More photos » by Charlie Riedel - AP

This is better than any award. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

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Dear Zack,

Thank you for an amazing 2009.

We know that if there's any athlete out there who may actually not care about the big fancy baseball awards, it's you. Still, just in case something insanely stupid happens and you don't win the Cy Young, we'd just like to say now that your 2009 season was one of the coolest things we've seen in a long time. Your starts were something we planned our life around and watching you perform brought out a side of us that many of us didn't know we had as fans. You made baseball incredibly fun. You made us proud to cheer for this team. Maybe you saw us making stupid signs. Hopefully you heard us cheer at least once or twice.

It's crazy that you've been a Royal since 2004. Has it been that long? Man, you still seem like a kid. A lot of us feel like we've gotten to know you a little bit over these last five years, which you would probably consider fairly idiotic, but it is the truth. You seem like one of us, which is crazy because well... you're Zack Greinke.

Honestly, we all really want you to win this silly thing. We really really do. Seriously though, it doesn't even matter. (Though if you don't, something, somewhere, is going to burn.) The Cy Young Award isn't big enough, isn't prestigious enough, to accurately describe what you did in 2009. Two people win the Cy every year after all. Two people don't do what you just did every season, however.

So thanks, man. Like, really. We mean it. This is getting too long... we'd give you an awkward bro hug if we could.

Sincerely,

Fans of the Kansas City Royals

The Royals have had one of the easiest to define historical archs of any Major League baseball team. While nearly every team has its wide swaths of good and bad years, the Royals are an especially extreme case. From expansion birth through the late 1980s, the Royals were consistently very good and considered to be one of baseball's model franchises. After a short period of mediocrity, the bottom fell out by the mid-1990s and the Royals have never made it back. Good, then bad. That's basically the franchise history. The team hasn't even had a "near-miss" season, really, since the 1980s.

As such, there's a stark generational divide amongst Royals fans when it comes to their experiences. The scary thing is this: now we're into the second generation of Royal rooters who have never seen a truly good team.

Let's work our way from past to present.

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• Twins Acquire Ron Mahay: Analysis & Fallout - Twinkie Town

It's all over. Signed to a two year, $4 million dollar deal in December of 2007, Ron Mahay was a product of the happy times. The days when we all thought "Dayton knows pitching, Dayton knows bullpens". A few people were even happy that Glass was now willing to spend eight million dollars on Baby Boomer relievers. That's all over.

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In December of 2005, Allard Baird signed Mark Grudzielanek to a one-year, $4 million dollar contract, with a player option for 2007. Grudzielanek's arrival was announced the same morning that Allard's other treasures -- Doug Mientkiewicz, Paul Bako and Scott Elarton were announced -- producing surely one of the lamest mass free agency sprees of all time. And yes, four years later, I more or less now know how to spell each guy's name.

Grudz's player option for 2007 ($3 million) was set to vest after 500 2006 PAs, which he ended up easily reaching. Of course, win-now Dayton Moore took over during the 2006 season, and rather than trading Grudzielanek, instead tore up his existing contract, gave him a raise for 2007 ($4 million) and threw in an option for 2008. Instead of spending one season, or less, with Kansas City, he spent three.

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More photos » by Charles Rex Arbogast - AP

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While Royals fans are understandably upset that Zack Greinke won't be starting tonight's All-Star Game, he's a lock to pitch at least an inning. He's been a story all week, and he's rightly earned a reputation as one of the best pitchers in baseball. He's going to a prominent part of the early stages of tonight's game. This is now something of a minor trend, dare we say. Last year, in the 2008 All-Star game, Joakim Soria faced nine batters in the 11th and 12th innings, playing a huge role in an eventual American League victory.

It hasn't always been like this.

In fact, prior to Soria's appearance, the Royals went two straight games without an actual appearance, and nearly twenty years without a single meaningful contribution to the game.

Amazingly, prior to Soria's appearance, no Royal had pitched in an All-Star game since 1999. The record of position players is even worse: no Royal has recorded a hit in the All-Star game since 1989. Hell, a Royal position player hasn't even appeared in the field since 2002. Since 1990, Royal hitters are 0-8 in the Game.

Since the nineties began, Royal All-Star Game history is a long string of did not plays, random pinch-hitters who didn't even make it onto the field defensively, and a handful of pitching performances, nearly all over ten years ago. (After the jump, you'll find a complete listing of what Royal representatives have done in this Hopeless Era.) For the last two decades, the collective imprint the Royals have left on the All-Star Game is comparable to the impact that Northern Ireland has had on the development of reggae.

In this context, Greinke suddenly starting the game, though in many ways simply a ceremonial honor, would have been truly incredible. Maybe not as incredible as the fact that Mark Redman made the team once, but incredible.

