Growing up as a baseball fan in Minneapolis, there was but one certainty in the American League Central: The Kansas City Royals sucked.
Seriously, look it up: In 20 seasons as a member of the AL Central from 1994 to 2013, the Royals had finished in the top half of the conference exactly once — all the way back in 1995. And even during that season, they finished with just a 70-74 record — that being the year that the Cleveland Indians tore the rest of the American League to shreds in a run to the World Series.
In that era, they also finished above the .500 mark just twice — once in the strike-shortened 1994 season, and then just four games above .500 in 2003. The Kansas City Royals weren’t even good enough to be mediocre; they just straight-up sucked.
Talents like David Cone, Johnny Damon, David DeJesus and Zack Greinke came and went, but they made no difference. The once-proud program that made opponents quiver in their stirrups in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s had been reduced to even less than a shadow of its former self — an afterthought, a footnote, a laughingstock.
Well, who’s laughing now?
Certainly not the Detroit Tigers and their murderers’ row of assorted sluggers. They got swept out of the playoffs by an upstart Baltimore team after winning the Central for the fourth consecutive time. Try again.
The Yankees? Nope. They’re watching the playoffs from their couches — with the feel-good Derek Jeter story already having come to a close.
In place of the usual suspects that have reigned atop the American League for so long, in this postseason’s spotlight you’ll see a ragtag group of no-name players that nobody could have faulted you for mistaking for quadruple-A late-season call-ups — because that’s exactly what some of them are.
America is a sucker for a good underdog story. The very notion of nobody becoming somebody — the embodiment of hard work transforming nuts and bolts and pieces of scrap metal into a mighty tower — plays to our idealized belief in the “American Dream,” the conviction that blood, sweat and tears will give anybody the chance to shine one day in the spotlight. That is the foundation off of which our society is built — the beacon that shines bright and draws people from all corners of the world to the stars and stripes.
This October, in that beacon, shines Salvador Perez, the emotional leader of the team, who poked a liner past a diving Josh Donaldson in the 12th inning of the wild-card playoff to cement the Royals as the darlings of a nation.
In that beacon, you’ll find Jarrod Dyson and Lorenzo Cain, the cornerstones of an outfield that makes America collectively gasp with wonder and disbelief at every sliding scoop and lay-it-all-on-the-line diving catch.
The beacon shines brighter with every steal of Terrance Gore, the situational pinch-runner that somehow seems to make the entire world around him feel like it’s trying to play catch-up and makes you wonder: What is this guy doing on a baseball diamond instead of racing with the Usain Bolts and Tyson Gays of the world on a track?
How could you forget the quiet, workmanlike components of one of the most stellar bullpens in postseason history? Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland have been an indomitable trio at the back end, while young lefty Brandon Finnegan has gone from a dormitory at TCU to the mound of Kauffman Stadium in less than six months.
And tying it all together: Alex Gordon and Billy Butler, later to be joined by Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas, the beloved hometown heroes that suffered through year after year of helplessness in which the Royals couldn’t so much as do something that finally paid off with a miracle run in which it absolutely seems possible — and almost destined to be — that they can do anything.
To the naked eye, it almost looks like a team scrapped together from the castoffs of the big boys — the last guys in the bar before closing time, waiting for someone to come pick them up.
But this October, they’ve been playing with a fire, a resiliency and even a pizzazz that has captivated millions of people across the nation. They’re the diamonds-in-the-rough, the lovable losers — but they’re no longer losers, and their luster is shining brighter than ever.
What luster, you say? They say chicks dig the long ball. Not anymore. Thanks to your Kansas City Royals, the late-inning stolen base is sexy. The outfield substitution is glamorous. The power hitter is out — the situational lefty out of the bullpen is in.
The Royals have stripped away all of the machismo and star power from the spotlight, but in their place, the Royals have showed us a mastery of the nitty-gritty of baseball — the unspectacular but fundamental — and they’ve done it with flair. They’re the Rocky Balboa facing the Ivan Drago of a Giant dynasty and have won over the hearts of crowds normally hostile to them from sea to shining sea (except for the unmoved and stony-hearted of the San Francisco Bay Area).
It almost seems like fate that the Royals are headed back to Kauffman Stadium trailing the World Series three games to two. This is the part where, backed into a corner and taking punch after punch from an opponent that smells blood, Rocky Balboa lashes out with an unexpected left jab and catches his opponent off guard before mounting a comeback, one gut punch at a time, with the roars of the crowd in his ears.
The 2007 Rockies and 2008 Rays created the perfect symphonies in their mystical runs to the playoffs but unraveled in the closing measures of the coda. And that’s the thing about every underdog’s moment to shine — as fantastic and unbelievable it is in the moment, people easily forget that it is fragile, often fleeting and can come crashing down at a moment’s notice.
The 2014 Royals have composed a similar symphony — but how long will it last? Will it, too, be foiled in the concluding bars? Will the fanfare of the Giants rudely cut into the melodies and leave a bitter taste in our mouths, or will the Royals be able to see their masterpiece through and seal their place in the hallowed shelves of baseball history, as did the 1969 “Miracle” Mets?
It almost seems unfathomable that this group of Royals would let this story go unfinished. It seems unfair to even think for a second that after all this drama, this emotion, these highs, the fans in Kansas City would be denied their release. Kansas City hasn’t seen a World Championship in 29 years, and if it doesn’t happen now, there’s no guarantee that it would happen within the next 29. It’s now or never — the stars only align every so often, after all.
They say that Hollywood endings tend to be clichéd, but sometimes a cliché isn’t such a bad thing. The script is open to the last page, and it’s up to the Royals to write it with an ending for the history books — and our wildest dreams and fantasies.
Do-Hyoung Park watched Rocky 12 times before realizing it was not based on real life. Be the Apollo to his Rocky by contacting him at dpark027 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Tweet him @dohyoungpark.