Farewell to a Special Royals Season

The Royals went from 50 games under .500 to the playoffs and that deserves a whole newsletter devoted to praising the 2024 team.

I’ve told this story before, but on October 12, 2015, I took the day off work to watch the Royals try to stay alive in the ALDS against the Astros. They were down two games to one and had Yordano Ventura on the mound against Lance McCullers Jr. The Royals took a 2-0 lead in the top of the second on a Salvador Perez home run, but the Astros scored since runs in the second, third and fifth. When Terrance Gore was caught stealing third in the top of the seventh to end the inning, I logged into Pine Tar Press to write a blog post about the amazing ride the Royals took us on.

While I was writing, the Astros got to Ryan Madson. He gave up back-to-back home runs and by the end of the seventh inning, the Astros led 6-2 with two innings to play. The Astros had the sixth-best bullpen ERA in baseball in 2015. The 2015 Royals could hit and, once they got going, it was almost hard for them to stop. But it was over. I kept writing and writing and writing. I wrote after Alex Rios singled, and after Alcides Escobar did the same. Ben Zobrist singled and I wrote. Lorenzo Cain singled in Rios and I wrote. Eric Hosmer singled and it was 6-4. I finished writing. It was, to this day, the best written blog/article/newsletter I’ve ever written.

The world, of course, never saw it. I finished writing in time to see Kendrys Morales hit a grounder up the middle that got through the infield to score the tying run. I can still hear Matt Vasgersian scream “past Correa!” randomly throughout my days. When Alex Gordon hit that grounder to the right side to score Hosmer, I knew that they were going to win the series. When Hosmer hit the bomb in the ninth to add some cushion, I knew they were going to win the World Series. I deleted the blog post I wrote that night because I knew it would never see the light of day.

I’ve now spent the first three paragraphs of a newsletter about the 2024 Royals telling you about the 2015 Royals and their story. And I tell you all this because I wish I could delete this one too and have it never see the light of day. But as much as we in Kansas City don’t really understand losing in the postseason anymore, this one is seeing the light of day. And while that’s a huge bummer, I don’t wax poetic about seasons that don’t mean anything. I guess that’s a way of rephrasing the phrase that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.