***OFFICIAL Kansas City Royals Vs. Oakland A's Post Season Wild Card Thread 9/30***

[gblowfish]

Let me start by saying,
I ****ING hate Oakland.
I despise ALL THINGS OAKLAND.
I especially despise the Oakland Raiders, Oakland Fans, and today I especially despise their weak ass, carpetbagging "Oakland "A's" baseball team.
Why?
Glad you asked.
I'll tell you why:
Because I'm old enough to remember what happened here, and what has been stolen from us as a city.

Let me tell you a story from a long time ago:

Spoiler!

As most old fart stories begin, so does this one by saying "I've lived in Kansas City my whole life" - which is 55 years now. When I was a little shaver, my baseball team was the Kansas City Athletics. The Athletics had come to my home town from Philadelphia in MLB's western expansion, and were generally seen at the time as the worst team in the American League, but with great promise for the future. Most Philadelphia fans followed the cross-town NL Phillies, because in the late 1950's the Phillies were pretty good. The A's needed a fresh start somewhere they'd be loved as the only home town team. KC was exactly that. The Athletics team colors were All-American Patriotic Red, White and Blue. They had an elephant as their mascot -the same mascot first adopted by Connie Mack back in 1909. And they were our team. Kansas City's team.

The primary owner was a guy named Arnold Johnson. Sure, Johnson gave up good players to the Yanks for virtually nothing (see the Roger Maris trade, for example), but the team had a future with other good young players . Then in 1960, the most colossal douche bag owner in MLB history (including Steinbrenner) bought control of the team from Johnson. That colossal douche bag asshole was none other that Charles O. Finley. How big an asshole was Charles O. Finley? When you Google "Charles O. Finley Asshole", it comes up with 7,920 hits in less than one half second.


Charles O. Finley (the "O" stood for "Outrageous") was Cheap as Comiskey. Un-Trustworthy as O'Malley. Sleazy as Veeck. Starting in 1960, COFA (shorthand for Charles O. Finley, Asshole from this point forward) proceeded to turn the A's into a Giant Baseball Clown Car.

First, he screwed with the uniforms, changing red, white and blue to "Kelly Green, Wedding Dress White and Ft. Knox Gold." He made the players wear fruity white cleats. COFA also phased out the team name "Athletics" in favor of "A's." When Mickey Mantle first saw the A's' green-and-gold uniforms, he jeered, "They should have come out of the dugout on tippy-toes, holding hands and singing."

COFA did condescending crap like put sheep out grazing behind the outfield wall. He dumped the elephant as a mascot and brought in a stupid mule named "Charley O.," pandering to hick Missourians. He even took the mule to cocktail parties. After an announcement that COFA intended to ride the mule around the bases at Dodger Stadium during a road game vs. the LA Angels, a reporter wrote: "You can't tell the owner without a program." COFA did kitschy, gimmicky stuff like installing an electrical rabbit called "Harvey" to pop up behind home plate ump with baseballs to entertain the rubes.


But COFA was mostly known for being a giant throbbing dick with ears.

After being told by manager Ed Lopat about the Yankees' success being due to the short right field porch in Yankee Stadium, COFA built the "K.C. Pennant Porch" in right field, which brought the fence in KC's Municipal Stadium to match Yankee Stadium's dimensions exactly, 296 feet from home plate. He did this ignoring a rule passed in 1958 that said no new or renovated major-league fence could be closer than 325 feet, so league officials had to force him to move the fences back. COFA countered by ordering a white line to be painted on the field at the original "Pennant Porch" distance, and told the stadium PA announcer to say "That would have been a home run in Yankee Stadium" whenever a fly ball was hit past that line but short of the fence. That went away quick after the PA guy was calling more "would-be" dingers for the visitors than for the A's. COFA also was stupid enough to want to change the color of the baseball from white to orange, oblivious to the fact that the color change would keep the hitter from being able to pick up the spin on the ball, giving the pitcher a tremendous advantage.


