2010 Kansas City Royals Repository thread

[SPchief]

All Royals All The Time!

After consultation with others who peruse the game threads we decided to create this as a repository for all things Royals. Minor league news, AL (ahem) Central (thanks Vonne) news and anything Royals can be found here.

alnorth, me and atleast 5 others will continue the game threads as usual. But if you locate something of interest.. ANYTHING.. deals on apparel, best ways in/out of the stadium, giveaways, great stories from this season or from seasons gone by, rumors, trades, anything.... feel free to post it here.

If a big story breaks, you can still start a thread about it. There is merely an all inclusive thread that will make a easy for us all to keep up with all things Royals.


Welcome! "Grab a Brew... don't cost nuthin"...[spills beer on feet]

[BWillie]

I know nobody cares but Kila has raised his avg to abou .220 tonight, .300 obp. He has walked, tripled, and hit two hrs tonight. I dont know how many games are left but it would be nice if he could at least get to .240 with 10-12 hrs and build on that next year. One thing about kila is he typically struggles for a bit when he moves levels but after a while adapts and starts to rake.
Posted via Mobile Device

[Reaper16]

KILA CITY

[SPchief]

With the twins in the fight for homefield you would have thought they would have showed up to play this week. Wood just made 6 straight look silly

[duncan_idaho]

Originally Posted by BWillie007

I know nobody cares but Kila has raised his avg to abou .220 tonight, .300 obp. He has walked, tripled, and hit two hrs tonight. I dont know how many games are left but it would be nice if he could at least get to .240 with 10-12 hrs and build on that next year. One thing about kila is he typically struggles for a bit when he moves levels but after a while adapts and starts to rake.
Posted via Mobile Device

I've been a big critic, but he's slowly making a believer of me. Definitely going to be interesting to see what he does out of the gate in 2011. If he can be a .270/25 guy, he'll drive in a fair amount of runs and be an overall valuable offensive player. Not a superstar, maybe, but a solid run producer, and a guy who would look pretty nice in the 6 spot a few years down the road.

I'm not giving up on Crow until I see at least two professional seasons out of him. We'll see how he comes back next year... if his command doesn't return by the first few months of next season, then I'll worry. But the guy is flat-out filthy (his stuff is on a different level than Hochevar's. Crow throws harder with similar movement, and has a much sharper, nastier slider). and came up huge in several big games in college (including clinching a trip to the Super Regional as a true freshman).

A lot of people had given up on Moustakas and Hosmer at this point last year as well. I remember some saying that Moore deserved to be fired for drafting those guys...

[Reaper16]

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/10/02...-losing-a.html

Originally Posted by Sam Mellinger

Despite a lifetime of losing, a lost era of Royals fans still cheer



The men and women in the lost generation of baseball fans are in their mid twenties now. Has it really been that long? They are grown adults who’ve seen nothing to cheer for. But do it anyway.


They come with blind pride, unreturned loyalty and hope for better days but no real explanation for continuing to care about a team they’ve never seen win. The whole thing defies both logic and the short attention spans of the MTV generation.
How to explain a Royals fan who can’t even call on 1985 as a memory?


“This is a marriage,” says Adam Hance, born in December 1985. “You don’t leave just because your wife let herself go.”


You could point out here that the country’s divorce rate is near 50 percent, but that would be pointless and maybe even rude. This is a lasting partnership built on eternal faith and not much else.


This month makes 25 years since the Royals won their only World Series championship, and the team has young fans anyway, a generation that knows winning baseball only through old stories and grainy video.


Their fathers’ heroes are George Brett and Frank White and other men with championship rings. Their own heroes are Mike Sweeney and Zack Greinke and other men who’ve played on 100-loss disasters.


These are graduate students and young professionals, some with marriages and mortgages, who’ve only seen the Royals as perennial losers and national punchlines. Yet they still cheer.


“Do I get my therapy paid for?” says Brandon Henderson, born in November 1985.


•••
Frank White sits in the Royals dugout, preparing for another broadcast and talking about what Kansas City will be like if its baseball team turns into a winner. This is personal for White.


He grew up in Kansas City, and the story has been told many times how he worked on the construction crew that built Kauffman Stadium and made the big leagues through the old Royals Academy.


