For the first time ever I have a Kansas City Royals fan answering questions prior to a matchup with the Washington Nationals. You may remember Todd, aka Control City Freak (not pictured) from an earlier Q&A about his youtube channel. Todd, a Kansan, talks about KC’s other team, the Royals.
WFY: Last year, the KC Royals lost 106 six games and this year THEY ARE IN THE WILD CARD race. THat’s even after some rough losing streaks. How crazy has it been to have such a big swing and is it keeping fans thinking about something other than the Chiefs?
CCF: It’s pretty wild! It’s definitely the number one topic of conversation in my back home friends group chat. I wish I’d been keeping up a bit more, but all the losing the last few years kinda ground me into submission so for me personally, I’m still paying way more attention to the Chiefs lol.
WFY: What’s driving the Royals big turnaround? Besides Bobby Witt, Jr. of course.
CCF: Robert Baseball is certainly the main reason, but I felt like we made some solid small moves last off-season. I certainly wasn’t expecting to actually be in contention though.
WFY: How excited are you that Witt is not only there, having 30-30 seasons at shortstop now, but signed for the long-term?
CCF: That’s huge. The Royals of my college years were basically a AA team. All our good players would get traded for $30 and a bag of balls to the AAA club in Oakland before eventually moving on to one of the Evil Empire teams to win championships. I think holding on to Gordo a few years ago signalled something of a culture change, and then hanging on to Salvy and now Witt has energized the team and the fans.
WFY: The Royals were perhaps the best run expansion franchise in baseball history, becoming a perennial contender about 7 years in and then for a decade. They captured two flags, won it all over their in-state rival and then got Bo Jackson for a few years. Then, not a lot! How as the 25-30 years long gap between pennants? Was Lorde the highlight?
CCF: It was pretty rough. I went to a lot of Royals games in the good old days, most memorably a double header against Toronto on Dick Howser Night where they honored the recently deceased skipper between games. The Royals won both, and won the second one in dramatic fashion with Frank White getting the winning RBI with 2 outs in the 9th, and it was the latest I’d ever stayed up in my life thus far. I didn’t grow up a Chiefs fan. My parents are from Chicago so they were Bears fans, plus the Bears ranged from fun to transcendent in the late 80s while the Chiefs were horrific, but I did grow grow up a Royals fan. In the early 90s we got Chiefs season tickets and the Royals fell into despair, so I started paying more attention to the Chiefs and haven’t stopped since. The Royals were good in ‘93 and ‘94 but never really recovered from the strike. The high point for Royals fandom between the strike and the 2014 run was definitely the early 2000s “Blue Wave” team with Damon, Dye, Beltran, Sweeney, Randa, and Ibanez. It also didn’t hurt having Buck O’Neil in the crowd at every game and the KC Star employing a murderers’ row of sportswriters covering it all.
As an aside, when Lorde played in DC a while back, she talked about swimming in the Potomac River to much astonishment. Has ever talked about swimming in the Missouri or the Kansas rivers?
CCF: Not to my knowledge. I’d always heard that the Kansas River was one of the most polluted in the country from all the agricultural runoff.
WFY: There seems to be a consensus that Kauffman Stadium was the best baseball new facility built between Dodger Stadium and the retro ball park boom. What do you like about it and has it held up even? How does it rank out of all the ballparks you have visited?
CCF: I love the K, it’s been a great stadium. The fountains are cool, and I saw Bo Jackson hit a homer that seemed to nearly hit the green sign over I-70 for the Blue Ridge Cutoff exit. It’s one of my favorites for sure. I’ve been to your park, and it’s a gem, and really easy to get to on transit. Camden Yards lives up to the hype as well, but I made the mistake of getting BBQ there once and it’s definitely minor league compared to KC. It’s cliche, but Wrigley is almost certainly the best. I lived a 10 minute walk from it for a couple years in the Prior-Wood era. Every game was a sellout but they sold Standing Room and Obstructed View tickets on day of game only, so I could stroll down there in the morning and buy a ticket for $10 and come back later in the afternoon to watch the game.
WFY: The Royals and Chiefs have been trying to get new publicly financed stadia and the state of Kansas is trying to get them across the border. What’s your take as a fan and as a Kansan? We recently dealt with something similar here with the Capitals/Wizards and even though they would have moved to my city of Alexandria, I wanted them to stay in DC for a number of reasons.