His employees all loathed him. During the team’s last years in KC, the players revolted against a fine levied on pitcher Lew Krausse. “Hawk” Harrelson, one of the A’s better players at the time (now infamous announcer for the Chisox), called COFA “a menace to baseball” and was cut for being a figurehead of the player revolt. Manager Alvin Dark was fired for not disassociating himself from the rebellious players. COFA ended up being dragged before the National Labor Relations Board and condemned as a result of his boorish conduct.

So, with all this going on, COFA started whining to KC city leaders that Municipal Stadium wasn't big enough, wasn't new enough, wasn't good enough. He was the first owner to hold a city hostage for stadium demands. COFA extorted a new lease from the city, and then began dropping hints that if he didn't get more of what he wanted, he would move his team and sign a lease for a stadium in Louisville. The other American League owners refused to approve the Louisville relocation proposal by a vote of 9-1, COFA being the only vote in favor. So, COFA signed a new lease back in Kansas City and then sued to reclaim rights to the earlier lease, which included an escape clause. He then announced that the franchise was for sale and drew offers from Denver and San Diego. With so much shit flying around, American League president Joe Cronin promised COFA that he could move within three years if he wanted to. The other owners finally approved COFA's proposal to relocate his team to Oakland for the 1968 season and promised Kansas City a new expansion team (YOUR KANSAS CITY ROYALS) in 1969 to make up for all the bullshit. That did not stop Missouri Senator Stuart Symington from branding COFA “one of the most disreputable characters ever to enter the American sports scene.”


Why else should we loathe this historically colossal douche? After he takes our team off to Oakland, the team's young players, who learned their trade toiling in KC, became a veteran-laden AL dynasty. They won the AL West five straight years -1971 to 1975- and routinely rubbed the young, upstart Royals face in the shit, much like an untrained puppy on a newspaper. They won three straight World Series trophies. Our KC Royals finally over came it in 1976 to end the A's dark rein. How? Because COFA was a cheap stake, and free agency blew his team up. After the 1974 WS, Catfish Hunter was declared a free agent because COFA had failed to set aside part of Hunter's salary in an annuity, as required by his contract. Hunter then signed a sweet deal with the Yanks. After the real start of league wide free agency, and after failing to get rid of Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, COFA gutted the A's before his best players could just walk away. Besides Hunter, the Yanks also ended up with Reggie Jackson, both of whom would figure greatly in the push down of our Royals starting in 1976, the seeds of starting the infamous KC-Yanks rivalry.

A Preteen Stanley Burrell -AKA MC Hammer- was a batboy/bitch for COFA. He was instructed to listen in on player conversations and dish the dirt back to COFA behind the players back. He was the clubhouse company snitch. The players called him "the pipeline."

So there you have it.

COFA's rein with the A's lasted 20 years. He personally cost us KC baseball fans at least three world series championships for sure, maybe more if they had stayed permanently. The A's stadium has been named and re-named and re-named, but it's still known mostly as "The Mausoleum." The A's are the only MLB team left that has to share their stadium with an NFL team (The father raping, convict laden 0-4 Oakland Raiders). Their crappy below sea level park is best known for having raw sewage spills which routinely happen in the dugout and clubhouses.
You can smell the shit from here:


Although official capacity was stated to be 43,662 for baseball, seats were sometimes sold up in Mount Davis (a nose bleed add-on that Big Al had built for football) pushing "real" capacity to the area of 60,000. The ready availability of tickets on game day made season tickets a tough sell, while crowds as high as 30,000 often seemed sparse in such cavernous place. In 2006 the A's announced that seats in the Mausoleum's third deck would no longer be sold, but would instead be covered with a big ass green tarp. Classy. That effectively reduced capacity to 34,077, making the Mausoleum the smallest stadium in Major League Baseball. They purposely shrunk their stadium after they left KC because….the new stadium was too big. Assholes. Total freaking Assholes.