White’s No. 20 is retired now, and he’s inducted in the team Hall of Fame. The Royals named one of their spring training fields after him. He is an enormous part of the Royals’ proud past.


Someone mentions to him that one sign of the Royals’ progress will be once the focus is no longer on the minor-league prospects.


“I’ll take that one step further,” White says. “Not talking about 1985. You want to get these guys to develop their own winning attitude, and set standards for the young fans to have a chance to see them play now, and not have to Google guys on the internet. That’s being a little too honest, probably.”


Actually, it’s a pretty good description of this lost generation of fans.


•••
They are a self-deprecating group, mostly out of necessity. The fat guy at the beach knows where he stands, right?


So they make jokes about their parents’ unfortunate timing or the line in their 2003 high school yearbooks about the Royals being winners or that Stockholm Syndrome is the only way to explain their continued love of a team that’s lost more than 90 games in all but four of the last 14 seasons.


Their memories are not George Brett off Goose Gossage or Bret Saberhagen in ’85 but Mike Sweeney’s back giving out again or Carlos Beltran being traded to Houston.
Two friends have a $10,000 bet on whether the Royals will win a World Series in their lifetimes. If one dies, the wager is to be placed in their will.


Mario Cancilla was born in June 1987 and his first Royals memory is Brett kissing home plate after his last game in Kansas City. It’s been all downhill since, but this is a resilient bunch, and Cancilla found himself listening to the June draft at work.


Nick Blevins, born November 1985, is @SorryRoyalsFan on Twitter. Stephen Peel, 21, lists his religious views on Facebook as “Zack Greinke.” Dylan Tucker was born in June 1986 and says he won’t ever give up on the Royals, but “at some point I will have to seriously evaluate my investment in them.”


They all love the Royals for different reasons. Some of it is geography and family and some of the same memories their fathers may have had, like sitting in the old G.A. and getting sprayed by the groundskeepers on a hot day or trying to get a beer with a fake I.D.


So maybe Hance is right. The relationship of fan and team is like a marriage, only the bond can’t be broken just with paperwork.


“Even though I hate almost every player on the team and I hate watching us lose, I continue to watch,” writes one fan.
He signs his e-mail:
“Kill Me Please,
-- Spencer.”
Spencer Moore was born in December 1987.


•••
Lauren Cage owes the Royals for her relationship with her father. Teenage years are always tough, and she didn’t talk much with her dad back then.


Except they always had baseball. They always had the Royals. He taught her the difference between a curveball and a slider, when to steal a base, and told her stories of when the Royals were good.


She was born in December 1986 and sometimes asks her father why the heck he had to raise her a Royals fan, but she knows she wouldn’t trade it for anything. When she calls home during a game, mom hands the phone straight to dad.


“I just think you should root for the team that’s closest to where you grow up,” she says.


•••
The oldest in the group were 8 years old when the 1994 strike killed a Royals season that many thought would end in the playoffs. They were 18, graduating high school seniors, during that 2003 season that felt magical at the time but looks so flukey in hindsight.


The rest of their memories are mostly losses. They remember Beltran running down balls in the gap, but also Kerry Robinson climbing the wall for a ball that bounced in front of him. They remember Johnny Damon stealing bases, but also Desi Relaford being picked off after losing his balance and falling off first.


Their hope remains, their passion sticks, even at the end of another miserable season like this one — and that’s the whole point.


You don’t need championships and star players for hope. The smell of freshly cut grass and the crack of a wood bat and all the other clichés can wipe out Ken Harvey taking a relay throw off his back and a routine fly dropping between two outfielders jogging toward the dugout and all the rest of the embarrassing list every Royals fan has on instant recall.


Sports, and maybe even baseball in particular, can be such a cool thing this way. The Royals’ last moment of real glory came 25 years ago this month, in a time these fans can only read about or watch on technology that didn’t exist back then.


They want their own memories, their own celebrations, and maybe those better times are coming. But even young in life, they’ve been disappointed before. They feel certain to be let down again, and certain that it won’t stop them from cheering for another 25 years.


“It isn’t so much that I am ever hopeful about the Royals becoming a winner again,” says Barry Grass, born September 1986. “It is that I would hate myself if I slip away and they become a winner later on. Fear of betrayal and fear of being a fraud compel me to stay passionate.”

