Oh Those Pesky Royals'

Leave it up to a non-baseball traditionalist to title a blog by using a very baseball traditional adjective. (Next up, hustle)

But since I've been in California for a month now, and haven't been subjected to the laugh-factory that is Kansas City Royals' baseball, I must say my life has been a little more enjoyable.

Oh those KC summer nights. Filled with bad baserunning, bad defense, bad plate-discpline, bad managing, BAD general managing, and a host of other second-rate organizational happenings (port-a-johns included with your $250M in renovations!) have not been missed by this life-long Royals supporter.

But because the kool-aid drinkers refuse to let this organization know how intolerable their performance has been for, well, the past 25 years, the Glassians keep circling into the abyss awaiting for the magic to happen.

And waiting.

While some may enjoy the old college try being given by the front office of a franchise that should be, and at one time was, the face of a region, it is inexcusable the amount of ineptness that radiates from our brand new, 40-year-old stadium. And unfortunately it has been this way for so long, it has become common place. It's the familiar tune at the end of an all too familiar sad country song.

(Kind of like how, at the end of a country video, they do that weird "last note strummed on the guitar fading - slow motion look into the camera." Is there a rule that this had to be done to end every country music video? Seriously. Is there like a union that is on-set for every video to make sure this goes down? If so, these people need to be seriously investigated for the "don't get-its." Coincidentally the same affliction plaguing Dayton Moore.)

At the heart of me I wish things were different. A baseball team is what's supposed to unite a father and a son. However this franchise has become so sad that after being a punchline for a decade, it has now faded into the darkness of irrelevance.

And so it's this I suppose that is the most disheartening fact of all. It used to be that Baseball Tonight, or hell even the Tonight Show, would make a snide comment about how futile our Boys-In-Blue were. No longer.

Punchlines have turned to apathy. The Royals' are the sad story heard too often, without change, that no one wants to read anymore.

How did we get here? How did we get to this day? Three years ago was supposed to be the Awakening. Allard Baird, a seemingly very honorable and respected baseball mind, (so respected that it took him 3 seconds to be offered a job with baseball's best franchise after being let-go be this one) was run-out of town because of his depletion of the organization. Come to find out, it really wasn't Baird's inability as much as it was David Glass' pride that lead to his demise.

For years Glass tried hard to change a slightly, slightly, flawed system instead of trying to win it. A feat that left his organization what it is today. It took Glass to finally give up his charge (kind of hard for the man running the biggest organization in the world to tell others that a system is broken just because he happens to be losing in it) and realize that it was he that needed to change, not the system.

So he hired Dayton Moore. We all felt saved. He was the man that would come home, and bring us back to the glory years. This once proud and great franchise was to be again.

Sigh.

In three years Moore has done more to disprove his candidacy than to prove it. There have been positive steps taken along the way towards a better future, but they have been few and far between. (And really, those things that he's given credit for, are really more the result of Glass' money, than his ability to run a franchise. Increased spending in free agency. Increased budget for the draft. Money given for more scouts. An academy in the Dominican Republic. Bigger budget for a larger front-office. These things don't add up to be a testament to Moore's rights, they add up to be an "attaboy" to Glass finally getting it.)

The biggest problem with baseball is its inability, as a system, to evolve with the eras. Other sports do it. Football coaches are always trying to find new ways to win. The Wildcat formation. The 3-4. The Cover 2. The Shotgun. Tight-ends as receivers. 5 receiver sets. All of these things were against the grain of traditional footbal thinking that, if they were considered in baseball, they would have been laughed at and considered foolish.

It’s much the reason Billy Beane was so admonished and ridiculed for taking the status quo, and throwing it out the window. It’s not what you see; it’s what you can prove. It’s not about all the old guard stats like batting average, or pitcher’s wins, or RBIs. It’s about statistics that determine the true value and abilities of a hitter with the abstract factors like on-base percentage and ERA. Beane was a progressive thinker in a highly unprogressive environment; an environment that shuns the different and applauds the familiar. To its detriment.

And for Royals’ fans we’re stuck with a status-quo thinker. A man who doesn’t value on-base percentage. A man who doesn’t even know what defensive statistics are let alone how they’re figured.

It’s an evolving game and Moore’s just, volving.

And we just got stuck with 4 more years of it.