Well, Thank God for MR. KAUFFMAN. The Royals flourished while he was here, then floundered after his death, and now after 29 long years in the wilderness, we're back with a vengeance, baby. Even the post-COFA teams were dicks, The Bash Brothers were just a couple of roided up cheaters with Tony LaRussa looking the other way. They have no honor as a franchise. They suck, and they're currently threatening their fans about moving again to Sacramento. Let em go. That's almost as big of a toilet town as Oakland. Almost.

It's long past time to get some payback on these Garish Green and Gold Oakland Turds. Oh, btw, on their website, the A's are already selling ALDS tickets vs. the Angels are a foregone conclusion, and are calling the upcoming post-season "Oak-Tober."


One thing we do know. Win or lose, their stupid fans will riot afterwards and burn their own toilet of a town. That's a given.


The final reason I hate these ****ers? The movie "Money Ball" from 2011. They use the Royals as the big finale for the team's 20th straight win, showing Jason Grimsley blowing an 11 to 0 lead after three innings. to lose in the 9th on a Scott Hatteberg walk off homer. Hey, I lived that game in real life -I watched that whole game when it happened for real in 2001. Now I have to live it over and over and over on the MLB channel every time they show that frickin' movie. All I can say is I'm glad Art Howe OD'ed and died three years later. Karma's a bitch.

So, as the crusty yet benign manager Lou Brown once said: "Let's give them all a great big shit burger to eat!"

Gird up your loins. Pin your batting gloves to the bedpost, sacrifice a live chicken, leave some rum for Jobu, smear your bat with pine tar and your jersey with BBQ sauce, prepare your rally hats. Let's stick it to this California clown show and send them back to the fetid stinking sewer from which they crawled.

Let's Play Ball.

WHO'S WITH ME????

[BigRock]

**** OAKLAND
**** LESTER
**** BEANE

WIN THIS SHIT

[Prison Bitch]

Originally Posted by RockChalk

You are one pathetic, sad individual.

Owned.

[Anyong Bluth]

Pretty good read from Passan in his feature for today... .



29 years in making, Royals desperate to shine on playoff stage as nervous K.C. braces itself


Yahoo Sports By Jeff Passan

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – George Brett, skin forever bronzed, teeth whiter than a Phish concert, eternally the face of the Kansas City Royals, turned 61 this year, which, depending on the perspective, serves as a wonderful affirmation that heroes can age gracefully or a depressing reminder that the star of this tortured city's last playoff baseball team can collect Social Security next year.

In 1985, when Brett led the Royals to their only World Series championship, he was 32, still in the prime of his glorious Hall of Fame career, and coming off a spectacular decade in which Kansas City served as the archetypal baseball franchise. Consider that for a moment. The only other time Kansas City has played archetype for anything involves meat and smoke, and yet the Royals – the Royals more than a generation of people know only through stories – were the model.

.
Please understand, then, how odd this feels to those who live here, those conditioned, so sadly, to expect the worst from their local sports teams. If winning is like a drug, so is losing, a barbiturate to the mind and soul, one that fosters a permanent numbing that can be allayed only by what's happening Tuesday.

A playoff game. A home playoff game. An honest-to-God playoff game with more meaning than many of the past because it's a win-or-go-home affair. And contrived though the wild-card format may be, a city trying to awaken itself from a three-decades-long stupor could use a little defibrillation in its efforts.

At 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the Kansas City Royals will host the Oakland A's for the privilege of facing the team with baseball's best record, the Los Angeles Angels, in the American League Division Series. The Royals' ace, James Shields, for whom they traded a top hitting prospect, will oppose the A's ace, Jon Lester, for whom they traded a top hitter. Both teams catch the ball very well, feature lockdown bullpens and struggle at scoring runs. It is the sort of game that could go 0-0 into the 12th inning. Of course, it being the first time the Royals have played a postseason game in 29 years, the expected script is finding itself rewritten a fair bit this year.

