you mean there's still over 3 months of this to watch?

what a...disappointing weekend.

in order:
Friday: St. Louis 5, KC 2

the royals, once again, made the opposing team's pitcher look like an ace, in an attempt to show...um, what are they trying to show again? well, greinke showed the fact that baseball is very reliant on unlikely chance and inopportune moments to highlight the difference between a win and a loss. greinke gets rolen to pop out with the bases loaded in the third? the game is anyone's. the royals pretend like they're playing in an actual game? a base hit or two together could have won it. but, no, another team's pitcher "regained his form", and the royals went down.

Saturday: St. Louis 3, KC 1 (10 innings)

the royals, once again, made the opposing team's pitcher look like an ace, in an attempt to, show...um, royals? whatcha doin' out there, anyway? despite denys reyes' best efforts to bowl the cardinals over with his ground game, this game, once again, had the unfortunate effect of highlighting the difference between a bounce here and there or two feet in either direction. I couldn't believe sweeney's hit and the subsequent outcome in the 9th, but, then again, I could believe he would be swinging 3-0 and dejesus would be running immediately on contact in order to win the game. I can't blame either, but neither ideas were exactly the best ones. what if sweeney drives the ball in the air on 3-0? a fly ball to the outfield would do no good, since we only have a guy as far as second. a hard-hit ground ball at someone would likely be a double play more than anything else. a line drive out is bad; a line drive double-play is worse. a base hit is obviously good, but that's the most unlikely outcome. a walk would load the bases with one out, with speedster ken harvey up next. not that I particularly have faith in ken harvey. despite the somewhat still high batting average and talk (ha!) of "batting crown", he just doesn't get enough good contact with the ball on a consistent basis to believe he won't revert back to his usual technique of swinging over a left-handed batter's box curveball, or skying a pop-fly to the first baseman. BUT, with harvey up, one out, and a runner on third, all the same variables come into play as with sweeney's at-bat, only any hard hit ball to the outfield is likely a game winner, a walk wins it, and the only things that completely kill you are hard hit balls at infielders. naturally, sweeney lined out, dejesus was trying to score, and it all fell apart, as the baseball gods have determined it should be this season. if sweeney takes that 3-0 pitch, it would have been 3-1, and then anything goes. it's hard to fault him, because he did hit the ball ridiculously hard, but the "green light" is given too many times, I think. beltran was another guy that always had a green light, and managed a great number of ineffective pop-ups to kill innings. I guess one good thing about having a lot of rookies and poor hitters is that management isn't likely to give the green light to almost any of the players. if only management knew how to use it, anyway..

Sunday: St. Louis 10, KC 3

the royals, once again, made the opposing team's pitcher look like an ace, in an attempt to, show...jesus christ, i gotta watch this?

sad. enough to make you pour a couple bloody mary's and write about it on the 'net. unfortunately, since trevor vance doesn't work for local softball leagues, my games were cancelled this evening, so I had more time to reflect on this one. and, this is what I came up with:

pitiful shit.

I was really disappointed with this game. I watched a couple innings, fell asleep after a few runs scored, and woke up to a 5-0 score. even as the royals scored 3 runs in the fourth, you knew this was never going to be close. other teams justify their investments in high-dollar players when they play the royals, as it seems every star player manages to shine through against our boys. the whole weekend it was scott rolen and edgar renteria and no-names 7-9 in the order...hell, it doesn't have to be star players. it just has to be players.

it's kind of sad to see that st. louis, a town that's only a little bigger than kansas city, manages to field a competitive team year after year, which, combined with a strong team history, continues to bring in a rabid fan base. kansas city has fielded a bunch of nobodies for years, and, despite having a shorter history, experienced great success for many years, and *should* have something to show for it. but, years of bad decisions and continual claims of poverty and aversion to "losing" money on this team on the part of ownership is sapping this team. I think last year's run at .500 is going to do worse for this year than if we sucked all the way through the last 10 years without a glimmer of hope. because the "success" of last year stirred long dormant hopes in the hearts of many of the small number of people in this town, and while most of them don't quite understand the gigantic economic differences, there's still the fact that the owners of these teams are absurdly rich, yet almost completely unwilling to actually spend any of their own money on a winner. god forbid that. but, being worth hundreds of millions and at the same time being afraid of spending a little of that money on something many people care about that you – and only you – have the power to change breeds a lot of anger and resentment. and while the royals baseball club screamed for your money in the form of season tickets, and the need for millions of fans to come out so that the royals could possibly, potentially, maybe-one-day-if-baseball-fixes-itself be competitive, it's kind of sad to see only a couple million dollars ever allocated towards free agents this year. the supposed oakland / minnesota / moneyball-ish philosophies right now are crap. these teams lucked out with the right players at the right time...it won't continue indefinitely. but, anyway, this is stuff I fully intended for another entry, so I will leave it at that.

I'll just say: watching scott rolen, a high-profile, formerly available third baseman beat you on consecutive nights while joe randa flounders in nowhereland certainly isn't doing anything to help your image in this city, mr. glass. by refusing to invest anything in this team at all at any point during your tenure, it sure does make it hard to keep watching this crap.