Sometime late on the season’s final Sunday, while traveling secretaries bustled and fans checked their fantasy scores and vendors hawked the last of their inventory, it happened again. For the 10th season in a row, major league hitters set a record for strikeouts: 37,446 in all.

One of these days, Geico will notice and sell insurance with the catchphrase: If you’re a major league hitter, you strike out — it’s what you do. As hard as modern pitchers throw, with such late movement and command of the strike zone, hitters (a loose term, really) increasingly accept the whiff as part of the game.

And then there are the Kansas City Royals.

“Personally, for me, I hate striking out,” said left fielder Alex Gordon, who has been there the longest. “So if I get to two strikes, I’m going to battle as much as I can. Even if I hit a weak ground ball, I feel like that’s a lot better than striking out. This is a crazy game. As long as you put it in play, something good might happen.”