In Part 2 of my ongoing quest to:  1) distract myself from the grim reality that the Royals' season is beyond repair, and 2)blame others for KC's freefall rather than face the facts that the Royals are not a good team, we check back in with the latest ongoings in international MLB conspiracy news!

Today's episode of "Conspiracy Theory Rock!" brought to you by KCPT-19, Kansas City's Public Television, and contributions from viewers like you.

In our initial installment of "Conspiracy Theory Rock!," it was brought to my attention that when the Royals' season showed the first sign of faltering (the West Coast trip), Kansas City Royals manager Thomas "Trey" Hillman sent an urgent "S.O.S." across the waters of the Pacific back to his beloved Japan, hoping for guidance on how to steer our season back on course.  The good folks of the Nippon-Ham Fighters (well, actually their somewhat perverted mascot "Brisky the Bear")  replied to TreyDaddy with the key to turning around the Royals' season--- he must rid himself of the moustache.  The exact correlation between Trey's moustache and Trey's team winning is still somewhat foggy, but Japanese mathematicians are working on the statistics as we speak. Early word from Japan is that it's nearly a 100% correlation. Nevertheless, this message never made its way to Trey, as FCC employees in Washington DC (with help from Seattle) intercepted the message in the hope that the Royals' season would tank so much that the Nationals would no longer have the worst record in MLB and be the laughingstock of the league.

If you remember, after recovering a copy of the message that was intended for Trey (and having it loosely translated from Japanese to English), Royals fans put their faith in Royals Review's own devil_fingers to hand-deliver the message to Hillman-san. After all, he's been talking for a while about how he had good tickets to go see Zack Greinke pitch against the Toronto Blue Jays at Skydome Rogers Centre. Problem solved, right? Well my friends, things did not go as expected........

As it turns out, someone somewhere sabotaged devil_fingers' ability to deliver the message to Trey! Those scum in Washington DC and Seattle have further-reaching connections than we originally anticipated! Who would have thought they could have 1) tracked down d_f and kept him from delivering the message, and 2) have Greinke's worst performance of the season on the same night? Simply amazing. 

A couple of days ago I was browsing some of the other SB Nation sites when I came across this article from our own d_f on Driveline Mechanics in which he tells the grim tale* of what befell him the evening he was to help save the Royals' season:

 But on Thursday, I decided to do something even more fun -- feel terrible all day, go to a walk-in clinic, then spend about 6 hours sitting around the emergency room, culminating in the joy of a midnight appendectomy. You aren't going to believe this, but we didn't make the game. It's been a heckuva fun weekend.

*First of all, my sincere wishes to a speedy return to good health for d_f. Unfortunately, like the rest of my pseudo-conspiracy theory, this was not completely of my own imagination.

That's right folks....."Sabotage: The Sequel" had its first screening somewhere north of the border, and d_f was its first victim. Since he was unable to attend the game, Mr. Trey Hillman-san surely did not receive his correspondence from Japan, and we've seen what effect it has taken on the team (in rough order of importance): his moustache is still flowing in its full glory, and the Royals still haven't turned things around since that West Coast swing. 

What's even more sickening than the fact that the Royals' fall from grace now has them in last place of the American League Central is a quick look at the entire MLB standings (per Yahoo):

As you can see, our beloved Royals are now sitting with the second-fewest wins in all of baseball, while enjoying the 2nd worst winning percentage in the MLB as well. If the standings were inverted, here's what they would say:

Team                      GB
Washington            ----
Kansas City           8.5
Arizona                    8.5
Baltimore               9.0
Cleveland              9.0
Houston                10.0
Pittsburgh             10.0
Colorado               10.0

Seems to me that those folks in Washington are smiling now more than ever. 

(wipe those grins off of your faces, FCC workers.....your time will come!)

 I've reached out my connections from our very own Food & Drug Administration to Canada's Food Inspection Agency in the hopes of turning up some evidence showing foul play was involved in devil_fingers unfortunate stomach ailments forcing him to miss the Royals/Blue Jays game. All signs point to foul play being involved; it's just a matter of nailing down who is responsible and how the crime was committed. Early speculation involves two possible options: contaminated seafood from the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, perhaps?), and/or unsafe wolf-meat from the Grass Creek, Wyoming area. You can rest assured that no stone will be left unturned in our investigation of this obvious tomfoolery.

, I

In the meantime, our Royals are languishing away in Cleveland, Ohio while Trey's moustache remains in tact.  Unless we have Cleveland connections willing to contact Trey and send him Japan's message, it will be two more days until our Boys in Blue return home and Trey can surely be informed of his facial hair folly as the root of all that ails Kansas City baseball. In a sense, it's the antithesis of Samson's hair (for a biblical reference). When Trey's moustache goes, he will be re-energized with power, knowledge, success and the tools to take our team where it needs to go. 

Until then, a restless fanbase grows sicker by the day (both literally and figuratively), while the conspirators in Washington's FCC offices and Seattle's Grass Creek Headquarters tirelessly plan their next mode of attack. Kansas City struck a quick counter-blow last night by drafting Washington's 2008 First-Round Draft Pick, Aaron Crow. The pitcher is a welcome addition to the Royals organization due to the fact that he despises the Washington Nationals' organization, as well as his lack of a moustache.

The word in some circles is that the Washington/FCC/Seattle conspiracy group initiated their next move against the Royals by infiltrating the Fox Sports Kansas City booth last night upon learning that the Royals drafted noted National-hater Aaron Crow. However, while the conspirators were successful in removing FSN broadcaster Ryan Lefebvre from the broadcast due to "sickness" (and while it also somewhat coincided with the Royals collapse in the game), word from inside the Royals' organization is that Lefebvre is merely a pawn in this game of espionage. Many club officials speaking on the condition of anonymity privately hailed the "bad guys" efforts to wipe out Lefebvre. ESPN's Pedro Gomez (always hot on the trail of controversy) is reporting the following quote from a Royals official:

"We'll gladly sacrifice him. Those clowns thought taking out Ryan would upset us? Ha. I'll trade one loss for Lefebvre any day of the week. In fact, if you ask me, they're doing us a favor. Have you ever listened to that guy?"

So the Royals move forward, with a moustached leader aimlessly directing his team closer and closer to oblivion, a play-by-play guy sidelined, and a resident sabermetrician appendix-less.  Meanwhile, the dark underbelly of the Kansas City Royals fanbase (located somewhere near the stadium in Raytown, I believe) grows larger and larger every day, slowly and meticulously plotting its revenge.............