Wistful Baseball Times Eased by Football Electricity

     It is an October Sunday in Kansas City in 2019, and that means Chiefs excitement pure and simple. And rightly so. If the Chiefs are not the best, they are certainly the sexiest team in the NFL, and Patrick Mahomes is right now the game’s biggest story. It is also a day where there are two baseball playoff games in series that are tied up a game apiece. Playoff baseball is electric, it is almost like a different sport than regular season play. The pitch-by-pitch riveting action is undeniably compelling. It is less than 1,500 days since that kind of excitement pervaded Kansas City.

     If Kansas City sports fans are paying much attention to the baseball playoffs, it is no doubt wistfully. Four years ago the Royals were about to launch their title run with their divisional series with the Astros. Now their fans sit having just experienced back-to-back one hundred loss seasons, and even the upbeat Ned Yost, in his press conference after his final game, expressed the feeling that it would be at least three to four years before the team was a contender.

     It’s really quite a shame, but at least the Chiefs have stepped into the breach to fill the void. The Chiefs and Royals franchises have almost been uncanny in trading off periods where they were good teams. They have seldom been good at the same time. After the Chiefs won their only Super Bowl they started to fade into mediocrity or worse. But the Royals emerged as a successful franchise right then and continued that until the early nineties. Then just as they were starting to hit the bat chute, Marty Schottenheimer’s Chiefs were there to fill the void.

     By the time the Chiefs bottomed out to get the number one draft pick, the Royals were just starting to emerge for their short, but exhilarating, run of relevance. Andy Reid improved the Chiefs pretty darn fast, and actually one of the few times both teams were playoff caliber was in the Royals pennant years. But nobody really thought the Chiefs could win a title. The Royals did, and the city certainly has the right to think that the Chiefs can follow, and soon.

    Except for the first two games in Anaheim, I got to experience every Royals postseason game first hand. The excitement that swept the community seems almost like a distant memory, even though it isn’t. I watched the pitch-by-pitch electricity in person with my own eyes. Every pitch. Well, ironically, almost every pitch. I didn’t see any of the twenty that Wade Davis threw in the bottom of the 12th, as I chronicled in my 2016 book “Leaving Cancer for the Circus”……

     “Once the Royals got the lead, with their flawless closer, Wade Davis, the game was almost certainly won, and I had to get downstairs to the clubhouse. It was a weird scene, all of the media waiting to cover another Champagne celebration. But as the Royals continued to score, and then Davis struggled a bit in the bottom of the inning, we cooled our heels in a basement hallway for about a half an hour.              

     Finally, we saw on our phones that the game was over and soon we heard the sounds of wild celebration in the clubhouse. Champagne celebrations may be fun for the players and look like lots of laughs for fans, but they are no fun to cover. In fact, when I think about it, the reason for my half tooth was from getting bumped in the mouth by a TV camera during the ALCS.

     Many of the camera people and others had ponchos or rain gear, and goggles and the like. My strategy was to work the periphery during the real mayhem, and sneak into the quieter sectors when possible. But it’s impossible to not end up at least a little bit sticky, with stinging eyes. When it’s a World Series' celebration, it’s work, but it’s special. The joy of seeing people celebrate reaching the top of their profession is something. But the champagne part, not so much.”

     I went on from New York to visit my parents for a few days. But the impact that the not so long ago seminal event in Kansas City sports history had was embodied in the stunning parade and celebration at Union Station, a scene who’s framed image likely is now on the wall of about every other man cave in the city. My own first hand version of the mania was experienced from 1,500 miles away, again, from the book…..

     “ Among the throng were my wife and our friend Linda. Linda is the kind of long-suffering die-hard Royals fan that made up a portion of the massive crowd. My wife represented the type of phenomenon that a winning sports team can create. Jayne is a successful businesswoman as well as an accomplished opera singer. She has always enjoyed sports a little bit, and now probably a little bit more, since it is my profession.

     But like thousands of others who didn’t really know a thing about cut fastballs, or WHIP, or double switches, she got swept up in the hysteria. I felt like I was in some kind of alternate universe while I was covering games and I would receive texts from her expressing the common Royals fans' complaints about Fox announcer, Joe Buck, reviled by Kansas Citians.

     The parade however, took the cake. She and Linda maneuvered around Kansas City with craft, creativily finding a prime spot quite near the stage, standing just behind some people sitting in lawn chairs so they could breathe, it was so tight. This took hours and hours. Truly amazing, and a reflection of what a sports team can do for a city.”

     I was up past midnight last night watching as the Astros completed their second win over the Rays. An easy game became a nail-biter and the Astros would pull the game out only after pulling their closer, something you would likely never do in a regular season game where he still had the lead. It is just another reflection of the desperation for each win that is so precious.

     The next feeling like that for Kansas City sports fans won’t come until January. The difference is, it will be football, and the maximum amount of games the Chiefs will get is almost certainly three. Not that those won’t be treasured, and in fact, I think the parade that the Chiefs hope to have likely will outdo what we saw in 2015. But there is something to the steady drumbeat of a march to a seventh game of a World Series, or to a title.

     The Royals played 31 postseason games in 2014 and 2015. Thirty-one days and nights of ecstacy and anguish, and finally, complete and utter fulfillment. It no doubt was, and is, treasured. It may never happen again in the lifetimes of many of the fans, a feeling that is being reinforced right now as October baseball is played out, and even participation in the ritual seems a stretch here in Kansas City.

     Less than 1,500 days have passed. To me it does seem a long time since I waited in that tunnel to enter the clubhouse. Maybe it doesn’t seem as long ago to you, when were hugging your kids, or high-fiving your buddy, or toasting with a complete stranger.

     Wistful seems like just the right word when I watch playoff baseball now, and think back to then.