As alluded to in Will's maganimous open thread post, the Royals got some love on ESPN's Baseball Tonight. If you could call it love.

They mostly played up Banny's amazing start. However, they also got several Royals slights in. They mispronounced Soria's name "Joke-im" (he's been in the league a lot longer the Joba, but everybody corrected their pronunciation of his name!). How long has he been closing for us? They also made sure the story of the Royals winning two straight story didn't interfere with the BIG Pedro story. The Royals theft of Bannister is just a subplot with it's own chapter in the story of "What's Wrong With the Mets/Red Sox/Yankees Today."

However, leave it to a former Cardinal to coin this one:  "Trey Hillman has these guys believing that they can win." Vina translated: "The Royals are playing way above their heads, and, by the way, they are losers." Now I have no problem with making note of Hillman's personable, positive managing style. But you can say "Trey Hillman's Royals are buying in to his philosophy," or, "Trey Hillman positive approach is reverberating throughout the clubhouse." But the negative assumption that somehow the Royals will inevitably collapse pervades the mainstream media - and predjudices their coverage - so I don't blame Vina as much as ESPN itself. Vina is just a hack, a jock in a suit.

Hack of the minute, Fernando Vina.

All in all, it was nice for the Royals to get 4:23 of fame, and I'm sure we'll get more tonight (three in a row!)! It will take some work - but the media will come around to loving the Royals as much as we do (but I'll settle for them just being fair).

Without further ado, judge for yourself what they had to say.