Royals Rumblings - News for September 25, 2020

Farewell #4.

The last weekend of the season starts with huge news. Future Royal Hall of Famer and future statue model Alex Gordon announced he will retire at the end of the season.

I really hope the team has a fitting celebration for him next year in front of a sold out crowd as we were not able to send him off the way we’d all like.

Alex Gordon gets the Royals section today because there’s so many Alex Gordon stories and memories flooding in from around the Royals

Let’s lead off with Jeffrey Flanagan’s story for MLB.com:

When the statue is made of Royals legend Alex Gordon — and it will be made and placed outside Kauffman Stadium someday — it no doubt will depict him raising his right arm toward the sky as he rounds first base after hitting a game-tying home run in Game 1 of the 2015 World Series. “I think everyone knows what pose fans want,” Gordon said. “But I think it would be kind of funny to have that one where I hit the wall and am knocked out for 10 seconds. That would be a good statue.”

The Star’s main story is big enough to require two bylines: Pete Grathoff and Lynn Worthy.

Gordon, 36, considered retirement last year, but returned to the club on a one-year contract this offseason. This time, the deciding factor was the time he was able to spend at home during the pause in the Major League Baseball season amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It allowed Gordon to spend additional time with his wife Jamie and the couples three kids for the first time in his career. That pull was too strong for Gordon to resist any longer.

Vahe Gregorian talks about the connection between Gordon and Dayton Moore.

“He did what the very best leaders and the most successful people do,” Moore said in the speech. “They take their situation, their circumstances, whatever event that they’re presented with, and they take it as the very best thing to ever happen to them in their life. They take that challenge, that hardship, and they use it to their advantage to shape them and mold them and make them better.”

Sam Mellinger’s story is behind the Star paywall, but here’s a link to it:

Also from the Star:

• Pete Grathoff collects social media sentiments about Gordon’s retirement
• Blair Kerkhoff has reaction from The Chiefs.

Steve Adams at MLB Trade Rumors does a career retrospective:

Long before Gordon was the face of the franchise, however, he was perhaps the poster child for not giving up on a top prospect after early struggles. Gordon spent just one full season in the minors before arriving in the big leagues with outlandishly high expectations in 2007. He put together a pair of solid but unspectacular seasons as the Royals’ third baseman in 2007-08 before a pair of injury-ruined campaigns in 2009-10 caused many to write the once-promising talent off at just 26 years of age. Struggles at third base had prompted the Royals to move Gordon to left field, and his .222/.319/.365 slash line in those two seasons certainly didn’t look like the savior for which Royals fans had pined after more than a decade of mediocrity. That feels like an eternity ago, and it’s entirely due to Gordon’s remarkable mid-20s turnaround.

Rustin Dodd wrote this yesterday for The Athletic but it bear re-linking

Today’s story from The Athletic comes from Alec Lewis:

Dave Skretta got the call for the Associated Press:

Gordon said his immediate plans are to hit the links. He often plays golf with teammates Whit Merrifield and Greg Holland during the season, and the left-handed Gordon wants to finally beat them by this time next year. And, after diligently adhering to a healthy diet, he’s dying for some pizza.

Matt Snyder wrote about it for CBS Sports

Though he’s retiring from playing baseball, Alex Gordon is most certainly Forever Royal. Kudos to him for not only a very good MLB career, but for getting to spend the entirety of said career with his childhood favorite team.

So, yeah, it’s pretty much an all Alex Gordon day for the Royals.

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There’s too much around MLB to just ignore.

The Blue Jays made their first postseason since 2016.

Speaking of which, Rob Manfred said MLB plans to have fans at Globe Life Park in Arlington for the NLCS and World Series.

If the Mets sale is approved, Sandy Alderson will be the team President.

Sports Business Journal is reporting that Turner’s contract with MLB has been extended through 2028.

Those ideas include having TBS move its regular-season game from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday night and expand that regular-season package to a full season from a half season. TBS also picks up a wild-card playoff game, in addition to the two division series and one LCS that it carries every year.

In 2021, The MLB Draft will be in July for the first time ever. There will also be a minimum of 20 rounds.

MLB Pipeline names its All-Rookie Team. Royals Brady Singer and Josh Staumont make the 2nd team.

Finally, in a story we missed earlier this year. Well, I’ll just let the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel tell the story:

The criminal complaint describes how Lambert entered the stadium on June 2 after finding an unlocked door and wandering to the playing field with grounds crew present. He told police he decided to commandeer the tractor because he had never driven one before and wanted to carve his name into the grass with the tires. The tractor didn’t move fast enough for that to happen, but Lambert nevertheless drove across the field while raising and lowering the front bucket, damaging the pitcher’s mound and digging holes elsewhere on the field, according to the complaint.

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Looking back through my game list, I’ve only once talked about the Kirby franchise once. I’m standing by what I said back then:

I was going to type “Somewhere along the way, Kirby became a tech demo franchise for Nintendo” but, actually, he always has been pushing the genre envelope.

The DS’s Kirby Canvas Curse (2005) is an excellent illustration of this.

Nintendo sometimes has trouble getting 3rd parties to make games that take full advantage of their peculiar hardware. For instance, the only really good 3D game for the Nintendo 3DS was Super Mario 3D Land. For the recently discontinued system (RIP) “3D” is clearly in the title and the stereoscopic 3D is really well done. It really is a sight to behold when used well. But no one has really been able to develop for it except Nintendo. Most looks like the cheesiness you get in mediocre 3D movies (Think Avatar vs “Yeah, Thor’s hammer just came at me but that wasn’t worth the extra $5 you’re charging me for the whole movie”).

Few games took advantage of the stylus and double screen for the Nintendo DS like Canvas Curse. Kirby is a rolling ball that you can’t really control so you have to draw lines and change the level around him. It was a brilliant tech demo for what the DS could do and a fun platformer to boot. Poke Kirby to make him dash. Kirby starts getting out of control one way? Draw a little line to stop him or a ramp to make him fly? Still not going to way you want? Draw more! Until you run out of ink. Uh-oh. The top screen is used for a level map, which, well, is a lot more important in a game where you help control the level.

In his review of the game, IGN’s Craig Harris echoed what I mentioned above and talks about a game I hope to do in the next couple of weeks:

The best Kirby games seem to be the ones that don’t follow the traditional design model of the pink puff’s platforming history. Though he started his life out as a run-and-jump hero, it’s when he’s thrust into much more atypical situations where he really struts his stuff. Games like Kirby’s Dream Course and Kirby’s Tilt ‘n Tumble are fantastic examples of successful yet unusual design concepts for HAL Laboratory’s creature.

Chalk Kirby Canvas Curse as another one of these successful departures from the usual Kirby offerings. It’s an outstanding design that captures what the Nintendo DS platform is all about: unique and creative gameplay, and speaks volumes of the potential this system can offer gamers down the line.

Here’s a video showing you can actually completely beat the game in about an hour and a half. I think I put at least 10 hours into it and never beat it: