The Royals Radio Network is comprised of over eighty affiliates and stretches across seven states. In this recurring series (previous features listed below at the bottom of the page) Royals Review attempts to give each affiliate its proper airing, celebrating the regional reach and heritage of Royals baseball.

Ava, Missouri

Population: 3,021

Miles from Kansas City: 227

Located in south-central Missouri, the proud Royals Radio Network Affiliate of Ava certainly brings a back country, hill country feel to the confederacy of sometimes Royals fans found across the network. No staid midwestern berg here. No, in fact, Ava might be the most stereotypically Ozarkian town in the newtork, if not all of Missouri.

To begin, the very name of the town speaks to the tired cliche of hilltopper ignorance. Ava, it seems, was originally known as Militia Springs. (An oddly evocative name, to be sure... part sylvan, part martial, all Civil War Era Missouri.) Supposedly, the new name of Ava was adopted because the residents of the town could not spell Militia Springs correctly. Thus, A-V-A was attractive. Nevertheless, I'd rather have my hometown named in this way than the alternative, seen endlessly between the Mississippi and the Missouri, of "the town was named for ____ G. ____, a railroad executive." Right or wrong, accurate or not, when you change your town's name to make it easier to spell, you're opening yourself up to a joke or two.

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The Royals Radio Network is comprised of over eighty affiliates and stretches across seven states. In this recurring series (previous features listed below at the bottom of the page) Royals Review attempts to give each affiliate its proper airing, celebrating the regional reach and heritage of Royals baseball.

Salina KS

Population: 45,679

Miles from Kansas City: 175

Although I have not officially ever lived in Salina, I have spent a considerable amount of time there. My wife spent her high school years in Salina and her parents still live in town. My brother lived there a few years including a few days in the local jail. Heck, I was even married there and that seems to be going good some 7 years and 2 kids later. Hope you enjoy my take of the town

Salina (pronounced Sah-line-ah) is the county seat of Saline County. It was founded in 1856 where the Saline and Smoky Hills Rivers come together. It was the western most outpost on the Pike Peaks trail for a time. Today it is more known for being at the intersection of I-70 and I-135.

An Army airfield was located there in WWII and was expanded in the 50's to become Schilling Air Force Base. The base was eventually closed in 1965. At one time, it had one of the longest runways in the country at 12,300 ft and was recently airfield used by Steve Fossett when he became the first person to circumnavigate the world solo without being refueled.

The main economy is manufacturing with Tony's Pizza, Schwan Food, Phillips Lighting, Exide Battery, Great Plains manufacturing and El Dorado National all located in Salina . Agriculture also has a strong presence as with most Kansas towns.

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The Royals Radio Network is comprised of over eighty affiliates and stretches across seven states. In this recurring series (previous features listed below at the bottom of the page) Royals Review attempts to give each affiliate its proper airing, celebrating the regional reach and heritage of Royals baseball.

Fordyce, Arkansas

Population: 4,799

Miles from Kansas City: 490

Fordyce, the county seat of Dallas County, is the southernmost affiliate in the Royals Radio Network. Don't believe the incredibly inaccurate map on the Royals' website, Fordyce is in southern Arkansas. About 80 miles south of Little Rock, Fordyce is closer to both Dallas (312 miles) and Houston (386 miles) than she is to Kansas City, the home of our Royals. Fordyce is over a thousand miles south of the latitude of Belle Fourche, South Dakota, the northernmost affiliate.

Fordyce was named in 1882 for, get this... a railroad executive. That is noteworthy. I've never heard of a small town west of the Mississippi being named in such a way. Fordyce's population peaked around 1980, when it was over 5,000, but like the rest of Dallas County, Fordyce has been declining in population for the last twenty years.

Arkansas is typically considered a Cardinals state, and St. Louis has fourteen affiliates there. Perhaps because of their connection to Wal-Mart, the Royals have been trying to expand their presence in Arkansas for a number of years now, with mixed success. In 2008, the Royals moved their AA club from Wichita, Kansas, to Springdale, Arkansas. In some ways this was just your typical follow-the-stadium-money cash grab. However, at least symbolically, it was another sign of the Royals' efforts at a southern strategy. Currently, there are six or seven (depending on how you parse it) radio affiliates in the state. By comparison, in the glory days of the Network, the early 1980s, the Royals had only one affiliate in the Gem State.

