KC Royals: The “Still Hungry” Trope Is The Most Toxic Part Of Sports

Let’s blow up these three bad ideas one by one:

1). The playoff process accurately determines the best team

There’s a whole lot of reason to doubt the first assumption. Since major league baseball added wild card teams in 1995, the team with the best regular-season record in baseball has only won the title three out of 21 times. We’ve seen a 116-win Mariners team fall in the 2001 ALCS to a Yankee team with 21 fewer regular season wins. We had an 83-win champion with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006. We had two wild cards make the World Series in 2014, both with less than 90 regular-season wins (SF Giants and KC Royals).

Major league baseball has only seen one repeat winner in 21 years since going to the six division format: the 1998-00 New York Yankees. Frankly, the playoffs have become a crap-shoot ever since the wild card came into play.

2). No other team improved enough to challenge the “champions”

This presumption looks pretty silly when you realize that the playoffs are a crap-shoot. If the 83-win Cardinals can beat the 95-win Tigers for the 2006 title, and the 85-win Twins take the 1987 World Series, fans have to believe that ANY playoff team could knock off a defending champion—even if last year’s champ gets back into the tournament.

Add in free-agency roster changes, age-related decline, and normal performance variance, and this belief becomes downright nonsensical.

3). Team “character”, and conforming to baseball’s cultural norms, are the keys to championship success

Here we brush up against the most toxic belief of American sports culture: that success on the playing field is due to good “character” or superior “moral fiber”.

More from KC Royals News

• KC Royals Rumors: Is a monster move in the cards?
• KC Royals Free Agent Hunt: 3 Tampa Bay pitchers
• Grading the 2022 KC Royals: The $25 million man
• KC Royals Winter Meetings Tracker: Expectations met
• KC Royals Winter Meetings Tracker: Day 3 update

The fact is, we’d all LIKE it if “good guys” enjoyed an advantage over the “bad guys”. That means when the KC Royals, or another favorite team, disappoints us, we can scream at them without feeling bad about it. After all, if they were “hungry” or “devoted to winning” they’d meet our expectations, right? And, by giving the KC Royals our devotion as fans means we deserve their best effort in return. So if the team doesn’t win, they’re cheating us.

This set of beliefs turns baseball into a morality play where we heap honors on the most worthy teams, and players. I guess Yordano Ventura being able to throw 100 mph doesn’t matter. And Wade Davis‘ sick cutter has nothing to do with God-given gifts. No. Wade Davis racks up saves because he’s a better person than any other reliever in baseball, or any of the millions watching the broadcast around the world.

In short, by buying into the notion that character determines success or failure, we validate the results we see on the field—and the justice of the cultural pecking order that follows.

Next: Conflating On Field Results With Character Has Toxic Consequences

Conflating on field results with character can lead to abusive acts in the “real world”

Our admiration for winners often leads people to look the other way when our “heroes” behave badly off the field. Seeing a sports star treat a peer, business partner, or spouse, with contempt can lead to cognitive dissonance—a state where our minds struggle to reconcile events that conflict with our world view.

Consequently, our brains shut down and we pretend that the uncomfortable act didn’t happen. We say or do nothing when one of our athletic heroes acts out, even with our “body English”.

More from Kings of Kauffman

• KC Royals Rumors: Is a monster move in the cards?
• KC Royals Free Agent Hunt: 3 Tampa Bay pitchers
• Grading the 2022 KC Royals: The $25 million man
• KC Royals Winter Meetings Tracker: Expectations met
• KC Royals Winter Meetings Tracker: Day 3 update

This behavior can lead sports stars to develop an increasing sense of entitlement, until it culminates into awful behavior that extends way beyond the pale: such as O.J. Simpson seizing sports mementos by armed force after a jury acquitted him of his wife’s murder, or Ray Rice beating his then-fiancee in a hotel elevator.

On the flip side, failure on the field exposes athletes to the raw cruelty of crowd behavior. Angels reliever Donnie Moore killed his wife, and committed suicide in 1989, in part due to his inability to deal with blowing a save in game 5 of the 1986 ALCS. An enraged soccer fan even murdered defenseman Andres Escobar after he scored an own goal that eliminated the Colombian national team from the 1994 World Cup.

Sports figures failing to fulfill our need for vicarious victory can make us angry. Connecting results with character justifies punishing the players that disappoint us.

Associating success and failure with character isn’t limited to sports. We do the same thing in the real world when people, or groups, don’t meet expectations at home, school, or work. Even when problems are the result of poor choices, conflating success and character can lead us to continue snubbing co-workers, friends, and family as they try to dig themselves out of a difficult situation.

The convenient myth that achievement reflects character harms us in more ways than we can really quantify.

The problem is, success in anything—including baseball—is about more than capability. For the KC Royals to thrive in 2016, they will have to train hard during during both the winter and regular season, they will have to play team baseball, and catch some luck.

So, yes, we can talk about “character” in terms of baseball, or any team sport. But that term is strictly limited to the discipline necessary to train the body, the diligence to develop playing ability through practice, and the social skills to fit within a team framework.

None of these traits necessarily make you a “good” person.

We can see this truth when we realize that convicted felons like Lenny Dykstra and 31-game winner Denny McLain were part of championship squads. Conversely, does anyone really think that KC Royals starter Jeremy Guthrie posted a 5.76 ERA in 2015 because he developed a sudden character defect? How many truly good people have been booed off the field when they couldn’t succeed?

Fans have no way to know.

None of this means KC Royals fans shouldn’t enjoy the 2016 season, or get emotional about games. Every baseball season offers nail-biting finishes, crazy reversals of fortune, and plays no one has seen before. Major league players are marvelous athletes who invest an enormous amount effort, training, and thought into every game. The KC Royals can indeed win the 2016 World Series. They’re a really good baseball team that just might catch enough luck to repeat.

Shouldn’t that be enough? Can’t we do away with the morality-play narratives?

Next: Royals Should Look At Reunion With Greg Holland

The world will be a happier place if we can manage it.