At the start of the 2013 baseball season it will have been 28 years since the Royals last played in the playoffs. During the 1985 season I was 11 years old. If you had told me then that a team had not made the playoffs since 1957, 28 years before then, you might as well have told me it hadn't happened since the Teapot Dome Scandal or since Julius Caesar was the Roman Emperor.

There are 11 year old kids today that think the same way. To them, the idea of the Royals playing in the playoffs is a legend of the distant past that has no relation to today's world. You might as well tell them that the Royals haven't made the playoffs since JFK was assassinated or since the Battle of Tours.

28 years from today will be 2040. By then we have been promised flying cars and robotic servants. Will the Royals have made the playoffs yet?

In fact, if light years can be a measure of distance, perhaps RPA (Royals Playoff Appearance) can be a measure of time. For example, it has been 3 RPAs since Stalin exiled Trotsky to Kazakhstan. It has been 7 RPAs since Rossini's opera Barber of Seville premiered. It has only been 14 RPAs since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

So enjoy the next time the Royals make the playoffs. How humans measure the passing of time just might be changed.