Eras and Endings

Copyright © 2015 Sports Illustrated

Essay Copyright © 2017

By Ralph F. Couey

Sports teams are irretrievably bound with the cities they represent and the fans who root for them. The relationship is a complicated one. Teams are, legally, private clubs to which membership is strictly limited, and which could be revoked at any time. But those teams live and die financially on the revenue stream provided by those who come to the games. Except for the Green Bay Packers, they are privately owned and operated, an entity unto themselves. Yet, there is a passion that exists between those on the field and those in the stands, and a sense of ownership, even family.

I’ve been a fan of the Kansas City Royals as long as there has been a Kansas City Royals.  I grew up in the Kansas City area, and even in those years when I was separated by miles, oceans, and continents, I followed their shifting fortunes.  I haven’t lived there since 1980 and yet they remain my favorite team.  There have been times of great excitement, and times when frankly, they were hard to even watch.  After the 1985 World Series Championship, it seemed that they would dominate for a few years anyway.  But things went south and I, along with millions of others, endured nearly three decades of drought. 

Around 2008 or so there were rumors that a supremely talented group had been assembled in the minor leagues, players who many said might bring the Royals back to dominance.  We waited with admirable patience until they all joined the major league team.  2014 saw them get into the playoffs by the few inches between Salvador Perez’s hot grounder and Josh Donaldson’s outstretched glove.  They blew through the rest of the playoffs, not losing a game until the World Series.  They took a tough Giant’s team to game seven only to lose with the tying run standing on third base. 

That disappointment became the cause that drove them through the 2015 season, and into the playoffs.  The Royals played with passion and energy and this time, winning the whole thing over the mighty New York Mets in only five games. In 2016, the driving, breathless pace of the previous two seasons caught up with them, as injuries crippled the squad, leaving at one point, four all-stars on the bench healing.  Unable to sustain the race, they finished out of the playoffs. 

When 2017 started, it was billed as the last time this core of singular players would be together.  Free agency was looming, and the Royals were not rich enough to sign them all back at the rates of pay they had so richly earned.  Two-thirds of the dreaded H-D-H combination of shutdown relievers were gone.  Greg Holland lost a year to arm surgery and was signed by Colorado.  Wade Davis, the most dominant closer in major league baseball was traded to the Cubs for a reputed slugger who ended up spending most of the season in the minors, being unable to hit major league pitching with any consistency or authority.  Both Holland and Davis ended up in the top three for Saves.  It was Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas all over again.

The Royals showed short glimpses of dominance and brilliance, but spent much of the season hovering around the .500 mark.  The season isn’t mathematically over yet, but in a big way, it really is.  The chase for the divisional championship died with the Indian’s improbable 22-game winning streak.  Although technically still in the running for a wild card spot, it would honestly take an act of a kind and partisan providence to make it happen.  In a couple of weeks, the last game will be played, a meaningless encounter with the Arizona Diamondbacks.  The gear will be packed up, and the K will fall silent except for faint echoes of the cheers coming from nearby Arrowhead.  Within a few weeks, certainly before February, we will begin to hear and read how Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakis, Jason Vargis, Alcides Escobar, and Lorenzo Cain will have signed enormous contracts with other teams.  And we will have to endure the heartache of seeing our guys in enemy uniforms. 

This kind of thing is inevitable.  Baseball is a game; but it is also a very serious business, and like all others, focused on profit, loss, and bottom lines.  In that stark environment, there is little room for sentiment.  Rosters change constantly, with deserving rookies coming up, old players retiring, some being traded.  Of the twenty five members of the 1927 Yankees, considered the best team in history, ten players were gone in two years.  But amidst the swirl of change in the Royals roster, that core of players, joined by Alex Gordon, Salvy Perez, and Danny Duffy were there for the two most important years of this franchise.

In the sorrow and sense of loss that will accompany this round of change, we will mourn their departure.  But we will forever remember the excitement and the pride they brought to our city, and that wider geographic group of fans called the Royals Nation.  It is easy to be bitter, even angry.  But having resigned myself to the reality, I won’t give in to the negative.

Instead, I want to thank them publicly for the tremendous ride.  In just two short years, the Royals went from doormats to dominance; from chumps to champs, and we rode that dizzying arc with them.  For two all-too-short seasons, we heard and reveled in the breathless reportage, seeing the national media pay attention to us, even saying salutary things. It became almost common to travel to other cities and encounter tens, even hundreds of people wearing Royals hats and shirts.  It was exhilarating to feel that shared excitement with total strangers.  It was finally cool to be a Royals fan.

Now those days are done.  The team will fall back into a rebuilding mode.  There are promising players in the pipeline, but nowhere can be found another set like the one we’re about to lose. There will likely be a few years until that spark is once again ignited, but hopefully not the three decades after the last championship.  Regardless of what the future brings, embedded in our hearts will be the memories of a time, a team, and one perfect season.

And as for Moose, Hoz, Vargy, Esky, and LoCain, I wish you all the best, and may the rest of your dreams come true.

But know that wherever you go, whatever team you play for, whatever fans you play in front of, you will never mean as much to them as you have meant to us.