2015 ROYALS—A Certain Kind of Fan

September 27, 2015—Indians

It’s the top of the seventh inning and the Royals have 2-0 lead over the Cleveland Indians. Kansas City reliever Ryan Madson is on the mound and the Indians have runners on first and third and one down.

Madson throws Lonnie Chisenhall an 0-1 changeup and it’s not a good one; the pitch stays up in the zone and Chisenhall hits a line drive back to the mound. By some combination of luck, skill and/or self-defense the ball winds up in Madson’s glove.

What Ryan does next sets off a very weird chain of events.

The runner on first base—Michael Brantley—has committed a base-running sin; he did not freeze on a line drive. (Actually, you’re supposed to break back on a line drive, but that’s a different column and we have enough on our plate already.) Instead, Brantley broke for second base and is now about 30 feet from first base.

It appears that the Royals will get an easy double play, but…

They don’t like to talk about it, but some pitchers have trouble making any throw that’s not 60 feet, six inches.

It’s why you see pitchers who catch a come-backer run 87% of the way to first base and then toss the ball underhanded. It’s why infielders run pitchers off pop-ups. It’s why, off-the-record, position players sometimes refer to pitchers as “non-athletes.” They can do that one thing—pitch—but ask them to do anything else and they’re a mess. It’s why a coach once told me anytime things get goofy on the infield “nine-times-out-of-ten it will involve that guy” while pointing at the pitcher’s mound.

Not surprisingly, guys who are on the field all the time are going to play better defense than the guys who are only on the field occasionally.

In this case…

Madson lobs the ball like a poorly-thrown hand grenade and misses everything he’s aiming at. Hosmer’s headed toward first base, but Madson’s throw isn’t. Eric has to dive back and to his right just to keep the ball on the infield.

Hosmer’s lunge knocks the ball down, but it rolls out of his mitt. Eric’s on his hands and knees when he grabs the ball with his bare hand. Hosmer then spins around to a seated position and tags Brantley who’s heading back to first base.

One small problem: Hosmer tags Brantley with his mitt and the ball isn’t in it. The ball’s in Eric’s bare hand.

Meanwhile, the runner on third base—Francisco Lindor—has problems of his own. He also broke forward on the line drive back to the mound, but when Madson catches the ball, Lindor heads back to third base.

Then, seeing Hosmer on the seat of his pants (not a highly recommended throwing position) Francisco breaks for home. Hosmer throws the ball to Salvador Perez, but Lindor beats the throw and is initially ruled safe.

Mike Moustakas then calls for the ball; he wants to appeal the play at third.

Moose is pretty sure Lindor did not tag up before heading home. Mike thinks Francisco scored way too easily for a guy starting 90 feet away from home plate. Salvy throws the ball to Moose; Mike touches the bag and third base umpire Mike Estabrook makes a safe signal—Estabrook has ruled that Lindor tagged up.

Then Ned Yost comes out of the dugout and wants to the umpires to take another look at the play, but it’s the wrong play; Ned wants the umpires to look at the play at first base. After reviewing the play at first base, Brantley is once again called safe.

The Royals have now used and lost their challenge on the play at first base, but Ned then asks for an umpire’s review of the play at third. The umpires agree to Ned’s request.

A review of the play at third base reveals two things:

1. Lindor did not come within 10 feet of tagging third base and…

2. Umpire Mike Estabrook was not doing his job.

Instead of focusing on third base—his area of responsibility—Estabrook is watching what’s happening over at first base.

It’s abundantly clear Estabrook blew the call at third and when the play is shown on the scoreboard, the crowd cheers. Moustakas decides not to wait for the review process to confirm what everyone without cataracts and a seeing-eye dog already knows; Lindor’s out and the inning is over.

Mike exits the field before the review process is complete and the rest of the Royals decide to join him. Umpires do not like to be shown up and what Mike and his teammates are doing is showing up the umpiring crew. By leaving the field they’re saying:

“We don’t need for you to confirm what we already know—you guys blew it.”

The Royals leaving the field appears to make home plate umpire Ed Hickox unhappy and while his associates review the play, Hickox approaches the Royals dugout looking like a guy who’s looking for a player to eject from the game.

That’s when Eric Hosmer steps up and once again shows some leadership.

Like it or not, star power counts for something in the game of baseball. Ask around and you’ll hear it’s harder than it should be to get a called strike three on Miguel Cabrera when a game is played in Detroit. You might hear also how certain star pitchers get a more generous strike zone. But some of those star players are reluctant to get sideways with the umpires; they want to stay on their good side and continue to get calls that personally benefit them.

