With the stink of the last two games still freshly in the air, and the team (in my warped mind, anyway) barreling towards a 100-loss epic failure of a season, I'm curious as to what some of the story lines will be when our local nine are 24-58 at the All-Star break and our venerable burg hosts the world for this year's All-Star game?

Story Line 1 - How much profit are the Glasses' pocketing while running the team on the cheap and throwing up yet another losing season? Does this increase the calls for contraction of the Royals and A's, two teams who obviously can't compete in this environment, and now with the changes in the draft, will probably never compete?

Story Line 2 - How long before Ned Yost is on the hot seat, if he isn't already?

Story Line 3 - How big of a mistake was it to give this year's game to KC instead of Boston, who is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Fenway this year?

Story Line 4 - When was the last time the host city had NOBODY on their team that was worthy of an All-Star selection? Now that our token "decent" player Joakim Soria is out for the year, what schlub do the Royals trot out their as their lone All-Star, and how much worse will s/he be than Mark Redman? Will s/he get into the game, despite being by far the worst player in either dugout?

Story Line 5 - "Our Time"...biggest marketing fail in this century thus far, or biggest marketing fail in history?

Story Line 6 - Is this the worst All-Star game for a host city ever? Will this be the first time ever that the ASG isn't a sellout?

Story Line 7 - When does Chiefs season start? Oh wait, they're just as big of a laughingstock as the baseball team.