When the Royals clinched their postseason spot, Brett sat in a luxury suite, surrounded by Dayton Moore, the general manager who built this team, and his coterie of lieutenants. The camera focused on Brett, of course, for what he represented. All those years of losing. All those reasons to distance himself, a winner, from a team that had become synonymous with misery. All the Royals Moments, unique slices of sporting incompetence. All of that, and still George Brett was there, representative of everyone who saw these last 29 years not as a reason to give up but one to believe.

*

Inside a vaulted-ceilinged lobby at Kauffman Stadium, the one through which the bourgeois Diamond Club ticket holders enter, Art Stewart greeted passersby and friends with their names, a nod and, occasionally, a wink. A man named Dave Wickersham stopped by to pay his regards.

Wickersham was a pitcher for the 1969 Royals, an expansion team jammed into existence after Charlie Finley in 1961 bought the Kansas City A's, over the next seven years shopped them to more than a half-dozen cities and eventually moved them to Oakland. Stewart was a scout for those '69 Royals, too, he and Wickersham two of the few remaining ties to the team that has packed an excessive amount of ineptitude into less than half a century's worth of existence.

"It's been generations since the only championship we've ever had," Wickersham said. "So many people have grown up, gotten married, had kids, and I don't know if there are any grandparents from then."

"I had my daughter here," Stewart said, "and now I've got two grandsons."

"It's a whole new group," Wickersham said, "and they've suffered through some pretty bad teams here. A first baseman that gets hit in the back with a relay throw."

.
"Yeah," Stewart said. "He's talking about Ken Harvey. He also got trapped under the tarp! Remember that?"

"Yes he did!" Wickersham said.

Stewart cackled. He's 87 years old now, his head still covered with white hair and his shoulders ensconced in a sport coat. Stewart was the scouting director who drafted Bo Jackson, the voice behind so many of the right decisions the Royals made during their glory years – and, admittedly, some of the wrong ones during the down times. He now can laugh, a decade removed from the time when Harvey, the Royals' excuse for an All-Star in 2004 and out of the big leagues forever following 12 games in 2005, found himself in the middle of awful situations from which manager Tony Pena needed to rescue him.

"Tony had to come get him out," Stewart said.

"That's just one example, isn't it, Art?" Wickersham said.

"Well, we did have some great players," Stewart said.

"Now you look at this team on the field," Wickersham said, "and you see some great players. I mean, I would've loved to have pitched for this team. Anyone who pitches would love to."

"The outfielders can get to anything," Stewart said.

"I love [Lorenzo] Cain," Wickersham said. "I think he's really going to be a leader of this team."

Wickersham considered what he said. He lives in the suburbs here now, watches the games in person and on TV, follows the Royals like good fans should. Even so, there's an inherent defensiveness here, borne of the losing, of the disappointment, one that shows itself through qualifiers and caveats. Lorenzo Cain, the Royals' center fielder, could be a leader …

"If his legs stay healthy," Wickersham said. "There's always an if, isn't there?"

*

*

Here is why there is always an if.

Baseball in Kansas City since 1985 has seen Ken Harvey get hit by a relay and swallowed by a tarp. It has seen Eduardo Villacis, a 24-year-old non-prospect who had pitched 30 Double-A innings, get called up for his first and only major league start at Yankee Stadium and end his career with a 13.50 ERA. It has seen the Royals spend 14 consecutive first-round picks, between Johnny Damon in 1992 and Zack Greinke in 2002, on players who easily could wear a bust label. It has seen the Royals, at the same time, refuse to spend more than $1,000 on players drafted after the fifth round. It has seen the beloved die (owner Ewing Kauffman, manager Dick Howser, closer Dan Quisenberry). It has seen the Fountain Mom.