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The Royals Radio Network is comprised of over eighty affiliates and stretches across seven states. In this recurring series (previous features listed below at the bottom of the page) Royals Review attempts to give each affiliate its proper airing, celebrating the regional reach and heritage of Royals baseball.

McCook, Nebraska

Miles from Kansas City: 418

Population: 8.000

Nebraska is part of the Royals true homeland. Though its rather unfortunately empty -- Nebraska's population of just 1.7 million is significantly small, even by the modest standards of its region -- there are probably still more Royals fans in Nebraska than anywhere else in the United States, save for the obvious duo of Kansas & Missouri. Aside the inevitable and unfortunate disease of Cub-fandom in Nebraska, the Royals are clearly the team in the Cornhusker State, to a greater extent anywhere outside of Kansas. As such, Nebraska doesn't make for an especially passionate part of the fanbase, but it certainly is a reliable one, which perhaps is also a somewhat lazy analog for the state as a whole. Thanks to Nebraska, we can say with certainty that the Royals truly have a regional fanbase, and for that, at least one Royals fan is thankful.

An affiliate of large importance in Nebraska is McCook [1300 KBRL-AM]. The Royals only have nine radio affiliates spread out across Nebraska, and thanks to a decline in the number of affiliates since the team's glory days, McCook is now the western most outpost in the state, and one of the furthest west in the entire network. McCook is closer to Denver (270 miles) than it is to either Omaha (284) or Kansas City (418 miles), obviously. Essentially halfway between highways 80 & 70, it's also somewhat isolated. Though it's an obscure rite of passage for many Americans to make a cross-country drive at some point, most who pass through Nebraska will only marvel at places such as North Platte or Grand Island, missing McCook forever. McCook is only sixteen miles north of the Kansas border.

McCook is a large town by Nebraska standards, given that 89% of the cities there have fewer than 3,000 people. With a population of roughly 8,000 people, McCook is the 21st largest city in the state, just behind fellow Radio Affiliate, York. McCook is also the county seat and largest city in Red Willow County, the 24st largest in the state. The Red Willow County prefix is 48, so if you pull up behind some hottie with Nebraska plates and a random 48 somewhere in there, she's likely from McCook. The county prefix is such because in 1922 it had the 48th most registered vehicles in the state. No, really. This is the reason. Sarpy County, now the 3rd most populous county in the state, has a prefix of 59.

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The Royals Radio Network is comprised of over eighty affiliates and stretches across seven states. In this recurring series (previous features listed below at the bottom of the page) Royals Review attempts to give each affiliate its proper airing, celebrating the regional reach and heritage of Royals baseball.

Monett, Missouri [990 KRMO-AM]

Population: 7,396

Miles from Kansas City: 184

Located 184 miles to the south of Kansas City lies Monett, Missouri. Monett (mow-net locally) straddles the line dividing Barry and Lawrence counties in far-southern Missouri. Most of Monett is in Barry, the more southern of the counties, where the city is also the largest in the county. Monett is sometimes described as an "Ozark Town" and in the most general sense, it is. However, the town itself is north of any real ridges, hills, or mountains, and looks like it could be anywhere else in Missouri. Large tracts of the Mark Twain National Forest lie not far from town however. Beyond these natural proximities, Monett is just a Miguel Olivo passed ball from either Joplin to the west or Springfield to the east.

As discussed before on this site, despite being much more of a local team, the Royals tend to play second fiddle to the Cardinals in the greater Joplin-Springfield region. However, the Royals do seem to be making a concerted effort to raise their profile in northwestern Arkansas, so perhaps some of that powder blue pride will seep back into southern Missouri. It isn't 1960 anymore and there remains no real reason for the Cardinals to so thoroughly dominate the I-44 corridor the way that they do. What we can do to help is to start making pamphlets describing Willie Bloomquist, pool our resources, and coordinate propaganda air drops in the region.

Late into the 19th century Monett was known as both Plymouth and Gonten, though as far as I can tell, the name Monett stuck when the railroad came through the town in 1887, and it isn't too much of an assumption to guess that the railroad also played a large role in renaming the town.

