Losing Game 7 of a World Series will always hurt, losing a close game will hurt a little more, being 90 feet away from keeping the game going is painful. While this loss hurts, at least the Royals fans have a feeling at the end of the season. This is a huge deal for a fan base that has not seen the postseason for 29 years. I am sure there were some seasons along the way where fans had feelings at the end of the season, but I think there were many more where the fans had just moved on to another sport by the end of the year.
Over the 29 years between playoff appearances the Royals had some really bad times. In the 29 year span they had 8 winning seasons. Of the 21 losing seasons with 13 of those seasons losing 90 games or more and 4 of those seasons they lost over 100 games! From 2004 to 2006 they lost 100+ games each year going 176-310 winning just 36% of their games. Between 2004 and 2012 they did not have one winning season.
I remember the 2003 season as we were out at the ball park many times enjoying the team and a winning record going 83-79, which was the last year the Royals had to win in order to keep their all-star player Mike Sweeney, if they would have had a losing season that year he could have gotten out of his contract. This was a good season for the Royals because they had not won in the previous eight seasons.
If you are following along that means from 1995 until 2012 (17 years) the Royals had one winning season! During that span the fans always started the year with hope and a sold out opening day crowd. However almost every year by late May to early June the fans were counting down the days to Chiefs training camp opening up. To be honest this year was not much different as I asked in a Facebook group at the end of May, after the Royals were just swept by the Astros, who was ready for Fantasy Football since the baseball season was over.
Something clicked in the second half of this and before we knew it the Royals were in first place in the AL Central catching the Detroit Tigers. While they could not hold on to the lead in the central, they wrapped up the first wild card spot and battled for the division all the way to the last day of the season coming one game short.
A month ago today the Royals were back in the playoffs, and not only back in hosting a game. I think most fans would have been happy if the season would have ended that night. There was hope legitimate hope that the Royals were relevant again and could be good for several more years. What happened that night was incredible, the Royals down 4 runs with 6 outs to go against a pitcher who had beat them in his two games in the regular season, the Royals came back to tie the game and after falling behind in the top of the 12 inning came back and won!
So not only now did we make the postseason, we were playing in October. For the Royals to go do anything else in the postseason was going to be a bonus. All they did was swept the best team in the AL in the ALDS and swept the second best team in the AL in the the ALCS to win the American League and put the Royals in the fall classic, the World Series.
There were stories all along the way of players picking up bar tabs for fans, players getting tickets for fans and wives of players giving World Series tickets as tips. Not only were Royals fans feeling good about their team, but America had fallen in love with the Royals. I saw a comment from one Royals fan that I liked though, it went along these lines; I really hope in a few years you all hate us because we have won so much.
The World Series was a roller coaster of emotion game in and game out. Then Game 7 was a whole new set of emotions inning in and inning out. I think all Royals fans still thought the Royals would find some way to pull that game out last night, and they almost did. What it took to beat this team was a historic series from one player.
So yes today Royals fans you have the right to be sad, disappointed, proud, hopeful and any other emotion you want to add good or bad, but remember no matter what the emotion is, it is better than not having any emotion to this team at the end of the season like in years past.
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