tk13
04-09-2006, 01:29 AM
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/14298855.htm
Judging this club takes time
JOE POSNANSKI
Kansas City Star
AUGUSTA, Ga. — The rain kept falling, washing away all the tension and most of the golf on Saturday at the Masters. Leader Chad Campbell made a couple of birdies and a couple of bogeys, so he stood still. Phil Mickelson managed in only five holes to be typically brilliant and awful.
Tiger Woods made a couple of great shots and got more CBS airtime than all the CSI shows combined. As usual, he’s your favorite going into today.
Other than that, there really wasn’t much to see. So I watched the Royals play ball.
Am I wrong or does it seem like there’s a lot more fan energy and attention being focused on the Royals early this year? People booed Mike Sweeney on opening day. I must have gotten 50 e-mails from folks griping after the Royals’ embarrassing 14-3 loss to Detroit on Wednesday. I understand that before Friday’s game, manager Buddy Bell was peppered with questions like: “How are you going to keep the guys in the clubhouse from panicking?” At the time, the Royals had lost two games.
Here’s what I think: Royals fans frustration has reached critical mass and everybody wants to beat the rush and start tearing apart the Royals now. You can’t blame people. It has been 10 years of lousy Royals baseball — not including the oasis of 2003 — and it’s like everybody, all at the same time, shouted: “Enough!”
That’s understandable. But, you know, it might be worth waiting a few weeks to see just what this Royals team is about. Everybody freaked out after the first two losses — the most used adjectives in the e-mails were: Pathetic (used 12 times); Embarrassing (nine); Disgusting (eight) and “Jackson County suckers” (one). They wanted to fire this guy, bench that guy, deport the other guy. They wanted payback — for Bob Boone, for Tony Peña, for the Jermaine Dye trade, for the Juan Gonzalez signing, for all the pain.
So what happened next? On Friday, the Royals came back from six runs down against the defending World Series champion Chicago White Sox and won the game.
Then on Saturday, Royals starter Denny Bautista gave up one hit in six innings and showed the stuff that could make him one dynamite pitcher. I’m telling you: This guy’s got a real chance. A veteran, Mark Grudzielanek, banged three hits and scored a couple of runs. Another veteran, Reggie Sanders, crushed a two-run double. Twenty-one year old Ambiorix Burgos blew away the White Sox in the ninth.
And everybody’s favorite scapegoat, Mike Sweeney, hit a one-armed home run through the wind that won the game. It was huge — a heroic sports moment — and you would hope that it might silence the boo-birds for a while. Look, fans have every right to boo and be angry about the Royals losses. And Mike Sweeney makes a lot of money and has never picked up the nuances of playing first base and has missed many games the last few years for injury. He’s the easy target.
But I think people have the wrong guy. Mike Sweeney signed with Kansas City when no other star — not Johnny Damon, not Jermaine Dye, not Carlos Beltran, not even Paul Byrd — was willing to stay. He has hit when he is healthy. He has done a lot in the community. He has tried in dozens of different ways to help the Royals win.
And, with few exceptions, he has held up remarkably well under the agony of injuries and all those bloody losses. This isn’t a guy who demanded to be traded or lashed out at the fans or held out for more money. This isn’t a guy who stopped caring or started playing for his own stats. True, Sweeney can’t play first. He gets hurt, but that isn’t his fault. He hits (the guy still has a higher on-base and slugging percentage than George Brett), and he cares, and he wants badly to win, and he stayed through it all. I would hope he hears the cheers today.
Anyway, back to the main point, the Royals won Saturday’s game, they played well, and they’re now 2-2 on the season. Also, Alex Gordon has looked fabulous in Wichita. He will be up soon. Billy Butler has hit the ball so hard down there that a couple of scouts say he could hit .400 if allowed to stay there all year.
In other words, two days after the world was collapsing around the Royals, they suddenly look awfully good.
You know what? If the Royals get destroyed today, things will seem dire again. If they lose two or three in a row, some fans might spontaneously combust.
And that leads to an interesting question sent in by Walter Stokely: Is Kansas City, deep down, a football or baseball town? On the one hand, you would have to say Kansas City is a football town. The Chiefs sell out every game. Half the televisions in town are turned to Chiefs football at game time. There’s a whole lot more red than blue around town these days.
On the other hand, baseball is in this town’s blood, going back more than 100 years, going back to Kid Nichols and Billy Hamilton. Baseball here goes back to the Blues and Phil Rizutto, to Satchel Paige and the Monarchs, to Dave Wickersham and Jerry Lumpe and mechanical rabbits that brought baseballs to umpires, to George Brett and Frank White and a bloop single by Dane Iorg, to Bo Jackson hitting the long home run and, yes, to Mike Sweeney rifling a double in the gap.
So, it’s not an easy question to answer — football or baseball town? It’s both. But I do think the town has a football tempo now. I think it has been so long since the Royals have been good, many people in town have lost the rhythm of being a baseball fan. In football, every game counts, every Sunday is crucial, every loss is devastating. That’s how many Kansas City fans feel about things.
In baseball, though, good teams lose all the time, bad teams win all the time, and you need to wait a while for the season to reveal itself. There are still six months left to go in this season. We’ll find out about these Royals in time. There will be plenty of time to panic or boo or be surprised. I once asked a baseball manager, Davey Johnson, if he had a good feeling about his team after only a couple of games. He glared at me and said, “I don’t believe in feelings. I believe in results. You want feelings, go to a movie.”