It has seen trades. It has seen lots of trades. It has seen Greinke and Damon and Carlos Beltran and David Cone and Bret Saberhagen and Jermaine Dye and so many others traded. It has seen Yuniesky Betancourt for 1,079 plate appearances, which is 1,079 plate appearances too many. It has seen Luke Hochevar taken No. 1 overall in the draft, six picks ahead of Clayton Kershaw, nine before Tim Lincecum, 10 prior to Max Scherzer. It has seen a manager walk fully uniformed into a shower to motivate his team (Pena), another manager's most memorable moment come from throwing a phone when phones could leave a mark (Hal McRae) and another manager deliver a quote that best encapsulates the Royals experience ("I never say it can't get worse." – Buddy Bell).

It has seen this.

*

Now, baseball in Kansas City sees something worth watching. For their staggering inability to hit for power – over 6,058 regular-season plate appearances, the Royals hit 95 home runs, or 22 more than Barry Bonds in 2001 had by himself over 664 plate appearances – they struck out 119 times fewer than the next most-disciplined team: Oakland. The Royals stole 15 more bases than any team and did so at an 81 percent clip, the highest success rate in the big leagues. They fielded the ball with brilliance, from an impermeable outfield to an infield that hoovered ground balls. Moore built these Royals on the tenets of pitching and defense, with power the sort of commodity too expensive for a low-revenue team like the Royals to buy and the lone elusive flaw of a tremendous development system.

At the forefront is Ned Yost, the manager who Milwaukee fired in the midst of a pennant drive because of his tactical mismanagement. Yost's misdeeds crop up far too often, and may have cost the Royals the AL Central title that would have saved them from the wild card's virtual coin flip, but Moore's most evident quality is loyalty, and Yost is his greatest beneficiary. He's been the Royals' manager since 2010, which makes him the sixth most-tenured in baseball, and wears criticisms with the understanding of someone who recognizes what Tuesday means.

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"I've taken piles of abuse over the years because they want a playoff-caliber team," Yost said. "To be able to play a homefield-advantage playoff game for them means as much to me as making the playoffs."

Alex Gordon grew up going to Royals games. He wasn't the greatest fan, by any means, not having to truck in from Nebraska, but like plenty of kids in the Midwest, his attention gravitated to Kansas City. The Royals aren't the Cardinals, all regal with their championship banners and air of self-importance, nor are they the Cubs, the team with the history and the aura and the drought that makes Kansas City's 29 years look like a movie trailer. The Royals are the team that frightens parents. Because to let a kid grow up a Royals fan is to let a kid know, learn and experience heartbreak long before he or she can fully comprehend it.

"I haven't gone through what some people have gone through, so I can only imagine how difficult it's been over the last 29 years," Gordon said. "I think Shields said it: Hopefully, we've made this fan base and town proud and, hopefully, we can make something special happen here. We all want it here. I know the town, the city does, too."

Shields. The fulcrum of this whole thing. Moore was drawn and quartered by the establishment for dealing Wil Myers to get two years of Shields. Maybe this is vindication, or maybe that's five years from now, when Danny Duffy and Yordano Ventura are leading a staff with Sean Manaea and Kyle Zimmer and Brandon Finnegan, the first-round pick this season who's going to be the Royals' main left-hander out of the bullpen. If it's not them, perhaps Christian Binford or Miguel Almonte or another of the hard-throwing prospects they've got. That's how it worked in Tampa Bay, from whence Shields came: When one guy left, another stepped in, and the lessons passed down by the elders were repeated and instilled.

And Shields does that here. He explains to Duffy how to bundle his nerves and channel them into a positive force, one that turns his arm into the weapon it always portended. He leads the silly nonsense in the clubhouse, from the pregame "We Ready" chants to the postgame smoke-machine celebrations. And intangible though that may be, the Royals believe it matters, and belief, similarly unquantifiable, nevertheless remains a currency in which even the most analytical inside the game will trade.

