Things That Happened During the Royals TV Broadcast Thursday Night

It’s been a rough couple of weeks as a Royals fan. They can’t hit the ball. They can’t get on base. They can’t score runs. Starters are losing strong starts. Alex Gordon seems to be about the only player who’s awake with a bat in his hands.

And the issues seem to be spreading to the Fox Sports Kansas City TV broadcasts.

It started by a really embarrassing mistake by the graphics department. Every night, the broadcasters ask a question – it’s the Sprint You Call It question – and with Mike Trout in town, they included him as part of it, asking which young player you’d rather have on your team to start a franchise. The other options were Manny Machado, Matt Jones and Bryce Hunter.

Wait? Who?

Let’s count the mistakes:

• Bryce Hunter instead of Bryce Harper
• Matt Jones instead of Matt Harvey
• Harper listed as a Detroit Tiger
• Harvey listed as a Baltimore Oriole
• Machado as a Chicago White Sox
• Trout as a New York Yankee

Is that it? I think that’s it. But then Deadspin went and found even more detailed mistakes.

Later on, the crawl at the bottom was keeping us all up to date, scrolling recent transactions, call ups, and scores when the alert about the Royals latest transaction popped up.

Luis Coleman. That was pretty close.

Then Joel Goldberg discussed Billy Buckner, former Royals draft pick, and how he was drafted in the same year as Billy Butler then reminded us that the Royals had a pitcher named Bill Butler and used to have Bill Buckner on the team in 1988 and 1989.

Steve Physioc cited both FanGraphs and Thomas Paine.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, after Ervin Santana had given up his fourth homer of the game, a fan ran onto the field, stole the rosin bag from the pitcher’s mound, then got tackled. (The video is from the Angels broadcast, since the Royals won’t let such shenanigans get TV time.)

And finally, the Royals lost 5-4. So, you know, just a completely typical broadcast.