A Baseball Afternoon-A Blog For You......and Me
My birthday is this Sunday, and I am declaring right now the start of my birthday weekend. I am sitting in the press box at Kauffman Stadium, and enjoying the rhythms of a day or night that I have experienced literally thousands of times. I have spent about half of my days watching, commentating, and soaking in games. I don’t do it as much these days, but it is always satisfyingly familiar.
Today features a routine game between two very disappointing teams, whose paths to 2023 disappointment have been drastically different. The New York Mets entered the season with baseball’s fattest payroll, and equally large expectations. They have been bad from the start, under five hundred by a fairly safe margin all along, and now having dumped stars at the deadline, waved a white flag that had been nearby for a long time.
The Kansas City Royals would kill for a place ten or so games under the break even point. They have spent much of the season in a pitched battle with the A’s for the worst record in baseball, and not just this season, but ever. They have also made several deals at the trade deadline or before, although star could not really be attached to those they sent to greener pastures. But the Royals have won all five games on the current homestand, a season high streak. Even bad teams routinely do this. Heck, the A’s even won seven in a row, almost a quarter of their win total. This five game run by the Royals is about one sixth of their victory total.
The day at the park has begun with the customary clubhouse time, with a smattering of players around to potentially speak, or not. Then the dugout session with the manager, although today Royals pitching coach Brian Sweeney was the man available. The Royals have had a hefty turnover of pitchers recently, and that seemed like a good reason for him to take the assignment. I’m all set up in the second row of the press box as a very small crowd gathers on a gooey, balmy, overcast afternoon.
Baseball has been a major part, and joyously so, of my life from my earliest days on the planet. I played it well as a boy, got screwed out of my high school career by a bitter, vindictive, coach (my gym teacher) in your stereotypical glory days story, played softball for quite a while, and loved the game of baseball as a fan to a rather obsessive level. And then it became a major part of my work life. I have done play-by-play at all levels except the majors, done pre and post-game coverage for decades, including some of the biggest highlights of my professional career as he traveling reporter for WHB of the 2014 and 2015 playoffs. It never gets old to me to keep score, view, and soak in even a game of far lesser magnitude.
So indeed a reasonably insignificant game among thousands in the majors this year begins. I have covered many games like this through the years, but each game is unto it’s own. It’s still major league baseball, and I will enjoy the nuances and intrigues it will provide. The slightest spritz of rain starts to fall, not even enough to sprout umbrellas from the small gathering of Royals loyalists and some Mets fans, a few of whom no doubt spent good money a few months ago to travel here and see their supposed juggernaut in an opposing stadium.
Royals starter Brady Singer breezes through the first. He kind of reflects the season for the team. They certainly didn’t have outsized expectations like the Mets, but were seeking a step toward respectability. Singer looked the part of potential staff ace in 2022, only to come out of the blocks horrendously this year. He has been better for a while, and today might well have an easy mark in the punchless Mets on a getaway day.
The Royals get to longtime veteran Carlos Carrasco for a run in the first. A one-out single by red hot Bobby Witt Jr., his stolen base, and a double by Salvador Perez that Mets right fielder D.J.Stewart played like a drunken man, did the trick. Witt Jr. has spent much of his year and a half plus time in the majors teasing Royals fans with occasionally brilliant, mostly pretty good play, but for six weeks now has looked like the star he was expected to be as the number 2 pick in the draft. He doubled down on that in the third after the Royals had already scratched out another run with a 425-foot bomb to center. The steal earlier was his 31st, and the home run was his 19th, giving him a real shot at a 30-30 season, which would about cement his bona fides.
The sun was emerging as the Royals lead was now 3-0. That really wasn’t good news for those who weren’t in the shade. Heck, even out of the sun it’s pretty jungle like, but in the nice seats for baseball viewing it must be just insufferable. I’m in an air-conditioned press box with the windows open and it’s pretty soupy, as Singer continues to cruise. Only Pete Alonzo is giving the Mets fans some evidence their squad isn’t mailing it in, He has both hits as Singer concludes his 4th scoreless inning with a strikeout.
Baseball’s new rules have cut game times down about a half an hour in 2023, but after the Royals Michael Massey spent the bottom of the fourth and top of the fifth playing outhouse-penthouse this affair was flying. Massey got doubled off second on a line drive to end the Royals frame, but then started a spectacular double play to end the Mets fifth. He picked off Francisco Lindor’s hot one-hopper, flipped it with his glove to Witt Jr., who fired to first to complete the cool defensive gem. The baserunning of the Royals is not keeping up with other aspects of today’s game, as Mikael Garcia gets picked off in the Royals fifth, just before Witt Jr. just misses another home run to center for the final out. Both teams might want to make a quick call to their charter plane companies to rev up the engines as this game blazes by.
Carrasco had settled down as we got to the bottom of the seventh in about another five minutes. In fact as the inning began he was working on a quality start in the 3-0 game with his six innings of three-run ball. Two singles produced a mound visit. Everybody had barely returned to their positions, and/or the dugout when Carrasco unfurled his first pitch to Drew Waters, who delivered it 381 feet just inside the foul pole. Another Mets day of misery was at hand, down 6-0. The sweltering fans would be glad they picked this day to roast, rather than the 36 other days and nights that the Royals had lost at home. It wasn’t quite over, the Royals tacked on, Lindor hit a meaningless homer, the final was 9-2 in a tidy 2:14.
The post-game was pretty standard. Manager Matt Quartraro is a genial, but flat-line interview. I asked him how timely was the streak, coming in the doggiest of dog days and after the trade deadline, and he pretty much said any time was a good time. Witt Jr. said about the same thing after another three-hit day. He and Brady Singer pretty much mirror their manager. They are pleasant, but don’t provide much sizzle. The highlight was definitely Zack Grienke’s kids running around, and playing ball with him
There was nothing earth-shattering, or even MLB shattering, to this paralyzingly hot baseball afternoon. Sure, the Royals extended their wining streak to six, and Singer and Witt Jr. starred, and the Mets woes mounted. But with KC still forty games under .500, and the Mets getting swept by the second worst team in baseball, and having a position player pitch in this one, it was really just a footnote day at the K.
But I enjoyed it. It wasn’t a great game, there wasn’t a big crowd (announced 11,926…..I don’t think so), and it was pretty darn clammy (a Boston boy’s word for hot and humid). I have done this countless times before. But not exactly this, and not at the start of this particular birthday weekend. Hardly electrifying in many ways, but still…..a little special to me.