Royals lose, but I'll go to my grave remembering Ryan Freel drawing that catcher's interference.
You know what could be fun? Someone finding the blandest, least interesting, most old school MLB writer around and seeing if he wrote a column around 2005 on throwback players or guys who play the right way or somesuch. It might be a good way to see who our next new Royal will be.
The terrifying thing about being a Royals fan is that you have no idea what rock bottom is. You spend two years hating Angel Berroa, so the team gives you Tony Pena Jr.
When the Freel trade went down, everyone went out of their way to say it was a sign of a future trade. Why? Was signing St. Willie in the winter a sign of anything? Was trading for Ross Gload a sign of anything? Dayton passed on the chance to trade Mark Grudzielanek three times. Here on Tony Pena Jr. celebration day, I think we need to stop assuming there's a smart move around the corner.
The decisions we're seeing are getting worse. We began, sometime around the 2007 off-season, at "hmm, not the move I would have made, but I can see the thinking behind it". Then, we had about a year of, "this is a dumb move, the justifications we're seeing are all bad ones" in varying shades. Now, we're at a fully psychotic level. It's not even bad anymore, it's... it's on some level that almost outside any realm of thought. Or, if you find that too frightening, it's as if the leadership team is behaving like an increasingly drunk and vindictive spouse: they thought that was bad, wait til they see this, she was mad at me for checking out the waitress, so now I'm gonna obnoxiously flirt with her too.
There's an arrogance on display in Kansas City. An unfounded arrogance.