As I write this my favorite baseball team, the Kansas City Royals, have lost eleven games in a row. That's nothing. There was a point last year when they lost nineteen games in a row. NINETEEN! Do you know hard it is for guys being paid millions to lose nineteen games in a row? It rarely happens.And as a Royals fan I'm fed up. I'm freaking tired of my team being the laughingstock of all professional sports. I'm tired of stupid managerial hires like the hire of freakin' retread Buddy Bell. I'm tired of always blaming small-market economics. Yes, small-market realities do stack the deck against teams like the Royals. But the Royals are well on their way to lose 100 games for the third straight year. This goes beyond small-market economics. This is pure incompetence. After all, the Royals made a $20 million dollar profit last year!
I was always proud to be a Royals fan. They were a model organization. People forget that before the resurgence of the Chiefs in the 90's, Kansas City was a baseball town. Despite being a smaller market the Royals were always among the top 5 teams in attendence. They competed for pennants and played in two World Series in the first sixteen years of the team's existence. The Royals won the World Championship in 1985. They were considered the most successful expansion team ever.
Now their organization is a disaster. Current GM Allard Baird is in the sixth year of a neverending rebuilding project. He has let the likes of Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye, Carlos Beltran, and Paul Byrd go without getting anything in return...not even a return that was mediocre. He needs to go. Buddy Bell needs to go. The entire front office, save for George Brett needs to go.
Fortunately even former CEO of Wal*Mart and owner of the Royals David Glass is becoming publicy disgusted. Franchise patsy columnists like Joe Posnanski are finally stepping up the criticism. The extremely polite and reserved Kansas City fan base are finally showing outrage. The public just voted through a major renovation bond package for Kauffman Stadium and are demanding returns for their investment. Maybe hope is on the horizon.
But for this season...I'm popping my VHS tapes of the 1985 World Series into the VCR and ignoring the reality of the nuclear wasteland this franchise has become.
update: The Royals have broken their streak! They've won two in a row! Now all they have to do is win ten straight and they're back at .500!
