KC Royals Fans Nominated for SI Sportsman & Women of the Year 2014

Technically they didn't start down this path until after the strike. Then about 2006 they actually started trying again. Even though the playoff drought was much longer, the Royals really only punted about 12 years, little more than a single decade. I'd also argue that supporting a shit franchise is better than no longer having a franchise.

 

Where were they gonna go, Buffalo?

 

I didn't say a move was ever imminent or even discussed. Beats the shit out of me where they'd go.

 

Almost as irrelevant as winning an ESPY.

 

btw, unless I am mistaken, Ol' Ned Yost had this big diatribe this summer about the lack of support for some late season series.

 

It used to mean something, quite a lot actually, but that ended sometime in the early '90s, right when the Michael Jordan era started. Now it's just what moves product. For actual sports accomplishment, Bumgarner and McIlroy should be favorites. Former has no chance, latter some. Editor's note: Three of the greatest champs in tennis history, Djokovic, Nadal and Federer, have never won it and never will. If they'd played in the 1960s, they all would have.

 

Sending the orange slices in the mail can get a little messy.

 

No love for Giants fans who survived Candlestick Park?

 

The Royals ranked 25th in baseball in regular-season attendance - behind all six of the last-place division finishers.

Turning out in October does not give them one fuck's worth of credit for "supporting their team."

 

Serena.

 

I wouldn't say big diatribe but in essence you're correct. Didn't generate near the amount of community outcry Jim Leyland's similar lament created in Pittsburgh in the early 1990s.

 

I'll agree with the premise behind this as a Royals fan.

In June, I had no idea how many games out they were. I didn't set up text alerts on Royals in-game information until about Labor Day.

Typically, a Royals season would go: pay attention through May 15, wait for inevitable 2-11 road trip, wait for Chiefs training camp. That's it.

Royals' fans haven't had a reason to show up after July 1 since 1994. Even around Labor Day, they were still skeptical, still waiting for the wolf at the door.

That being said, the last week of the season was intense throughout the city. The Wild Card Game was a five-hour experience that many are calling the best game they've witnessed in-person. It grew with each game, the roadies in Anaheim where late homers won games around midnight, the sweep of the Orioles and, finally, the World Series.

In six weeks, Kansas City morphed back into the baseball city it was from 1975 to about 1989.

It isn't like over in St. Louis, where 35,000 people show up for every night. As they should. After all, Cardinals fans invented the game, remember?

Kansas City is small-market and I take no shame in not showing up for a product that, historically, has been dreadful. You wouldn't keep going to a restaurant that kept serving lousy meals for 15 years, would you?