The Royals did so to get Shields, who sat on the same dais as Yost and Gordon, looking far more relaxed. A skull cap covered his head. White headphones hung around his neck, which looked like an overgrown thatch. He's done this before, six postseason games total, and even then wasn't as good a pitcher as he is now, 32, on the brink of free agency.

"I don't care what anybody thinks about the trade, to be honest with you," Shields said. "I got brought over here to do a job, and that's to win games every five days for my ballclub. Hopefully, I've done a great job thus far. We've got a long way to go, especially to get to the prize where we want to go."

It's the prize everyone wants, even Art Stewart, who every day wears his '85 championship ring on his right hand.

"When you're here so many years, and you start getting up in years, your dream is always to see another big pennant fly out there for the Royals, like we were consistently putting up in the '70s and '80s," he said. "My dream is to replace this world championship ring with his new 2014 ring."

He smiled again and walked through the exit of the stadium, back home for the last day before the Royals try to make some more history. They're back in the playoffs, no ands or buts. Not even any ifs.

[Archie F. Swin]

How freaking terrific will it be to send the A's home with sad clown faces and their filthy homeless beards.

[TLO]

A little over 7 hours away.

[Pepe Silvia]

Good luck tonight.

[WilliamTheIrish]

I love Art Stewart. Love him.

[Hootie]

Originally Posted by penbook

Finally Yost has learned

Because he has the luxury of using three starters out of the pen?

[Anyong Bluth]

Oh, by the way, gblowfish, I don't think that OP for this game given the circumstances could be topped.

Fantastic way to get everyone together and even more fired up for the game!

[siberian khatru]

Everybody expect the crowd to chant "LESSSSS-ter! LESSSSS-ter!" tonight the way the Pirates' fans did to Johnny Cueto?

[BWillie]

What is the line up!??!

[Anyong Bluth]

I recently read a feature piece on the back-stories on 20 of the more odd / puzzling American Professional Sports Franchise Logos.

By far the coolest explanation and the logo's meaning was the Trailblazers, but it also detailed the A's White Elephant logo.

For anyone who is a fan of amusing trivia and whatnot, and interested, it's here below.

John McGraw & the White Elephants
[IMG]
http://phillysportshistory.com/wp-co...Picture-31.png [/IMG]


When the A’s joined the American League in its first year of existence in 1901, team owner Benjamin Shibe wasted little time in offering exorbitant contracts to star National Leaguers, in effect raiding them of their talent.

John McGraw, who had managed the Orioles in the AL but flipped over to the Giants of the National League, was disgusted by Shibe’s actions, but thought that spending so much money was going to tank the team.

And so, while speaking to a reporter in 1902, McGraw stated that Shibe had a “big white elephant” on his hands. The term, popular back then, described something that looked nice but whose upkeep made it impossible to take care of.

Connie Mack heard what McGraw had said and showing that he had an outstanding sense of humor, ordered all Athletic’s gear to carry a white elephant on it. (You can see it below on Chief Bender’s sweater. He’s talking to the Giants Chief Meyer earlier in the 1911 Series.)


By the time the 1905 World Series came around, it was obvious that the A’s were a profitable franchise. And so, in playing a practical joke on McGraw, before Game 1 of the Series, McGraw was given a statue of a white elephant (above) at Columbia Park in Philadelphia (The Park was located at 29th and Cecil B. Moore).

According to the book John McGraw, the surly manager hammed it up this time, as he “doffed his cap and made a deep bow to the hooting spectators

[IMG]
http://phillysportshistory.com/wp-co...Picture-23.png
[/IMG]

[wazu]

Originally Posted by siberian khatru

Everybody expect the crowd to chant "LESSSSS-ter! LESSSSS-ter!" tonight the way the Pirates' fans did to Johnny Cueto?

There will be at least one guy doing it.

[teedubya]

I can't ****ing concentrate on work today...

[CaliforniaChief]

Originally Posted by teedubya

I can't ****ing concentrate on work today...

Welcome to my last month, brother.