Introducing Recap Coda: a look back at the random games of yore

Since Dayton Moore's first full season as Kansas City Royals General Manager in 2007, the Royals have played 1,620 regular season games. Over that time, they've played a few hundred more spring training games and a few dozen more playoff games, bringing the total close to 2,000 games.

Baseball is a grind, a marathon, a Final Fantasy game, or whatever other term you want to use for long, grueling, and often forgettable experience that may or may not be ultimately rewarding. As such, I can almost guarantee you can't remember what happened in the Royals game on May 15, 2012. Or September 4, 2014. Or even April 18, 2015. You probably can't remember if there was even a game. I don't.

The unfortunate thing is that most baseball games are ultimately forgettable, just as most moments in life are ultimately forgettable.

Dems and republicans have their differences but one thing brings us all together: everyone dies alone & is quickly forgotten
Eat Arbys

— Nihilist Arby's (@nihilist_arbys) July 26, 2016

Some moments you will remember. Like this one!

Walkoffs happen all the time. The Royals have played in 13 games just this year that ended in a walkoff. But it's not every day (in fact, it's zero days) that you score seven runs in the ninth inning to walkoff. Because of that, Eibner's hit will be remembered for a while.

But those other moments? The ones that come and go, just another game in the two thousand from the last decade? A glimpse into the everyday can yield value, too.

In music, a coda is a section of a piece at the end that exists after everything else has happened. It's the finale, and offers the last input about the musical themes that are presented and developed throughout the piece. The coda can only exist if the rest of the piece has already been performed; otherwise, it doesn't really fit.

This series, which will continue throughout the offseason, I will take a look at some games picked at random. We'll take a look at the box score, the scoring and event contours of the game itself, the Royals Review recap from that day, and discuss it with some longer-term perspective given to us by the passage of time.

Marathons are made up of many little moments, and while each moment tells you little about the marathon as a whole, the marathon as a whole, once finished, can gift a fair amount of contextual meaning to the individual moments.

It's a long time until March, friends. Until then, let's reminisce. See you next week.