Recently I've found myself living in Kansas City, which is a weird enough phenomenon on its own. During this experience I have had occasion to attend several baseball spectacles at Kauffman Stadium, enjoying not only the friendly fountains in the outfield, but the reasonably priced and relatively clean seats (in contrast to those on the East Coast). On top of the value, the ineptitude of the franchise guarantees that nearly every seat will be available to every single game.
This season the Royals (or TurdBirds, as the locals have taken to calling them) have reach new heights in incompetence, fielding one of the worst teams of all time (and that includes my 3rd grade T-Ball squad on which I was the star player). Even when a team loses, most of the time fans are loyal and longsuffering, but there is an inevitable breaking point. Kansas City reached that point exactly two days into the 2006 baseball season. No one is holding out hope anymore and are actively rooting for the only attainable goal this year: breaking the Major League record for losses in a season (120, set by the first-year expansion NY Mets back in 1962).
As an outsider I have been reveling in the unique joy that is a rogue fan base. So many people who have endured so many awful seasons are having their hearts ripped out as they bite their lips and endure the national media attention that comes with such futility. This is painful for so many involved, even as they pretend not to care. I seem to be one of the few immune to such horror as I could not care less if the team was boxed up and shipped to Somalia.
That is until last week.
I was attending a two-week intensive class that ran for four hours every weekday evening and concluded around 9:30pm. This happened to coincide nicely with the end of the fourth quarter of whatever NBA playoff game happened to be scheduled for the evening. Since I also do not have cable television and the NBA has seen fit to keep the preliminary rounds away from the telling eye of the impoverished and paranoid, I had been looking forward to listening to said broadcasts on the way home.
As I entered my car for the thirty minute trek I switched on the local ESPNRadio affiliate only to hear... yep, you guessed it, Frank Stallone... the Royals broadcast. Apparently the Kansas City affiliate for NBA playoffs had also yet to find a way out of their Royals broadcast contract. In my opinion it would be better to lose the money than subject the good-hearted mid-western people to that form of torture, but then again, I am not a programming executive for any media outlet (praise be to God).
This left me with the unenviable task of guessing when JT The Brick would be doing NBA updates and tune in at exactly the right time to avoid hearing any of his ridiculous voice or incoherent, illogical, inane banter.
The moral of the story folks, is that the Kansas City Royals are not just a baseball team, but an uncontrollable Juggernaut sent by the forces of evil to stomp upon the comfort and sanity of people everywhere. This menace will not be confined to Kansas City for long, it has savaged me and it will soon be knocking at your door. Be on you guard, therefore, and do not let the Royals drag you down with them.
