Too Little, Too Late: A Royals Divorce

If you’re looking for a ticket to Games 3 or 5 of the ALCS—I know a guy.

He’s been a Royals season ticket holder for years. He kept faith through the infamous 2005 season, was an Alex Gordon evangelist, and welcomed the arrival of Dayton Moore as GM that seemed to signal a new era.

Originally a Cardinals fan, he gradually converted after moving closer to Kansas City and establishing a small business. As far as anyone could tell, if he wasn’t at work, he was at The K. And that’s exactly where he was for the 2014 American League Wildcard game…

…rooting for the Oakland A’s.

Any serious Royals fan knows that his/her faithfulness has been tested for a generation. So, in a way, one can understand why someone would give up on a team that appears to have given up. In fact, one could even understand how someone would become a fan of another club like the wonderfully disruptive Oakland A’s.

What’s hard to fathom is the fact that the nail in the coffin, the final straw, the final push into madness, the disappointment that would breed into contempt, would come precisely as the Royals would have their best season in a generation.

But such is the power of Royals skipper Ned Yost, whom, this guy credits for his fatal and final fall into apostasy.

It started as an affair of the heart. If you love baseball so much that season tickets are a permanent line in your budget—- and you begin to fear that the organization that runs your team is not as concerned with your love of baseball as much as your permanent budget line—you can see why your eyes might start wondering.

I’m not saying it’s OK—I’m saying I can see how it happens.

Enter the Oakland A’s.

Even a casual baseball fan knows the A’s have changed the game. In the Midwest, all but the most suspect of people have rejected the Steinbrenner Way—not out of jealousy, as some to our immediate east might allege, but because it seems dishonest. In a time when Kansas City continued a series of empty rebuilds based on prospects who would find success at other clubs, Oakland began asking better questions.

Time went on, one thing led to another, the split-television experience led to confusion, anger and, ultimately, betrayal.

If the Royals have your allegiance but the A’s have your heart, how long until one begins to rend the other? One season? Two? Three and Hollywood movie starring Brad Pitt and the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman? (with the Royals featured frequently in the film)

It was May, 2014 when he told me: He was now an A’s fan. When asked if he was kidding he insisted that he wasn’t.

I asked why?

Something about Ned Yost.

“I have my problems with Ned too.”

The response he gave me reminded me of anyone else who was through. Polite. Despondent. Final.

You knew that Yost was just the face of a thousand broken promises and that, in the eyes of this man, success would only be the result of chaos; the random assembly of events in a million alternate universes where the Royals finally win the pennant. He got tired of waiting just to see someone roll the dice.

So he left on his terms and wore green and gold to the Wildcard game in Kansas City in seats he’s owned for years.

“So are you rooting for Baltimore?”

“I don’t really care who wins.”

He’ll sell you his Game 3 and Game 5 tickets.