Kansas City Royals Fans Voting As They Should

Right now, the Kansas City Royals have seven players that would be starting in the 2015 All-Star Game. The two starters for the Royals that are not in the All-Star Game presently, Alex Rios and Omar Infante, are just behind the leaders, and while it seems unlikely that either would displace Mike Trout or Jose Altuve respectively, Royals fans have been doing an amazing job of voting for the players on their favorite team.

Naturally, this All-Star Game love for the Royals has not gone unnoticed. National media outlets and fans of other teams are decrying these results, calling it a travesty and lamenting that so many “undeserving” Royals players are leading their positions. Yet, these are the same people that were perfectly accepting of the corpse of Derek Jeter being an All-Star, or having other washed up players make an appearance because of their name value.

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The outcry over the results of the All-Star ballot bring to mind another time where fans stuffed the ballot box to put practically their entire team on the field. Back in 1957, seven members of the Cincinnati Reds, or Redlegs, as they were known as at the time, were voted as starters. A subsequent investigation into those ballots revealed that over half the ballots received came from Cincinnati, and that the Cincinnati Enquirer had been printing out ballots with Reds players premarked. As a result, the fans lost the ability to vote for the All-Star Game until 1970.

Now, with a panel specifically in place to review the ballots, and these ballots evenly distributed to evry stadium, it would seem as though it would be impossible to stuff the ballot box. Even the online ballot is restricted, as one can vote only 35 times per e-mail address. This came about after a Red Sox fan created a computer program back in 1999 that allowed him to vote for Nomar Garciaparra more than 39,000 times.

Yet, even with all of these safeguards in place, fans and players from other teams are irate that the Kansas City Royals are dominating the All-Star vote. Based on the outcry, one would think this was voter fraud on a level equal to that of a third world banana republic. Charles D.B. King and Carlos Salinas de Gortari would be proud.

For those who are upset that the Royals are dominating the All-Star ballot, and that the MidSummer Classic will be a pleasing shade of blue, the solution is simple. Get out and vote. If the Royals fans can make Alcides Escobar a starter and give Lorenzo Cain more votes than Mike Trout, what is to stop other fanbases from voting for their players? Absolutely nothing.

If other fanbsaes are upset that the Kansas City Royals will be prominently represented during the All-Star Game, that is simply too bad. It is not as though the fanbase is doing anything untoward, despite the protestations of fans of other teams. Do what the Royals fanbase is doing – vote. You know that we will keep on going, refusing to rest until it is an entirely Blue All-Star Game.

Next: Royals 2015 MLB Draft Review