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More photos » by Rob Carr - AP

Ten years ago, Johnny Damon was a Royal, a period similar to Dennis Rodman's Pistons years. (AP Photo/Rob Carr)

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On this date ten years ago, May 12, 1999, the Royals defeated the Blue Jays 7-1, improving to 16-16 on the season.

Kevin Appier pitched a complete game, allowing just one run, on three hits and a walk. Appier had a sneaky near no-hitter that night: the only Blue Jay to get a hit all game was Shawn Green, whose homer produced the only Toronto run. With the win, Appier improved to 4-2 on the year, in what would be one of his final masterpieces as a Royal. On July 31, he would be traded to Oakland for Jeff D'Amico, Brad Rigby and Blake Stein.

Appier got the better of a young Blue Jay pitcher named Chris Carpenter.

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With the Royals and Indians set to clash for the next three days at the K, let us take a moment to remember Chan Perry, who briefly played for both teams in the early days of this decade. Only five players in Major League history have only played for the Indians and Royals and no one else: Billy Harris, Mike Hedlund (the 88th Greatest Royal of All-Time), Steve Mingori (the 62nd Greatest Royal of All-Time), Jason Rakers and Chan Perry.

Chan Everett Perry was born in Live Oak, Florida in 1972. Thirty years later, he would go down in history as one of the proud men who guided the 2002 Royals to a 62-100 record and made a region proud.

Perry was drafted by Cleveland late in the 1994 draft (44th round) and spent six minor league seasons in the Cleveland system, culminating in a two year run at AAA Buffalo.Technically, Chan was a utility man, but the type of utility guy who can't really play an infield position other than first. I'm sure Chan was happy to be part of any organization coming out of Florida, but in retrospect the Indians were a really bad fit for him. Cleveland was absolutely stocked with hitters at the corners, and although Chan was a fairly polished college prospect, it had to have been clear early on that he wasn't going to be a better hitter than Jim Thome or Manny Ramirez, to say nothing of the various free agent bats the Tribe was bringing in in the 1990s (Paul Sorrento, Ellis Burks, Matt Williams, David Justice, etc.). Thus, Perry's best minor league season, a .315/.355/.521 season at AA in 1997 did little for him professionally.

In 2000, as a 27 year old, he hit .296/.336/.434 in AAA and with the clock ticking on his time under the Tribe's control, he was briefly called up in August of that year. Chan appeared in thirteen games, mostly as a late-inning defensive replacement for guys like Manny Ramirez and Chris Selby. In those thirteen games, Chan got fourteen PAs, and hit .071/.071/.071.

Needless to say, Chan's days as an Indian were over. As a minor league free agent he signed on with the Braves -- scouted by Dayton Moore we can only dream -- where he hit .274/.316/.403 at AAA Richmond. It was an uneventful sojourn.

The next off-season however, Chan entered into the storied pages of Royals history, signing with the club as a free agent. According to this obscure Geocities page from seven years ago, dude was raking in Spring Training. Chan hit better in Wichita than he had in Richmond -- .316/.359/.481 -- and put himself on the team's radar thanks to his OK hitting at AA.

Mike Sweeney missed a month in the middle of the 2002 season, which created an opportunity for Perry of sorts. While the Royals used Ibanez at first quite a lot in 2002, Perry, in late July and early August of 2002 snagged three starts at first, and appeared in two other games as a defensive replacement.

Perry's first game as a Royal came on July 25, 2002, against Detroit. Starting at first and hitting sixth, Perry went 0-3, but drove in a run in the sixth with a groundout, scoring Joe Randa. In the bottom of the sixth Perry was lifted for Michael Tucker, who finished the game. The Royals would lose the game 5-2. Five days later, Perry played an inning at first in a blowout loss to the Blue Jays for no apparent reason.

Perry's second start came later in the Toronto series, where he again hit sixth and played at first. Facing Roy Halladay, Perry grounded into a double play in the first inning, but in the second, after Michael Tucker had stolen third (Penaball!) Perry picked up another clutch RBI groundout. Two starts, two RsBI as a Royal. Perry grounded out again the fourth and the sixth, and was lifted for Joe Randa in the eighth inning.

Chan would appear in two more games as a Royal. His final start came on August 4, 2002 against the Twins. Chan went 1-5 with a single, and snagged yet another RBI. It was probably his greatest game as a Royal. No, not probably, definitely. It was not Corey Koskie's favorite Chan Perry game however. In the 10th inning, with Torii Hunter on third, Koskie grounded to Perry at first. When Perry threw home, he nailed Koskie in the chest, send Koskie to the ground in agony as Torriiiiiiiii scored the winning run.

"If the run scores, the game is over, so I had to take a shot.''

In his final game as a Royal, Chan finally got to be part of a Major League victory subbing for Chuckie Knoblauch late in a glorious 10-0 rout of the Devil Yars at the K.

