A-O!

The Royals had three players represent the hometown team, John Mayberry, Cookie Rojas and Amos Otis. Otis received the third most votes among American League players and earned a start. Mayberry filled in as the starting first baseman after Dick Allen was hurt and couldn’t play.

Mayberry was deserving anyhow, with a .300/.439/.539 line and 20 homers and 80 RBI. Otis had a .287/.350/.496 line with 19 homers.

Mayberry ended the first inning with a ground out, but when Otis came up in the second inning, he already had Reggie Jackson on second base after a leadoff double. He singled towards second base and drove in the American League’s only run.

Despite the scoring problems of the AL, Otis and Mayberry did their part. In his second at bat Mayberry walked in the bottom of the third, then doubled to right-center to lead off the bottom of the sixth, but he was stranded there. In his last at bat, he grounded out against Tom Seaver (but hey, he moved Rojas to second after a walk).

Otis added to his RBI single with another in the fourth inning and stole second with Bobby Murcer at bat. He left the game after Carlton Fisk and Brooks Robinson stranded him on second.

Big John.

Mayberry slowed down in the second half, finishing with a .287/.417/.478 line and ending with 26 homers and 100 RBI. Otis finished at .300/.368/.484 and 26 homers and 93 RBI.

Maybe the two Royals didn’t have flashy, superstar kind of games, but they had solid ones, contributed to their side and did so on their own field. All three Royals in the 1973 All-Star Game ended up in the Royals Hall of Fame. That adds up to a special event and one worth noting.

Sportslogos.net

The huge-scoreboard, multi-fountained stadium opened in 1973 and also hosted the All-Star Game. The new stadium and its baseball event inspired the fans to vote Amos Otis as a starter (and third leading AL vote-getter) and John Mayberry landed in the starting lineup after Dick Allen was injured. Cookie Rojas also made it into the game.

Otis had 20 homers by the All-Star Break that year and 111 hits overall. Mayberry had 20 as well but had also reached base 180 times with 97 hits and 83 walks by July 24th. Rojas was in his third consecutive All-Star Game and fourth of five in his career.

Other stars included Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson, Billy Williams, Johnny Bench, Willie Stargell, Tom Seaver, Don Sutton, Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Rod Carew, Bert Blyleven, Nolan Ryan, Rollie Fingers, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays (in his final All-Star Game). Ron Santo was in the game and will be inducted in 2012.

Others included Joe Torre, Thurman Munson, Ted Simmons, Bobby Bonds, Davey Johnson and some guy named Pete Rose.

Non-players Sparky Anderson, Dick Williams, Whitey Herzog, and Nestor Chylak were involved in the game as well, all of whom are now in the Hall of Fame.

Bobby Bonds hit a two run homer in the fifth inning and was named the game’s MVP but the big blast came off the bat of Johnny Bench, who drove a ball to deep left estimated at 480 feet and considered the longest homer in Royals/Kauffman Stadium history.

Those Royals All-Stars finished with respectable numbers – though Rojas was showing signs of aging. Mayberry and Otis were well on their way to becoming Royals Hall of Famers.

Royals 1973 All-Stars, rest of season:

Video has been posted online of a feature about the game:

Check out the threads on Ewing Kauffman.

The NL won 7-1 and it wasn’t really much of a contest after the middle innings. Rick Wise, the NL starter, got the win while Blyleven took the loss.

Is winning games all a team must do to capture the imagination of its fan base?  Winning is obviously extremely important because nothing else matters if you don’t see a big number in the win column.   However, in my opinion, winning or at least the hope of winning is only half the equation.  The other half is based on the emotional investment the fans have in the team and particularly in the players.

I couldn’t be a Yankee fan because as Jerry Seinfeld once said, they’re “rooting for the clothes.”  The Yankees are substantially made up of players who established their careers on other teams.  Mark Teixeira originally from the Rangers, A-Rod originally from the Mariners, Curtis Granderson from the Tigers, Nick Swisher from the A’s, CC Sabathia from the Indians, etc.  With a few notable exceptions (see Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and potentially Robinson Cano), the Yankees are a super star team cobbled together from pieces that became too expensive for other franchises to afford.  They’re mercenaries.  How do you root for mercenaries?  I couldn’t do it.

How did you feel about Joe Montana when he took the Chiefs to the AFC Championship game?  If you’re like me, you jumped out of your seat with every touchdown he threw and cheered for him and the Chiefs at the top of your lungs.  But in your heart, you knew he wasn’t really a Chief – he was a 49er that we borrowed at the end of his career.  It’s fun to cheer for your team when they’re winning, but it’s just not quite exactly the same when you aren’t emotionally invested in the players as well.

The great Royals teams of the 70’s and 80’s instilled an extra dose of pride in the fan base because they were homegrown players.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  Many of these legendary Royals including Amos Otis, John Mayberry, Freddie Patek, Hal McRae and a few others played a handful of games while wearing different uniforms prior to coming to KC.  However, with the possible exception of Darrell Porter and Jim Sundberg, none of them will be remembered for anything other than playing in Royal blue, and white, and a little bit of powder blue.  None of the core players for these great old Royals teams had established themselves in other cities before coming to the Royals.