Judging this club takes time
JOE POSNANSKI
Kansas City Star
AUGUSTA, Ga. — The rain kept falling, washing away all the tension and most of the golf on Saturday at the Masters. Leader Chad Campbell made a couple of birdies and a couple of bogeys, so he stood still. Phil Mickelson managed in only five holes to be typically brilliant and awful.
Tiger Woods made a couple of great shots and got more CBS airtime than all the CSI shows combined. As usual, he’s your favorite going into today.
Other than that, there really wasn’t much to see. So I watched the Royals play ball.
Am I wrong or does it seem like there’s a lot more fan energy and attention being focused on the Royals early this year? People booed Mike Sweeney on opening day. I must have gotten 50 e-mails from folks griping after the Royals’ embarrassing 14-3 loss to Detroit on Wednesday. I understand that before Friday’s game, manager Buddy Bell was peppered with questions like: “How are you going to keep the guys in the clubhouse from panicking?” At the time, the Royals had lost two games.
Here’s what I think: Royals fans frustration has reached critical mass and everybody wants to beat the rush and start tearing apart the Royals now. You can’t blame people. It has been 10 years of lousy Royals baseball — not including the oasis of 2003 — and it’s like everybody, all at the same time, shouted: “Enough!”
That’s understandable. But, you know, it might be worth waiting a few weeks to see just what this Royals team is about. Everybody freaked out after the first two losses — the most used adjectives in the e-mails were: Pathetic (used 12 times); Embarrassing (nine); Disgusting (eight) and “Jackson County suckers” (one). They wanted to fire this guy, bench that guy, deport the other guy. They wanted payback — for Bob Boone, for Tony Peña, for the Jermaine Dye trade, for the Juan Gonzalez signing, for all the pain.
So what happened next? On Friday, the Royals came back from six runs down against the defending World Series champion Chicago White Sox and won the game.
Then on Saturday, Royals starter Denny Bautista gave up one hit in six innings and showed the stuff that could make him one dynamite pitcher. I’m telling you: This guy’s got a real chance. A veteran, Mark Grudzielanek, banged three hits and scored a couple of runs. Another veteran, Reggie Sanders, crushed a two-run double. Twenty-one year old Ambiorix Burgos blew away the White Sox in the ninth.
And everybody’s favorite scapegoat, Mike Sweeney, hit a one-armed home run through the wind that won the game. It was huge — a heroic sports moment — and you would hope that it might silence the boo-birds for a while. Look, fans have every right to boo and be angry about the Royals losses. And Mike Sweeney makes a lot of money and has never picked up the nuances of playing first base and has missed many games the last few years for injury. He’s the easy target.
But I think people have the wrong guy. Mike Sweeney signed with Kansas City when no other star — not Johnny Damon, not Jermaine Dye, not Carlos Beltran, not even Paul Byrd — was willing to stay. He has hit when he is healthy. He has done a lot in the community. He has tried in dozens of different ways to help the Royals win.
And, with few exceptions, he has held up remarkably well under the agony of injuries and all those bloody losses. This isn’t a guy who demanded to be traded or lashed out at the fans or held out for more money. This isn’t a guy who stopped caring or started playing for his own stats. True, Sweeney can’t play first. He gets hurt, but that isn’t his fault. He hits (the guy still has a higher on-base and slugging percentage than George Brett), and he cares, and he wants badly to win, and he stayed through it all. I would hope he hears the cheers today.
Anyway, back to the main point, the Royals won Saturday’s game, they played well, and they’re now 2-2 on the season. Also, Alex Gordon has looked fabulous in Wichita. He will be up soon. Billy Butler has hit the ball so hard down there that a couple of scouts say he could hit .400 if allowed to stay there all year.
In other words, two days after the world was collapsing around the Royals, they suddenly look awfully good.
You know what? If the Royals get destroyed today, things will seem dire again. If they lose two or three in a row, some fans might spontaneously combust.
And that leads to an interesting question sent in by Walter Stokely: Is Kansas City, deep down, a football or baseball town? On the one hand, you would have to say Kansas City is a football town. The Chiefs sell out every game. Half the televisions in town are turned to Chiefs football at game time. There’s a whole lot more red than blue around town these days.
On the other hand, baseball is in this town’s blood, going back more than 100 years, going back to Kid Nichols and Billy Hamilton. Baseball here goes back to the Blues and Phil Rizutto, to Satchel Paige and the Monarchs, to Dave Wickersham and Jerry Lumpe and mechanical rabbits that brought baseballs to umpires, to George Brett and Frank White and a bloop single by Dane Iorg, to Bo Jackson hitting the long home run and, yes, to Mike Sweeney rifling a double in the gap.
So, it’s not an easy question to answer — football or baseball town? It’s both. But I do think the town has a football tempo now. I think it has been so long since the Royals have been good, many people in town have lost the rhythm of being a baseball fan. In football, every game counts, every Sunday is crucial, every loss is devastating. That’s how many Kansas City fans feel about things.
In baseball, though, good teams lose all the time, bad teams win all the time, and you need to wait a while for the season to reveal itself. There are still six months left to go in this season. We’ll find out about these Royals in time. There will be plenty of time to panic or boo or be surprised. I once asked a baseball manager, Davey Johnson, if he had a good feeling about his team after only a couple of games. He glared at me and said, “I don’t believe in feelings. I believe in results. You want feelings, go to a movie.”