MLB frowns on umpires ejecting the star players fans bought tickets to see.

When Ed Hickox approaches the Royals dugout, Hosmer—now a certified star player—steps up and confronts him. Hosmer holds up his hand like a cop stopping traffic and, if my lip-reading skills are any good, says:

“Wait! Relax!”

Hickox probably wouldn’t have listened if Christian Colon tried the same thing. Hosmer has stepped between a pissed-off umpire and his teammates and tries to defuse the situation—and that’s what real team leaders do.

It’s a small moment, but if you understand what you’re seeing, it matters.

And by the way; the Royals go on to win the game 3-0.

September 28, 2015—Cubs

The Royals are making up a rainout game with the Chicago Cubs. The day before Royals pitcher Chris Young pitched five innings of no-hit baseball and won his 11^th ballgame. I’m pretty sure most Royals fans thought that was a marvelous pitching performance.

But on this night Cubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks pitches six innings of two-hit baseball and if social media is any indication—and let’s pray to God it isn’t—Royals fans think it’s a lousy hitting performance.

So when a Royals pitcher does well that’s good pitching, but when an opposition pitcher does well that’s lousy hitting.

It’s simple if you don’t think about it.

September 30, 2015—White Sox

In the eighth inning the Royals have a 3-2 lead over the Chicago White Sox when Kelvin Herrera throws Tyler Flowers a 100-MPH fastball. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much right down the middle of the plate.

But since the pitch is traveling 100-MPH, Flowers doesn’t get around on the ball; the right-handed Flowers hits the ball to right field and it goes over Paulo Orlando’s head, which is not totally surprising because the Royals tend to position they’re outfielders shallow.

As outfield coach Rusty Kuntz once told me: “We position our outfielders for the good pitch, not the bad one.”

Mediocre outfielders like to play deep because it’s easier to come forward than run back. So they come to Kauffman Stadium’s huge outfield and back up—you need binoculars to see them. We see a pitcher dinked and doinked to death with flares and Texas Leaguers and blame the pitcher, not the outfielders.

In Rusty’s mind, if a ball is hit over an outfielder’s head that’s on the pitcher; if a flare drops in front of an outfielder that’s on the outfielder.

This ball is definitely hit over Paulo Orlando’s head.

Orlando turns to his right and starts racing back toward the right-field fence. As he reaches the warning track, the ball drifts back toward the right field foul pole; now it’s over Orlando’s left shoulder and he has to get his body turned to make the catch.

But that puts him in an awkward backpedal. Paulo can’t get turned in time, the ball hits the warning track and bounces over the fence for a ground rule-double—that allows the tying run to score.

Social media lights up immediately:

“The collapse is unreal.”

“They are falling apart.”

“Total Timmy Lupus move out there.”

“This effing team...”

“Our defensive replacement can’t play defense.”

“Meltdown.”

“This team is just lost!”

“This season can't get over soon enough.”

“Yosted.”

And these negative comments were posted right after the Royals had won a division championship.

A 2025 Update:

When I started this serialized-book-on-line-apparently-I’ve-got-nothing-better-to-do project, I said I was going to remind you of some things you’d probably forgotten, but I forgot some things too. Reading my old game stories I’d forgotten how negative some fans were during a championship season.

When we think back, it seems all positive: a great team and the fans that adored them.

But that’s not completely accurate.

After covering baseball for ten years, I’ve come to believe there’s a certain kind of fan who likes to think he and/or she (women can be assholes, too—just ask Samson) is smarter than their team’s GM, the manager, the coaches and the players. They actually prefer it when they’re team loses: it proves they were right.

“See? I told you they sucked.”

A team that’s winning fucks up their narrative and they’ll look for any chance to be negative and Orlando’s misplay provides one.

A certain kind of fan wants Dayton to be clueless and Ned to make managing mistakes and players to misplay fly balls because it makes them feel better about themselves. Then they can stand at the water cooler (assuming they still go into an office and their office has one) and pontificate about last night’s screw up or tell people watching the game with them how dumb their team is and if it’s any consolation to the rest of us, those fans are punished by a lifetime of walking around being themselves.

It’s gotta suck to go through Life constantly looking for the negative and I’d write more about this except I need to stop writing and start reading so I can once again find something shitty to say about Donald Trump.

BTW: Despite the Timmy Lupus play in right field, the Royals come back and win in extra innings.

To some degree, resting players and tinkering with the lineup has cost them; September is the only month in which they put up a losing record. But they head into October with 91 wins, 67 losses—and a team that’s gotten some rest.