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The Royals Radio Network is comprised of over eighty affiliates and stretches across seven states. In this recurring series (previous features listed below at the bottom of the page) Royals Review attempts to give each affiliate its proper airing, celebrating the regional reach and heritage of Royals baseball.

Iola, Kansas

Population: 5,966

Miles from Kansas City: 103

Kansas is the heart of the Royals Radio Network, with more affiliates than any other state. Better still, unlike many of the far-flung affiliates in Iowa, Oklahoma or even, sigh, Missouri, in Kansas, the Royals are the team. If you're a baseball fan in Kansas, you're probably a Royals fan.

Iola, Kansas lies two hours south of Kansas City in southeastern Kansas. Long the bitter rival of the nearby town of Humboldt, Iola is the county seat of Allen County and the county's largest city. Thanks in part to Iola's population, Allen County is the 33rd most populous of Kansas's 105 counties, with 14,300 residents. In 1910, the country was nearly twice as populous, with over 27,000 residents. Nobody knows where the vanishing midwesterners went to, though it is surmised that they sailed westward, perhaps with the help of Celtic monks, to a land beyond the sunset. John McCain won Allen County last fall with 61% of the vote.

Contrary to popular belief, Iola was not named after Iola Boyland, the beloved neighbor on the classic sitcom Mama's Family. Instead, Iola was the wife of one of the town founders, and the residents of the city supposedly chose her name as the city's in a vote. Because there's nothing that is more appealing to a pioneer than honoring a rich guy's wife. They love that. Really.

Iola's founding is generally dated in 1859, making 2009 the town's Sesquicentennial Year. Celebratory events began this last weekend, with the marking of Dandelion Day at the Gazebo on the Town Square. Various events are planned throughout the summer, including a Beard Growing Contest beginning in August. For a number of historical photographs of Iola, click here

In 1951, along with a number of cities in Kansas and Missouri, Iola was hit with a major flood, one of the worst of the 20th century. The Neosho River overran its banks, spilling into downtown Iola.

Iola claims to have the largest downtown square west of the Mississippi. This is interesting because I actually grew up in a small town, also west of that river, which claimed to have the largest square IN THE COUNTRY. The internet isn't large enough for these two.

 Everything's bigger in Iola.

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The Royals Radio Network is comprised of over eighty affiliates and stretches across seven states. In this recurring series (previous features listed below at the bottom of the page) Royals Review attempts to give each affiliate its proper airing, celebrating the regional reach and heritage of Royals baseball. Baseball on the radio is a decidedly low-stakes, low-tech venture. Let it always lay hidden like a strength in the backyards of the mind.

Hastings, Nebraska

Population: 24,064

Miles from Kansas City: 280

Two hundred and eighty miles north of Kansas City lies Hastings, a proud Royals Radio affiliate in central Nebraska and one of the most colorful cities in the Cornhusker State. How colorful you ask? It stands out like a big glass bowl of bright blue Kool-Aid on a white cotton table cloth. The home of Tom Osborne and the original Kool-Aide man, Hastings is one of a handful of outlying Nebraska affiliates that may remain loyal to the Royals long after the Omaha-Lincoln corridor secumbs to all things Cub.

The county seat of Adams County (pop. 31,151, 11th largest in the state) Hastings was founded in 1872 and named for Thomas Hastings, a railroad contractor. If you ever want to have a town named after you, I suggest that you build a time machine, go back to about 1850, and start working for a railroad. I can't guarantee what state your town will end up in, but rest assured, it will happen. Just down the road, fellow Royals Radio Network Affiliate Holdrege, Ne, was named just the same way. Anyway, Hastings quickly grew as a railroad town, and also recieved some residual benefit from being close to the old Oregon Trail route. Today, four Fortune 500 Companies have offices in Hastings.

Downtown Hastings, done up for Arbor Day I believe. I see a tree, and it is Nebraska.

Continue reading this post »

The Royals Radio Network is comprised of over eighty affiliates and stretches across seven states. In this recurring series (previous features listed below at the bottom of the page) Royals Review attempts to give each affiliate its proper airing, celebrating the regional reach and heritage of Royals baseball. In an era defined by the endless quest for the big money, baseball on the radio is a decidedly low-stakes, low-tech venture. Let it always lay hidden like a strength in the backyards of the mind.

St. Joseph, Missouri- 680 KREQ-AM

Miles from Kansas City: 55

St. Joseph, about an hour's drive north of Kansas City on the mighty Missouri, is not surprisingly one of the Royals' strongest radio affiliates not directly in the Kansas City metro area. Then again, considering St. Joe is barely farther from KCI than many parts of Kansas City... With a population of around 73,000 (metro area ~123,000) St. Joe is a crucial affiliate in the quiet corner of northwestern Missouri, which unlike the treacherous environs of the southwest (I'm looking squarely at you Joplin and Springfield) has remained, more or less, Royal blue. In fact, a large number of this own site's regular readers are from St. Joe, which makes me somewhat nervous to be writing about it.

In earlier installments of this series I've tried to talk about the unique character of small cities like Enid, Oklahoma. St. Joe, though larger than Enid, certainly fits that profile. Unfortunately, I have never been to St. Joe, and am not a huge fan of northern Missouri generally (see, Trenton), so I sincerely invite you to comment with your impressions of St. Joe's general vibe.

Founded in 1843, like a number of Royals Radio Affiliates, St. Joseph's population peaked long ago, in this case around 1900, when she topped 100,000. By 1910 however, the population was down to 77,000 (what the hell happened?), a figure that St. Joe has hovered around for the last hundred years. In particular, both the 1970s and 1990s saw the city lose substantial chunks of population, canceling out the modest gains made earlier.

As even wikipedia will tell you, the two major talking points of St. Joseph's early history are 1) the town's status as an end-point on the Pony Express and 2) the demise of Jesse James, who was killed in town in 1882. Oddly enough, Betty Dorsett Duke, of Trey Hillman's pseudo-hometown of Liberty Hill, Texas, claims that Jesse James actually lived and died in Texas. This, however, is sorta a Texas thing, as the town of Hico, Texas, has long claimed that Billy the Kid also lived and then died there as well.

As for the Pony Express angle, St. Joe boasts the Pony Express Museum, which was renovated in 1993, which may have also been the last year the Royals were a legitimately good baseball team. The Pony Express Museum not only offers group tours and a wealth of P.E. history, but also a Community Room available for public use. If I was going to marry a St. Joe girl, I'd like to have the wedding reception right there. Although, since the Pony Express only lasted like two years, maybe that would be bad luck. Or maybe good luck, depending on the girl. Or me.

While Springfield, in many ways a similar "out-state city" has continued to experience occasional periods of growth, this has not been the case with St. Joe, which in the 1990s actually grew at a lower rate than Joplin, Cape Girardeau, Columbia or Springfield. According to  Lawrence H. Larsen in A History of Missouri, Vol. 6. (link) it has been shifts in the agribusiness market which have hurt St. Joe. Still, according to the Chamber of Commerce, the getting should be good,

St. Joseph's favorable tax structure translates directly into industry profitability, and the City of St. Joseph and Buchanan County provide a pro-business environment with attractive tax rates and competitive incentives for growing companies. Undoubtedly one of the city’s most valuable resources is the people. St. Joseph workers have a reputation for hard work, high productivity and low absenteeism and turnover.

You know which city's workers have a reputation of lazy work and non-stop absenteeism? Well do I even have to say it? Actually, I think somewhere in Northern Ireland is the worst. You thought I was setting up a Joplin joke there, didn't you?

For more relevant stats on St. Joe and how it compares to other U.S. Cities, the CNN/Money breakdown is useful. (Can a local let us know how St. Joe has low air-quality?)

St. Joe's largest local employer is the hospital, but the downtown skyline is dominated by the Hillyard Building, as seen above. Hillyard Industries - The Cleaning Resource, founded in St. Joseph in 1907, still produces a variety of cleaning supplies, offers management seminars at Hillyard University and now offers a variety of green cleaning products. Can disinfectants really be green you ask? Yes, yes they can.  (Buchanan County, by the way, was one of nine Missouri counties that went for Obama in November, by a slim 47 vote margin.)

