Just a Girl From Kansas City Who Loves Baseball

For many years my friends have asked which was my favorite team, and for the same many years I have smugly replied that I would never need to chose. A Cubs Royals World Series? I was not concerned.

This year the questioning became more intense; this year those two teams both ended up in the post season. When the kids at school jeered at my Royals hat I assured them that this wasn't necessary, the Royals were not the enemy. Children who attend school down the street from Wrigley Field had trouble understanding that idea.

There was never a choice. I love the Cubs, I love Wrigley Field and the neighborhood we call home. I love the roar of the crowd from the front porch, the traffic on game days and odd smell that emanates from the ball park in August. I love Ernie Banks and Ron Santo and Mark Grace. But I was raised on the Royals.

My grandmother taught me the words to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as we walked to our car in the parking lot of the old Municipal Stadium in Kansas City. The Royals belong to my grandfather and his lap that held me when Brett's fly ball escaped the right field wall. The Royals are Nana's, games broadcast from the old transistor radio on the front porch of her Ward Parkway apartment. The Royals are my dad's team, the suite level seats and the stadium club and Sunday afternoons entertaining clients from the third base side. The Royals are the hat that I tossed back to Dad when I announced I was too old for baseball caps, the skinned knees from running down the winding ramps, LC's BBQ in the parking lot, and the baby blue t-shirt I wore until it shredded. The Royals are my team.

This year I got to share them with everyone. When they won Sunday night I was not in Kansas City but 500 miles away, down the street from Wrigley Field, celebrating in my living room. When they won thirty years ago I was at Kaufman, on the third base side, with my dad, my grandfather and my sister. That win was youthful exuberance, this one was emotional childhood reliving joy. It was simply the best.

Kansas City usually sits at the back of the class, working quietly and diligently. It doesn't scream out; there are cities far more exciting and brightly colored. It's consistent and reliable and comfortable. Kansas City is my old shoe, the train that always arrives on time, the place that will always be home.

This team plays that kind of baseball, the kind that draws you in and holds you until the very end of the game. They quietly and consistently cross the plate, not by firework spouting home runs, but by working together to put players on base and bring them home. The Royals play Kansas City baseball.



I love baseball, and I write about it here.

Take Me Out to the Royals Game

My love of baseball was cultivated in a time when baseball was the star of the game. I am so old that my first games were at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City which was torn down so long ago that a community garden now grows on the site. It was here I chose Lou Piniella as my favorite player and learned what the numbers 1 through 9 signified. It was here that I developed a passion for a summer day at the ballpark, warm and sticky, with 9 innings and a blank scorecard in front of me, in anxious anticipation for the 7th inning stretch. It was here I sat, between my father and grandfather, topped with a Royal Blue ball cap, Cracker Jack in hand, ideally happy for many a summer day.


Once again I am ideally happy. Once again the game of baseball is the star.


In the twenty nine years since the Royals last played in the post season I have grown too comfortable with the idea that the glory days of Kansas City baseball might have passed and that the Royals of my youth, George and Hal and Willie, might just be the only names to remember. My annual visit to Kaufman Stadium became more of an opportunity to share my childhood with my girls than one with any expectations for great baseball. Far too many stories began with "remember when Freddy Patek...?". (No one did.)

I've never been so deliriously happy to be completely wrong.

Playing the kind of baseball that is incredibly fun to watch, putting together runs like puzzle pieces, and behaving like genuinely good guys who are just as excited to be winning as their fans are, the Royals are headed to the World Series. This team that together only hit 95 home runs in the regular season has now swept two teams and won 8 straight post season games, putting together runs pitch by pitch. The team that has not one super salaried star but plays together like they've been doing it since 1985 (even though most of them were not yet born in 1985) is showing everyone what scrappy baseball looks like and why it works. The Royals are making baseball a team sport once again and we are enjoying every stolen base.
 

When the Royals moved from Municipal Stadium to Kaufman, we moved with them, summer days now spent in section 306, third base side.It was here that I announced to my Dad I was too old for the baseball cap he had dropped on my head, here that my grandfather saw his last game, and here that I watched, with my dad, Grandfather and sister, the Royals win Game 7 of the 1985 World Series. My view has changed; Royal blue cap on head I'll watch every game of the upcoming series with three new seatmates, not in section 306 but 500 miles away, remembering how great it is to be a Royals fan and loving every minute of this amazing year.