by: Nick Wright

My boss asked me to write a piece about my hometown team, the Kansas City Royals—the team that has represented futility and mismanagement and the fundamental unfairness of baseball for decades. The team that once had a manager say, “I’m obsessed with losing.” The team that has never had a player hit more than 36 homeruns in a single season. The team that is so notoriously thin skinned it has twice revoked credentials of legitimate media members for even more legitimate criticism and has no relationship with its second greatest player ever because it couldn’t handle his honesty. The team that consciously thumbs its nose at silly things like “On Base Percentage” and “Advanced Statistics”, yes, THAT team is playing in the World Series.

At first, I didn’t want to. I simply wasn’t sure how much people in Houston gave a damn that my team is on this magical run, when Houston’s baseball team is in the midst of such a historic run of failure, that losing 92 games is seen as a MAJOR step in the right direction. But then it dawned on me, this story—this amazing, inconceivable, statistically improbable and logically impossible story—gives hope for ALL sports fans.

You see, if the Royals can do this, so can literally any team in sports. If the Royals can wipe away nearly 30 years of mismanagement and PR blunders with one magical month of baseball, then there’s no team that can’t do it. It’s not as if the Royals fixed all their woes this year, far from it. They were, once again, dead last in baseball in homeruns AND walks—two pretty damn important categories. It’s not like anyone saw this coming. As late as August they were a 30 to 1 shot to win the World Series, and in the Wild Card Playoff game, they were at one point at 25 to 1 just to advance to the next round.

There is no explaining this, except to say that sometimes sports are just awesome and unpredictable and surreal. That’s why this Royals’ run matters for everyone with any interest in any team across any sport. If THESE Royals can do it, so can your team, no matter what desperate straits that team currently finds itself in. So here’s hoping the Royals complete the journey over the next week or so, and here’s hoping that one day, your team does too. Unless, of course, your team is the Cardinals, because seriously, f— them.

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