[Reaper16]

Originally Posted by Sam Mellinger

“It isn’t so much that I am ever hopeful about the Royals becoming a winner again,” says Barry Grass, born September 1986. “It is that I would hate myself if I slip away and they become a winner later on. Fear of betrayal and fear of being a fraud compel me to stay passionate.”

Look at Sam Mellinger. Quoting my ass.

[Ivory Hunter]

In yesterday's Team USA victory over Canada, Eric Hosmer went 2-for-4 with a HR and two RBIs, while Mike Montgomery pitched five innings of three-hit ball, fanning eight.

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by Reaper16

Look at Sam Mellinger. Quoting my ass.
[/COLOR]

You were born in 86, balls I feel old.

[Sure-Oz]

Originally Posted by Reaper16

Look at Sam Mellinger. Quoting my ass.
[/COLOR]

Someone thinks their cool

1986, damn must be nice

[gblowfish]

Please don't mention these losing turdbirds again until at least March of 2011.

[DeezNutz]

Originally Posted by gblowfish

Please don't mention these losing turdbirds again until at least March of 2011.

Turdbirds. . DA was a pretty fun dude sometimes. Not sure if this is the source of your comments. But the cut from Grandpa used to make me laugh.

[siberian khatru]

Originally Posted by Reaper16

Look at Sam Mellinger. Quoting my ass.
[/COLOR]

This sounds like it was interesting ( @ the "I'm calm"):

# @mellinger I'm calm. I'm just saying that you are demonstrably incorrect about Berry's impact. He's having a large one. 9:18 AM Oct 10th via web in reply to mellinger

# @mellinger If you watch the games focused on Berry it is easy to see what a solid player he is right now & what a great player he will be 9:07 AM Oct 10th via web in reply to mellinger

# @mellinger And so? He's a rookie. He's also learned from those mistakes. 49'ers tried to exploit him on a long PA pass last Sun to no effect 9:06 AM Oct 10th via web in reply to mellinger

# @mellinger Major error in your column today: You claim Berry hasn't "made much of an impact," but he's been INSTRUMENTAL in improved run D 8:34 AM Oct 10th via web

[Reaper16]

Originally Posted by siberian khatru

This sounds like it was interesting ( @ the "I'm calm"):

# @mellinger I'm calm. I'm just saying that you are demonstrably incorrect about Berry's impact. He's having a large one. 9:18 AM Oct 10th via web in reply to mellinger

# @mellinger If you watch the games focused on Berry it is easy to see what a solid player he is right now & what a great player he will be 9:07 AM Oct 10th via web in reply to mellinger

# @mellinger And so? He's a rookie. He's also learned from those mistakes. 49'ers tried to exploit him on a long PA pass last Sun to no effect 9:06 AM Oct 10th via web in reply to mellinger

# @mellinger Major error in your column today: You claim Berry hasn't "made much of an impact," but he's been INSTRUMENTAL in improved run D 8:34 AM Oct 10th via web

Mellinger is one Hell of a baseball columnist. But I had to put him in his place wrt Eric Berry there.

[Ivory Hunter]

From MLB.com

Hosmer, Moustakas key Team USA in win
Royals farmhands come up big in victory over Cuba
By Dick Kaegel / MLB.com | 10/12/10 12:37 AM ET

There doesn't seem to be any stopping Team USA -- or Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas, either.

The two Royals prospects figured prominently in Monday night's 4-1 victory over Cuba in the Pan American Qualifying's second round at Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Moustakas belted a double to left field, driving in Team USA's two runs in the third inning. He also walked in the sixth and scored as Hosmer reached base on an error. Hosmer completed the two-run inning by scoring on a wild pitch.

Hosmer's 2-for-4 game boosted his average to .394 (13-for-33). Moustakas is batting .270 (10-for-37) with eight RBIs, while Hosmer has seven RBIs.

Team USA (9-0) enters the semifinals on Tuesday as the No. 1 seed. Cuba fell to 7-2.

Dick Kaegel is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

[Ivory Hunter]

In today's Arizona Fall League opener, our Surprise Rafters lead the Peoria Javelinas 8-6 right now in the 8th inning.

Royals pitchers
Brandon Fisk 1 IP, 0 H, 1 BB, 0 R, 0 K
Patrick Keating 1.1 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 2 R, 0 ER, 0 K