The next day, Mike Sweeney was back, and Chan Perry was gone.

As a Royal, Perry hit .091/.091/.091 in eleven PAs spread out over five games.

Perry was not a part of the 2003 Believe Royals, signing with the Pirates as a minor league free agent in the off-season. Between AA and AAA in 2003, at the age of thirty, Chan hit .282/.327/.398 in what would be his final season in baseball. Though he never returned to the Majors, he played in the 2003 Eastern League All-Star game alongside: Grady Sizemore and Mike Fontenot.

His Major League career amounted to .080/.080/.080 in 18 games and 25 plate appearances. In 4009 Minor League appearances, Chan hit .292/.345/.454.

Chan's older brother Herbert also played at Florida and was also drafted by the Indians. Herbert however, was a second round pick, and eventually played in over 500 Big League games. The Perry brothers were rather lovingly portrayed in George Castle's book Throwbacks: Old-School Baseball Players in Today's Game, which informs that Chan was named after Chan Gailey. He is, most likely, the most accomplished individual in human history to be named after Chan Gailey.

His five games played as a Royal is good for 523rd most in team history, tied with Craig Brazell, Adrian Brown, Enrique Burgos, Alan Hargesheimer and others too grand to mention.

Every year, Jason Rakers and Chan pick one Royals-Tribe series and attend it in person, making a mini-vacaction of it with their familes. They spend the series meeting old friends, telling baseball tales and lies, and dressing their wives in complicated, homemade jerseys that are half Cleveland, half KC. Rakers is more of a Royals fan at this point, while Perry is reportedly still loyal to the Tribe. As mentioned in the third appendix to Joe Posnanski's The Soul of Baseball, they play up their little rivalry just to make things fun, but really, they both just love the game. They see in Royals-Indians baseball a metaphor for how life should be lived; in every Rafael Betancourt appearance, a reaffirmation of man's fallen nature, but also the signs of a loving God and his forgiveness as they take pictures of their kids standing outside Michael Tucker's plaque in the Royals Hall of Fame. Twice, since retiring, Perry has served as Slider, the Indians mascot at children's hospitals in the Cleveland area, each time, with Mike Hedlund's baseball card, bought from a blind man at a garage sale in Overland Park in 2002, tucked inside his shirt pocket.

Actually, none of that last paragraph is true. I made it up. Chan Perry has disapeared into complete obscurity.

I may need to create a "Notes & Queries" section on this site...

I was working on a post discussing the worst catchers in Royals history (this came up in the game thread today) and I discovered that in 1980, someone gave John Wathan a tenth place vote for AL MVP. (George Brett, of course, won the award that year in a landslide.)

Wathan was not a bad player, in fact, he's the 41st best Royal of All-Time, which surely should count for something in this world. It's just that, I can't find a single reason why someone would have thought he was one of the top players in the American League that year.

In 1980 Wathan hit .305/.377/.406, which was a solid year in 1980, but hardly spectacular, given that his OPS+ was just 115 for this line. (Before steroids destroyed our national innocence all games were 2-1 pitchers duels that everyone loved because the game was played the RIGHT WAY!!!) Wathan's batting average and on-base percentage are nice, certainly so for a catcher, and he did have 17 steals, which was his forte as a player.

Still, tenth best in the American League? Let's start with the fact that Wathan only played in 126 games and only caught in 76 games (a huge part of his value). Wathan played a number of games at first and in the outfield corners, where his hitting numbers were much less impactful. Darrell Porter actually logged more innings at catcher for the '80 Royals than Wathan did. I can't speak to his defensive value, but I'll give Wathan the benefit of the doubt and say he was good, he was a good athlete and a fast runner, but he was also a catcher. His somewhat limited playing time and the fact that huge chunks of it did not come at catcher is a huge mark against seriously considering Wathan as a top player in the league. This is especially true given that, unlike today, pitchers were a part of the MVP discussion. Neither Wathan's BA or OBP were in the top 10 in the American League, and his .406 slugging was sixth best on his own team.

In defense of whomever voted for Wathan, his inclusion on someone's ballot may not have even been the weirdest vote that year. The perenially overrated Tony Perez and his .320 OBP snagged 2 points for some reason. Two batting average and nothing else guys -- Mickey Rivers and Miguel Dilone -- enjoyed sizable support. All evidence suggests this was a pretty bad era for baseball awards voting, given that it was the height of the attitudes that guys like Bill James were so annoyed by that they were compelled to start writing about it.

Nevertheless, it was a great year for Wathan, who had an up and down career, both as a player and a manager. Moreover, it was a great year for the Royals and a number of individuals on the team. In addition to Brett's MVP win, Quiz finished 8th in the MVP voting and 5th in the Cy Young. For good measure, somewhat forgotten Royal Larry Gura finished 6th.