Royals have a moment
Congratulations, I guess, to the Kansas City Royals for their Wild Card playoff win last night. I had placed a curse on the team back in 1985, when I was ten, forbidding the club from ever winning another postseason game after they claimed a World Series title through arrogance and avarice in the aftermath of an epically-blown call by an umpire.
FYI, I did not lift the curse. The Royals have made no public movement whatsoever towards my demand that the 1985 World Series trophy be delivered to 700 Clark Street in St. Louis for permanent display and possession. Instead, they overcame the nightly taunts and threats from my evil eye candle, my ritual sacrifice of a three-legged pig each April, and my nightly caterwauling before a shrine to Joaquin Andujar. I pulled out all the stops this year, point of fact, but apparently have lost my 29-year-old magic touch.
Now it's up to Albert Pujols, David Freese, and the Los Angeles Angels of the Greater Los Angeles Area to put a stop to the team's forward momentum.
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How can you tell a bandwagon Royals fan from a true blue fan? These Facebook posts from "long-suffering" Royals rooters are simmering in artifice. Most of these people are not "long-suffering" in the slightest. They abandoned the team, perhaps as long ago as George Brett's retirement in 1993. Remember how the club owners cancelled the World Series in '94? And it took a winning team in each city to bring the business gradually back? In many cities, it happened right away; in others, a decade or more. In Kansas City, last night. I can think of at least three Royals fans from my Royals-filled youth that have told me since 1993 that they don't follow baseball anymore. If that's the case, then by definition, they have not been spending this time suffering. They moved on. Spouses that leave the marriage stop suffering it.
Fans of teams that play important games and lose those games suffer infinitely more than fans of teams that never play important games. I agree that Royals fans have had nothing to celebrate, but that doesn't mean they've been suffering. It's not the same thing. Many Kansas City fans could-- and did-- move on to other interests like family, friends, Netflix, celebrity gossip, and a football team that is almost equally as bad as the Royals, but has caused slightly more suffering, according to my definition, and that at least has the decency to lose only once a week.
Anyway, to the original point of the last paragraph, I believe you can tell the bandwagon jumpers from the true fans by asking them their opinion of Derek Jeter's recent little retirement party. A true Royals fan, the one that stood with them till today from childhood or from the team's birth in 1969, despises the Yankees with maximum effort. He or she recalls the Game 5 loss to the Yankees in the 1976 AL Championship Series; the repeat performance in '77; the four-game defeat in '78; the eventual triumph for the pennant in a three-game sweep in '80; Billy Martin, George Brett, and the pine tar game; the booing of each and every Yankees representative (four of them) at the 2012 All-Star Game in Kansas City, including the hilarious and unmerciful taunting of Robinson Cano during the Home Run Derby.
If a "Royals fan" tells you that he or she is thrilled-- or even somehow warmed-- by the touching tributes to Jeter around the league and the final "heroic" performance of the Yankees "captain" upon his retirement, that man or woman is a Royals fan IMPOSTER! Tell them so! Say to them, "You are pretending to be a Royals fan in order to sponge up good will with people that, incidentally, aren't even worth having as friends. Simply stop." I have some Royals fan acquaintances from my youth of which I have seriously doubts that they could pass this Jeter test. What I'm saying is that I think they gave in. They left the Royals. I believe that they took to referring to themselves, instead, as just general baseball fans at best, and very possibly not baseball fans at all, and now that the Royals are "hot" for half of a week, they want praise from you for their endurance and character when they have displayed neither.
Set them up. Imply that you like Jeter, and that you think he's the coolest. Next, ask them if they agree that "Jeet's" retirement run, his last game, and that last fat pitch he got to swing at at Yankee Stadium gave you the chills for their collective authenticity. If they don't answer to the effect that they were sickened by the entire gaudy display of corporate-approved man-love and the senseless and manipulative media hype, then tell them you'll have no more of what they're selling. Baseball's built for obsessives and die-hards, and they've probably been away too long to remember that.
posted by CM @ 8:50 PM
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