In 2003, I was just as excited as everyone else when the Royals jumped out to an astounding 9-0 start.  Much of the excitement was due to the fact that their strong performance was unexpected.  The prior year in 2002 the Royals record was 62-100, their first ever 100 loss season.  They had lost 21 of their first 29 games in 2002.  Even the most optimistic Royals fans (myself among them) had very low expectations for 2003.  I rooted hard for their surprising performance to begin the season, but it wasn’t with the same heartfelt fervor as when I was fighting to get a seat in the upper deck of a filled-to-capacity Royals stadium to watch a team stocked with homegrown players back in 1977.  Back in ‘77, we knew this experience was just a taste of what was yet to come.

Now think about who was on the team in 2003.  Carlos Beltran was the only potential perennial All-Star in the group.   Some of us were holding out hope that Mike Sweeney would become the next George Brett, and although he was a very good player, he never completely reached the career potential we all dreamed of.  Sweeney’s annual back injuries, for which he inexplicably refused surgery (maybe it could have been explained, but it was never explained to us, the fans), torpedoed a career that might have made him the 5th or 6th greatest Royal ever, in my opinion.

After Beltran and Sweeney, who did we have?  Carlos Febles, Angel Berroa, Brent Mayne, Ken Harvey, Michael Tucker, Joe Randa, and Raul Ibanez.  Not exactly murderer’s row.  Ibanez turned out well, but we had to claim him off the Mariners’ scrap heap.  Runelvys Hernandez was the opening day pitcher after winning only four games in 2002.  Four games!  Who starts a pitcher on opening day with four career victories?  This roster was much more likely to inspire frustration and disappointment than confidence and optimism for the future.

How many of these guys from the 2003 roster did you dream could be key pieces of a pennant winning ball club?  Please don’t say Angel Berroa.  Joe Randa was a solid player on the downside of his career.  We saw flashes of what Raul Ibanez was to become, but history taught us if he performed well he’d be rewarded with a long-term contract by a team that could afford it – aka not the Royals.  If you believed anyone else on this roster could consistently compete at a high level, you were kidding yourself.  Don’t even think of looking up the list of pitchers we had in 2003, it will make you cry.

We were all excited when the Royals unexpectedly won a bunch of games to begin the 2003 season, but even in the midst of a winning streak when the Royals found themselves in first place, the experience wasn’t everything we wanted it to be.  We wanted to believe that our players had the potential to sustain and even improve their performance over several seasons, we wanted to believe if one or more of our players grew into a super star that we could sign him to a long term contract and prevent him from moving to the coast, and we wanted to believe in the direction the team was heading.  If you’re honest you’ll say that you couldn’t believe any of these things in 2003.  So all you were left with was a quickly fleeting winning record, and that’s not enough.

Today, something is different.  The Royals had a losing record last year and you were still reading about them in the dead of winter, possibly for the first time in your life.  You listened to the sports channel in December to hear the news about the Winter meetings, right in the middle of football season.  You know something is different, don’t you?  You can sense it like all the rest of us.

Salvador Perez blocks the plate and establishes himself as a difference maker for 2012.

A couple of years ago, there was a little spark – some news about a home run hitting high school kid named Moustakas being drafted, and you watched Alex Gordon get moved from 3^rd to the outfield to make room.  You heard another younger kid named Hosmer was hitting the cover off the ball and making a mockery of minor league pitching.  Then you learned that Wil Myers was also being moved to the outfield to make way so some A-ball stud named Salvador Perez could catch.  (And yes, he will catch again.  Probably around the All-Star break.)  The Royals drafted multi-sport star Bubba Starling, and Nebraska boy Alex Gordon shot laser beams all over the park last summer and gunned down nearly everyone who dared challenge his arm.   And the list goes on, as the spark begins to erupt into a roaring fire.

There are many other reasons to love this Royals team, but I think you get my point.  The Royals are trotting out athletes that you believe have potential to play key roles on a championship club, players who haven’t yet reached their potential, players you’ve heard about and rooted for since they were in Rookie league, and players who are either homegrown or didn’t establish themselves on other teams.  (I don’t care if Frenchy played for a few other clubs.  That smile, hustle, and attitude of his are infectious and I think he was a great addition.)

And above all, you believe the club is headed in the right direction.  We’ve stopped signing over-the-hill veterans to fill positions because we had no major league ready talent available.  We signed Billy Butler,  Alcides Escobar, Alex Gordon, and Salvador Perez to long-term contracts and we have many other players tied up for several years into the future.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.  This Royals team is different, and it’s not because they’re winning, because they aren’t winning yet.  It’s because they have the potential to consistently win, because we believe in them, and because we’re emotionally invested in them.  That’s why 2012 feels different.

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However, on this day, the whiff I’m getting holds the strong scent of processed deli meat. (more…)

• Continued development of the key prospects
• Alex Gordon plays all year in Kansas City
• Jeff Francoeur and Melky Cabrera aren’t OBP sinkholes
• Alcides Escobar hits. At all.