year, that turns out to be more and more of a blessing for Kansas City sports fans. 

Oh sure, Sporting KC looks totally legit, and they’re sure to provide countless hours of entertainment for thousands of fans over the summer, but the Royals are predictably turning into an abortion and that WNBA team I’ve been pining for is no closer to fruition than they were two years ago when I had that really weird sex dream about Lisa Leslie (let’s make it happen, baby… have your people [agents?] call my people [Hearne?]).

In St. Louis (or Detroit, or Texas, or Cincinnati, or Washington—or any other city where the baseball team could feasibly be better than the football team), they don’t CARE about the release of the NFL schedules. In BBQ country, however, it’s big news.

And like any self-respecting windbag with a Wang 2200 and a license to spout pointless drivel, I’ve made some predictions about the fate of the 2012 Kansas City Chiefs. Gather round and have a gander, won’t you?

The season kicks off at home on September 9th against the Atlanta Falcons.

Continue reading →

It’s easy to overreact. It’s easy to look at the Kansas City Royals’ just-concluded West-coast trip and think that the sky is falling. It’s both upsetting for the fans and demoralizing for the players to leave Wednesday evening from Oakland thinking that the team should easily be 4-2 instead of 3-3.

Game 3 against the A’s was in the bag. After taking the lead in the 12th, the Royals watched their dream slip away like so much bacon-wrapped-sausage sliding down Broxton’s gullet.

Closer Jonathan Broxton, that is.

When the behemoth took the mound in the bottom of the inning, however, it didn’t feel good. Perhaps I’m conditioned by so many nervous hours spent watching Mike MacDougal’s hat fly across the infield as he uncorked a wild pitch in the bottom of the 9th; maybe I’m still troubled by nightmares of an aging, incompetent Roberto Hernandez laboring his way through yet another blown save. Whatever the case, it felt blown as soon as it began.

Continue reading →

Ah, Opening Day.

For baseball fans, it’s like Christmas in April. Well… Christmas Part Two: Santa’s Revenge. I mean honestly, do you know a lot of Muslim baseball fans? I can only count like, six or seven, certainly no more than eight, so it goes without saying that most baseball fans also celebrate Christmas. But I digress.

It signals the end of a long, harsh winter (well, except for this freakishly warm previous one), a time to cast aside prior failure and set shoot for the stars (unless you’re in the AL Central, and then it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Detroit Tigers will be taking it all, and with frightful ease).

Alright, alright… so for most Kansas City baseball fans, it’s “same shit, different day.” But it’s all about watching the team grow and flourish in incremental, yet important ways. Starters going a bit deeper under the tutelage of new pitching coach Dave Eiland. The maturation of principal parties like Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain. The solidification of last year’s mostly-impressive bullpen.

Continue reading →

When a person is unreasonable, their natural inclination when dealing with disappointment is frequently irrational. Often times, no one is more unreasonable (or irrational) than your garden-variety sports fan.

When Carlos Beltran left the Royals in 2004 for greener pastures (and nothing says greener than “Houston, TX”), fans were understandably miffed. Here go the Royals, once again, the sorrowful fans bemoaned, crying softly into their Kaufmann Stadium nachos.

A once in a lifetime player, and for what?

Blake Wood, who was out of baseball after a 2010 stint with the Rockford Riverhawks, whoever they are.

John Buck, who is still catching with the Miami Marlins, despite having the dubious honor of having the lowest percentage of runners caught stealing in all of baseball in 2011.

Mark Teahen, the lynchpin of the deal, who was released by the Blue Jays in January and is currently on a minor league deal with the Washington Nationals.

The trade, by nearly any tangible measurement, was a bust. And yet strangely, after all of these years, the casual fan would point this blame solely at Beltran. He was a spoiled dick, a diva, and a gargantuan greed-monger who did that shit where the cartoon wolf’s eyes cha-ching and turn into giant, old-timey cash register dollar signs.

Frank Martin is the Carlos Beltran of Kansas State University… Sort of. 

Continue reading →

There are literally 1,313,045 things happening in the world of sports right now that are raping my Twitter feed. So while I usually like to spend my opening paragraph waxing poetic about the modern era of “sports and social media; what they mean to you,” I figure we should treat this like Whitney in the bathtub and dive right in.

First up, Denver, Colorado, best known for their… shit, I don’t know… cheeseburgers? (Seriously—is Denver known for anything other than mountains and John Elway? Help me out here) Anyway, Denver, best known for their stuff, made waves like… Whitney slipping quietly into the bathtub? by signing Jesus H. Manning and then trading Jesus H. Tebow (or did they?! dun-dun-DUN) to the Jets.

Local radio personality/aspiring Mensa member Bob Fescoe watched the press conference and had this to say:

@bobfescoe (610 am)
“Peyton has a huge forehead”
“John Elway looks like the team mascot”

Brilliant, Bob, just… brilliant.

Continue reading →

Of the 15 college basketball experts on the front page of ESPN.com (Jay Bilas, Doug Gottlieb, Dick Vitale, et al.), nine have Mizzou advancing to the Final Four, five have KU going, and K-State… yeah, so anyway… It’s pretty clear that lofty expectations are being placed upon the Big XII Champeen, the evil dissenter, the little team that could, the Missouri Tigers. Obama’s got them in HIS Final Four as well and you KNOW that’s a big deal because, well, the president is never wrong, right? If I’m not mistaken—and I don’t believe that I am—he has the presidential authority to veto whatever ACTUALLY happens in order to make his bracket accurate.

Congrats in advance, Mizzou!

But if I’m not mistaken, I think they have a few games to play before they can begin cutting any nets and/or punching people at nightclubs (I’m not passing judgment on any particular team with that last statement, simply stating what happens to be a growing national trend with most college athletics participants).

The excitement gets under way on Thursday at 11:40 CT when Manhattan’s finest take on ninth seeded Southern Mississippi in Pittsburgh (PA, not KS).

Continue reading →

We have become a soft nation built on easy solutions. We demand convenience, rapidity and satisfaction, yesterday. Our sense of patience—threadbare to begin with– has been raped by social media, where, in a matter of moments, I can learn that my aunt just ate some really delicious chicken, Bea Arthur has gone on an inexplicable shooting rampage at a bustling cafeteria and Terry “likes” Amanda’s video of the dog smoking a cigarette.

Sports are no different.

In fact, watching a team fail year after year to field a competitive product tends to exacerbate the need for this immediacy. We live and die with each heartbreak, our tired corpses glistening with team-colored body-paint, our novelty foam fingers pointed tragically at the ground. We want our team to win NOW and OFTEN and AT ANY COST.

So in our quest to microwave the proverbial burrito of success to jarring temperatures, faster than anyone ever imagined was humanly possible, people across the city are now crying, “Peyton Manning, one of the greatest quarterbacks EVER, a true winner in every since of the word, is available! Let us throw BAJILLIONS OF DOLLARS AT HIM SO HE CAN MAKE SWEET LOVE TO THE FANS OF KANSAS CITY WITH HIS TALENTED ARM AND SOUR FACIAL EXPRESSIONS.”

Continue reading →