For a thoughtful account of St. Joseph, as well as a number of nice photographs, click here. By way of warning, I should say that the author sees similarities to St. Louis,

"St. Jo has many familiar faces: the old industrial section next to the river, the (now) flooding waterfront park, the old warehouse area, the nearly vacant downtown, the "it will save downtown" arena, parking garage and hotel combination, numerous older residential areas, new suburban homes and auto-centric chain shopping areas with mid to big boxes."

They never said St. Joe wasn't clean.

St. Joseph is in an interesting position media-wise, large enough to have a local ABC Television Affiliate, a strong daily paper with good Royals coverage from R.J. Cooper, but perhaps a little too close to Kansas City to extend beyond that. St. Joe is roughly the 179th largest television market in the United States. As a reference point, here are the others in Missouri: St. Louis (20th), K.C. (27th), Springfield (130th) (74th), Jefferson City (131st), Joplin (156th). In addition to, of course, the radio, St. Joe also has its own CW & TBN affiliates and St. Joe Now, a cable channel.

Missouri Western State University has called St. Joseph home since 1915, and is home to 5,300 undergraduate students. M.W.S.U. offers over 90 majors. One of my favorite campus clubs is the Alchemist Club, though they seem more interested in networking than in finding the Philosopher's Stone. The odds are, the Matrix Club has already found it. M.W.S.U. is represented on the fields of sport by the Griffins, and those Griffins are supported by a full complement of dance (the Mystics) and cheer teams.

The 2007 MWSU Mystics listened to the Royals CONSTANTLY on 680 AM. Never moreso than on their trip to St. Louis, pictured here. When they left KFEQ's signal area, the girl in the pink doing the hand signs pulled out a printed list of radio affiliates and helped the bus driver find the best station to find Denny.
 

A number of Major League baseball players have been born in St. Joseph. Byron Browne is probably the most successful of these five or six players, appearing in 349 games as an outfielder from 1965-72. A career 99 OPS+ hitter, Browne was an alum of MWSU and led the National League in strikeouts with 143 in 1966. However, hardcore Royals fans may remember Jim Wright (stats) a right-handed pitcher who appeared in 24 games with the Royals in 1981 & 1982. Mostly a reliever, Wright's 4.04 ERA was just a tick above the 3.74 league average. After the 1982 season, Wright was traded to the Cubs for Mike King, and it appears that neither player appeared in the Majors ever again (actually, King never had). Sadly, a number of former players have also died in St. Joe. For whatever reason, they have almost all been obscure old-time players like Bill Bishop (appeared in two games in 1920), Oad Swigart and Frosty Thomas (two games played, in 1905).

Other than Jesse James and ex-Royal Jim Wright, St. Joe's most famous son is Walter Cronkite, born in St. Joe in 1916 (its the same old thing, since 1916, in your head, in your head...). Beyond Cronkite (still with us, which is cool) the city can claim a truly impressive musical fatherhood. Steve Walsh of Kansas grew up in St. Joe, as did Eminem, aka Marshal Mathers, who was born in St. Joe as part of a nomadic childhood. In 2003, a parade for Eminem was held in St. Joe, although the rapper did not attend. Aspiring R&B star Kelli Pyle (relationship to Howard unknown) is also a child of the Joe.

I'm gonna rent myself a house, in the shade of the freeway...

Unlike, sadly perhaps, the majority of Royals Radio Affiliates, the boys in blue & white are the undisputed first team in St. Joe. Located north, rather than east of KC, there's a nice, though far from unimpeachable boundary from Cardinal Nation (they have a radio affiliate in St. Joe as well) and the city is more than close enough for an easy day-trip down to the K for a game. Despite a number of alternating down-decades followed by mini-periods of stability, according to some, the future of St. Joe looks bright. May her fortunes, along with those of the Royals, continue to rise.

Previous Affiliate Profiles:

York, Nebraska
Conway, Arkansas
Waynesville, Missouri
Topeka, Kansas
Storm Lake, Iowa
Vinita, Oklahoma
California, Missouri
Garden City, Kansas
Belle Fourche, South Dakota
Ulysses, Kansas
Trenton, Missouri
Fairbury, Nebraska
Nebraska City, Nebraska
Winfield, Kansas
Mount Pleasant, Iowa
Butler, Missouri
Enid, Oklahoma
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Bolivar, Missouri
Holdrege, Nebraska
Shenandoah, Iowa