CCF: I thought the Chiefs’ plan in the recent ballot initiative in Jackson County was pretty lame, basically just bells and whistles for club level fans and nothing that would improve the game day experience for regular fans. I don’t like the idea of the Royals moving to Kansas, I think they should move either downtown proper or to an interesting part of the city, although I would be okay with a stadium exactly on the border so that fans could buy weed on the third base side and gamble on the first base side lol. Football is a different animal though, it’s the only sport that actually does make sense in the middle of a giant parking moat, at least in a car-centric place like KC. Tailgating is a big part of the Arrowhead experience. As a Kansan, I’d be happy to see New Arrowhead at the other 70-435 interchange. There’s plenty of room for big parking lots there, and maybe they could manage to bring in more development than the Taco Bell, Amoco, and 2 hotels that have sat next to Truman Sports Complex for 50 years.
WFY: How much do you get up for the Royals vs. Cardinals rivalry and would a move to Kansas increase or decrease the stakes?
CCF: I don’t get up for it as much as I used to, but I think moving to Kansas could actually increase it. KU and K State folks despise Mizzou, and people would get excited over playing Missouri’s only MLB team.
WFY: Given how much the Royals have overachieved this season, do you feel bad about not scheduling a DC-centric Control City Freak video based on this series?
CCF: Haha never really thought about it. I cheer for the Royals and hope the do well, but I just don’t have enough time to focus on them as much as I do the Chiefs. When I was living in Korea I caught Royals playoff games when I could but missed a lot due to time zones, but I still watched condensed versions of every Chiefs game that I couldn’t catch live, even in the Brodie Croyle days.
WFY: It’s September and the penultimate series is a road trip to a NL city – is the new interleague all season, all teams, schedule something you are enjoying?
CCF: It’s cool, but definitely kinda weird to wrap up the season with 3 consecutive NL series. I would have liked playing the White Sox an extra 15 or 20 times this year.
WFY: Do you have any memories of previous Nats vs. Royals series? I remember they beat Stephen Strasburg in a day game I went to with my dad and my brother in 2010. That’s the only thing that stands out, though I saw the Royals in Yankee Stadium two of the four times I visited my grandfather’s old neighborhood/mother’s old workplace for a game. Bo was hurt though.
CCF: None that I can think of offhand.
WFY: Have you ever been to Nationals Park or RFK Stadium for a Nats game?
CCF: I have! I saw the Nats play the Mets in 2009. Really enjoyed it, great facility.
WFY: Can you even name three players on the current Nats roster?
CCF: I can’t lol.
WFY: What does the Royals Mount Rushmore look like? I know George Bret is on there, but who else? Frank White? Brett Saberhagen? Zach Grienke?
CCF: Definitely gotta include Salvy in there. Brett for sure, then I’d probably throw in Frank White and Alex Gordon. Hal McRae would be up there but he did his best work as DH. Grienke was great but his most significant contribution to the team’s success was probably his trade value. I’d probably take Saberhagen if I had to pick a pitcher, but most of our better pitchers had short careers in KC and often had greater success elsewhere.
WFY: Speaking of Grienke, in spite of his losing record with KC, I think of him as Royal first and wonder if he’ll go in the Hall of Fame with a KC cap. How well remembered is he among the Royals faithful? Oh and I also think of him refusing a trade to the Nats around 2012 and then getting pulled in Game 7 of the 2019 World Series…
CCF: I’d love to see him go to the HOF as a Royal. He’s well remembered and well liked in KC, and people were stoked to have him back at the end of his career. Royals Twitter was sad to see him decline some at the end and was generally kind and careful not to call him out to any big degree.
WFY: What was that black era all about for the Royals? That always seems forced, black for black sake as Uni Watch would say. Do you prefer script or block Kansas City on the road jerseys? How about the City Connect uniforms?
CCF: I prefer the script ones, it’s more what I grew up with. The City Connect ones are cool, but I feel like the White Sox blow everyone away in that department.
WFY: Lastly, with the Royals hanging on for the Wild Card and the Nats out of it, how do you think this series goes?
CCF: I’m not too confident. The Royals have picked a pretty bad time to fall off a cliff.