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I don’t believe this got a proper front page mention over the last couple of days. Former Royals pitcher Marty Pattin died Wednesday:
Former Kansas City Royals pitcher Marty Pattin, a major league All-Star in 1971 who won 114 games in a career that spanned 13 seasons, died Wednesday at the age of 75. Pattin pitched for the Royals from 1974 to ’80 and also the California Angels, Seattle Pilots, Milwaukee Brewers and Boston Red Sox. He had lived in Lawrence since 1982 when he accepted a job as head baseball coach at the University of Kansas where he led the Jayhawks from ’82 to ’87.
Also in the Star, Alex Gordon “will set the pace at Kansas Speedway for the Hollywood Casino 400”:
The Royals Gold Glove-winning outfielder will drive the pace car for the NASCAR Monster Energy Series race on Oct. 21, keeping the duty in the circle of Kansas City professional athletes.
From the Star’s Sam McDowell, Whit Merrifield claimed Adalberto Mondesi helped him with the stolen base crown:
“Actually, I take that back — since he’s kind of a second leadoff guy right behind me, I started to take more of a gamble, especially with two outs,” Merrifield said. “If I get thrown out, he’s leading off the next inning, which isn’t a bad thing.”
Johnny Damon did the “Letter to my Younger Self” thing in the Player’s Tribune and the Royals are featured prominently:
So of course you’ll just about lose your mind with excitement when the Kansas City Royals pick you in the MLB draft out of high school. It’s hard to imagine anything better than getting the chance to play for your favorite team growing up. It’ll feel like you’ve reached the peak — what could be better?
But Johnny, what you’re going to learn is that losing sucks. And, man, your first five seasons in the majors, you’re going to lose games in some remarkable ways. You’re even going to be part of the first team in baseball history with more blown saves than successful saves. I know that sounds bad, but living through it will be unbearable. Losing suuuuucks. And over the course of five years, even though you’ll develop all of the skills you need to be one of the best players in the game, that constant losing will eat at you.
Lots of the usual suspects don’t have stories for today (I don’t even have my usual referral joke for The Athletic), but on Fansided’s KCKingdom, Leigh Oleszczak has two:
- First, she puts together a slide show (fair warning) of “Former Royals in 2018 postseason”
- She also implores fans to “Vote for Whit Merrifield for Hank Aaron Award”
Speaking of Whit, he was the only one to make Yahoo’s 2018 All-MLB team. He’s on the 3rd team at “UT”:
Two outfielders, two starting pitchers and two relief pitchers were unanimous choices on the Yahoo Sports 2018 All-MLB Team, garnering first-team votes on 60 ballots filled out by players, general managers, front-office officials, scouts, analysts, writers, broadcasters and other major league personnel surveyed.
This may be burying the lede a little but Fancred Sports writer and Scott Boras mouthpiece Jon Heyman buries a couple of interesting nuggets about the Royals in an MLB notes article:
— Ned Yost accepted the offer to stay for one more year, but the strong belief is that it will be his last year. The days of the expensive, 60-plus manager seem to be winding down, though the Royals have more heart than most – and wanted to give Yost the year in seeming appreciation for all he’s done …
— They see Whit Merrifield as a latter-day Pete Rose. Don’t laugh. He led MLB in hits. Terrific player. They have a hard decision whether to offer him an extension this winter.
We’ve reached the offseason so it’s time to revive The Best of Royals Review (TM, patent pending)! For those of you who don’t remember, this is where our distinguished panel (i.e. me) pick a favorite thread from the past and repost it to bulk up lackluster offseason Rumblings take a look at a blast from the past!
Game 1, ALDS: Kansas City Royals at Los Angeles Angels Game Thread
As is tradition, October is for playoff baseball threads. We’ve already used the Wild Card Game (naturally), but how about the first “real” playoff game since 1985: ALDS Game 1. Extra innings, Moose with a huge game-winning hit. This all feels really familiar. There were over 3800 comments that night (3813)! I miss playoff baseball.
FYI, this went 5 overflow threads deep:
- Thread 0 (669 comments)
- Thread 1 (679 comments)
- Thread 2 (601 comments)
- Thread 3 (784 comments)
- Thread 4 (874 comments)
- Thread 5 (206 comments)
In other non-Royals news, the sky is blue, water is wet, and Yankees fans are jerks:
That is a video of a Yankees fan throwing beer at a very sad A’s fan. That poor fan was sad before he got covered in beer, and then got sadder after he was doused. But his immediate reaction was disbelief. Because seriously, unless your goal is to be a massive idiot who gives Yankees fans a bad name, why do that to someone?
Craig Edwards at Fangraphs looks at which players ”need a ring”. I think Lucas Duda is the only former Royal on any of the lists.
Not baseball related, but a funny headline: “Drunk birds are causing havoc in a Minnesota town. Police say they’ll sober up soon.”
It’s long overdue we talk Mega Man in this space. And, while the obvious thing would be to talk about the universally acclaimed Mega Man 2 (and I’m sure we will, at length, some day), I’m going to go a different direction and talk about my favorite: Mega Man 3.
I’ve always liked big and grand, even if it comes up short. For many, Mega Man 2 was the perfect Mega Man game. I liked that Mega Man 3 tried to one up it. Sure, we could talk about the innovations to the series from MM3 like the slide move and the introduction of Mega Man’s brother Proto Man and dog Rush.
But what I liked most of Mega Man 3, aside from its polished (albeit extremely difficult and occasionally maddening) gameplay is that once you finished with the standard bosses, you had to fight through all of the bosses from Mega Man 2, as well. It was like getting two games in one.
As with pretty much the entire series, the music is top notch and picking a favorite level theme is difficult. For some reason, Magnet Man’s level music has always stuck with me to this day and will be our song of the day: