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teedubya · 09-02-2014, 11:27 PM

From the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/sp...naissance.html

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Alex Gordon grew up in Lincoln, Neb., a three-hour drive from the glimmering major league ballpark that sits here off Interstate 70. Twice a summer, his family would visit for a weekend, splitting time between the stadium and an amusement park.

Gordon has three brothers, one named Brett, after the best player in the complicated history of the Kansas City Royals. Gordon liked the Royals, too, but his favorite player, Ken Griffey Jr., did not play for them.

Gordon, 30, has now been a Royal for eight seasons. He has never played elsewhere and does not want to. He once ended a game with a home run, in 2010. It lifted the Royals out of last place for the day, but by the end of that season they were back at the bottom.

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Naturally, things felt different last Tuesday, when Gordon came to bat against Glen Perkins, the Minnesota Twins’ All-Star closer, with a man on first and his team down by a run in the bottom of the ninth. The Royals were in first place in the American League Central. Up in the radio booth, a familiar voice told his listeners that the best teams find a way to win games like this.

Of course, Gordon could not have heard that, though the broadcaster, Denny Matthews, did once cover a road game so sparsely attended that the Royals catcher later told him, “Good broadcast today, Denny.” But Gordon knows Matthews the way every Royals fan does, as the soundtrack to the team since its first game in 1969.

Matthews, now 71, skips a few road trips these days. But basically he has seen it all, and if he did not exactly predict what happened next, he gave it the proper context. Almost on cue, Gordon connected for a game-winning home run.

“You want to be the hero that helps the team win,” Gordon said by his locker a few days later. “Running around the bases, you’re almost like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ ” Matthews could. He made his observation and then let the roar of the crowd tell the story across the airwaves. Maybe, after the longest drought without a playoff appearance in the four major North American team sports, these Royals really will see October.

“The way everything had been breaking for the team the last two or three weeks, everything was kind of going their way,” Matthews said. “You think back to all the pennant winners, they won a lot of games in a lot of strange ways, and we’re doing that.

“So, is this your turn? I’m a big believer in, ‘It’s your turn.’ In ’85, I just felt like, this was it, it’s the Royals’ turn to win the World Series. It’s just your turn. The baseball gods have declared it to be so.”

The baseball gods have a month to render their verdict on which teams advance and which teams go home, as the Royals have done every year since winning their only title in that charmed autumn of 1985.

They sputtered at the end of a scintillating August, starving for runs before packed crowds. Still, the Royals, who visit Yankee Stadium this weekend, began September in first place. It was an exhilarating feeling for some Royals people who have felt so much pain and who hope they are seeing a renaissance at last.

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The Voice

Sometimes, Denny Matthews wonders what would have happened if he had signed with the San Francisco Giants after his freshman year at Illinois Wesleyan, where he played second base. His double play partner, Doug Rader, played 11 seasons in the majors. His first radio partner, Buddy Blattner, played five.

“Buddy said, ‘O.K., what if you had signed and made it to the big leagues?’ ” Matthews said last Saturday, in a suite near the Royals’ radio booth. " ‘You’d have been one of 25. Now you’re one of two. It’s a lot harder to get a big-league broadcasting job than it is to get a big-league playing job. And you last longer.”

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Denny Matthews, 71, who received the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award in 2007, has been broadcasting for the team since its first game, in 1969. Credit Mike Groll/Associated Press
Matthews has lasted the entirety of the Royals’ existence. Only two active broadcasters, Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrin of the Dodgers, have a longer tenure with one team.

He got here with ingenuity, and without much experience, after passing on the pros to finish his degree. Matthews, who had called basketball in the winters during college, was intrigued by a chance to be the No. 2 voice for the expansion Royals. He took a tape recorder to a St. Louis Cardinals game and called the action from the stands. He sent Blattner two innings of his work, peppered with the sharp analysis that comes from having played, and got the job.

In the early years, Matthews’s background also helped him away from the booth. When the Royals visited their farm teams for exhibitions, Matthews often played a few innings.

“I knew you wouldn’t embarrass the club or yourself,” Whitey Herzog, the Royals’ manager, told him. “But the biggest reason was if you were out there and you blew an ankle, you could still broadcast. If one of my regular players was out there and blew an ankle, we’ve got problems.”

Those games, Matthews said, gave him credibility with the players, and they socialized together. Over time, he said, he got older but they did not. The average games also got longer, often by an hour or more.

But Matthews continues on, with the Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award on his résumé and seven years of calling games for postseason teams, all between 1976 and 1985. The Royals stayed competitive through the 1994 strike season, but had losing records in 17 of the 18 years that followed.

“I always thought that if I was only as good as the team, I probably should have accepted the offer from the Giants,” he said, laughing. “But you try to rise above it. I come out here and my hope is, when I sit down to do the game, both teams play well.”

The Royals, whose pitching and defense are among the best in the majors, have generally been competitive since last season, when they were 86-76 and stayed in the wild-card race until the final week.

To Matthews, though, the expanded playoff field has diluted the meaning of greatness. He does not mean to question fans’ enthusiasm for a playoff berth of any kind. But a lifetime in the game gives him a different perspective.

“I’ve never seen such a streaky season for almost every team in both leagues,” he said.

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“There’s no great team. There’s not even close to a great team. There’s some I’d call pretty good teams, certainly not great; and a lot of average teams; and about six or seven teams that aren’t good at all.

“I see a game almost every night and I see the quality of play, and I don’t know — if you have three or four really good teams, I think maybe that’s better than having just some good teams. Because I think if you have three or four really good teams, then everybody has to ratchet it up and push the quality of their play and players to reach that.

“But if everybody’s just kind of flopping along, average, that’s what you’ve got — you’ve got average.”

Then again, even an average team was beyond the Royals’ reach for many years. They may not be great, but they are approaching something that passes for it now.

The Historian

If you were born in 1968, as Curt Nelson was, then you came of age just as the Royals did. Nelson grew up in Tulsa to parents from Kansas City, and when he was 8, the Royals won their first division title. When he was 17, they won the World Series. He was hooked.

“If you had found the 12-year-old me coming to this ballpark and someone had asked, ‘What do you want to do for a living?’, I would have said, ‘I want to work for the Royals,’ ” he said.

First Nelson worked in the University of Missouri athletic department. He tried to open a sports bar, and went into publishing. But the Royals pulled at him, and he moved to Kansas City without a job.

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Curt Nelson, the director of the Royals Hall of Fame, which opened in 2009 as part of a stadium renovation, wanted to work for the team since childhood. Credit Tyler Kepner/The New York Times
The Royals had a seasonal opening — $7.25 per hour, maximum 30 hours a week — to help in group sales and pregame events. Nelson would be a 30-year-old intern, but all he wanted was to be in the building, to work in view of the outfield fountains and the famous crown scoreboard. Soon he made his mark.

“I got to be known as the guy who knows a lot about Royals history,” Nelson said.

“Somebody wanted to know something, it was like: ‘Go ask Curt. He’ll know.’ I kind of got that reputation.”

Nelson now serves as director of the Royals Hall of Fame, which opened in 2009 as part of the renovation of Kauffman Stadium, the team’s home since 1973. He can tell you where Paul Splittorff went to college (Morningside, in Iowa); where he was drafted (the 25th round in 1968); and produce a photo of Splittorff’s first minor league team, in Corning, N.Y., and a baseball from his 166th victory, the club record.

He can also tell you that Don Denkinger, the umpire who mistakenly called Jorge Orta safe at first to start the Royals’ fabled rally in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, called his very first game in the Royals’ franchise opener in 1969. He knows that it snowed the day the stadium opened, when the fountains were not yet working.

The museum sits above left field, part of a fan plaza that includes a carousel, a batting cage and a miniature golf course. Before the renovation, fans did not have access to the area beyond the outfield. It was meant to be admired, not experienced.

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“For those of us that have been coming to this ballpark since 1973, it’s a completely different view than you would normally have,” Nelson said. “It’s striking.”

The Royals opened their Hall of Fame before the other Missouri team, the far more successful St. Louis Cardinals, opened theirs. In the 1970s, Nelson noted, the Royals outdrew the Cardinals, the reverse of recent trends.

The Royals ranked in the top half of A.L. teams in attendance in each of the first 18 seasons at Kauffman Stadium, through 1990, when their roster included George Brett, Bo Jackson and Bret Saberhagen. They have not ranked in the top half since, although this year’s average attendance figure, 23,750, going into Tuesday’s game, is their highest in 20 years.

“Hopefully we’re rebuilding that, and I think we are,” Nelson said. “I think that’s coming. We have to be consistent about it, too. Last year we were 10 games over. This year we’re in a pennant race and trying to push it over the finish line.

“It can be done, that’s the thing, because it’s been done before. There’s no reason it can’t be done again.”

The Scout

Art Stewart never had a choice. He was a baseball man from the start.

“I was born on Babe Ruth’s birthday, the year he hit 60 home runs,” said Stewart, referring to 1927. “That’s what my mother always said when I was a little guy: ‘You’re meant to be in baseball.’ It’s been the love of my life, and nothing has changed.”

At 87, Stewart is still going strong, and this year he scouted dozens of prospects for the amateur draft. He is high on the team’s first pick, the left-hander Brandon Finnegan, who has already reached the majors.

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At age 87, Art Stewart, a longtime Royals scout, reviewed dozens of prospects for the amateur draft and released a book, "The Art of Scouting." Credit Steve Hebert for The New York Times
“He stays down in the zone and he’s got a Steve Carlton slider — a wipeout slider and a big-time out pitch,” Stewart said. “That’s why he’s on the fast track.”

Stewart is a senior adviser to General Manager Dayton Moore, whom he first met when Moore was a 17-year-old infield prospect in Omaha. Stewart was the Royals’ scouting director then, and he asked Moore to fill out an information card. He did not draft him.

But in the 1990s he did draft Johnny Damon, Carlos Beltran and Michael Tucker, who was traded for Jermaine Dye. The Royals had the makings of an outfield that could have stayed together, and been productive, for many years. But their timing was off.

Ewing Kauffman, the Royals’ first owner, died in 1993, and the franchise went into a trust until 2000, when the Glass family bought it. The mandate of the trust was not to lose money, and so the franchise routinely lost its best players. There were other reasons for the many lean years, but Kauffman’s death is considered by far the biggest.

“That’s when the organization went downhill,” Brett said.

Brett wrote the foreword to Stewart’s book, “The Art of Scouting,” released this year and written with Sam Mellinger. Few in the organization predate Brett, a second-round draft pick in 1971, but Stewart does. He was recruited by Kauffman from the Yankees in 1970.

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Stewart wears a sports coat almost everywhere, always with a gold logo pin affixed to the lapel. It has two small diamonds and a sapphire, commemorating his 40 years of service.

Stewart was there when Kauffman created the Royals Academy, an instructional school in Florida that found 14 future major leaguers, including Frank White and U.L. Washington, the double-play duo for the team’s first pennant winner, in 1980.

Kauffman made a fortune in pharmaceuticals and challenged those who worked for him to think of new ways to gain an edge. He demanded results, Stewart said, but paid well and treated employees with dignity. He designed the 1985 World Series ring, which Stewart always wears, to include 26 two-point diamonds, representing the number of clubs in the majors at the time, encircling a one-carat diamond on a blue face.

Stewart believes in the Royals’ future, largely because of the scouting staff Moore has assembled and retained. For all that has happened in the last two decades, Stewart does not hesitate when asked what the Royals stand for.

“Excellence,” he said. “It stands for excellence, and to be the best in the game. I’ll never forget Mr. Kauffman saying this, in one of our first meetings: ‘You must always remember ‘excellence’ is the word. I want you to dress like a big leaguer, behave like a big leaguer, carry yourself like a big leaguer and talk about the Kansas City Royals as an organization of excellence.’ That was his philosophy. I never forgot it.”

The Architect

The Royals’ first playoff appearance ended in heartbreak in 1976 when Chris Chambliss homered off Mark Littell to clinch the American League pennant in the Bronx. Dayton Moore, a 9-year-old from Wichita, Kan., wept.

Nine years later, Moore was driving through Missouri with a friend on a Sunday night in late October. They were heading back to Garden City Community College in Kansas after visiting friends in Illinois. The seventh game of the World Series beckoned.

“We decided we were just going to stop and watch the game,” Moore said.

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Royals Manager Ned Yost, right, and General Manager Dayton Moore before a game against the Indians on Sunday. Credit Charlie Riedel/Associated Press
He meant in person. They had no tickets, so they joined other fans on the grassy embankment along I-70. The Royals beat the Cardinals, 11-0, behind Saberhagen, the best 19th-round draft choice in franchise history.

Moore would coach in college, scout for the Atlanta Braves and then move up the ranks in their front office. He came to the Royals in 2006, the end of a five-year stretch in which the team lost 100 games four times. He and his staff were committed to a methodical rebuilding process.

“The Glass family’s been extremely patient with us,” Moore said. “If they would have gotten rid of us after Year 3 or 4, nobody would have probably said anything.”

This was the plan: Turn the existing top prospects Gordon and Billy Butler into quality major leaguers, then sign them to long-term contracts; add more homegrown talent and sign that group, too; then use the farm system to trade for veterans to supplement that core.

After the sixth full season of losing under Moore, he implemented the third phase of his plan and sent outfielder Wil Myers, pitcher Jake Odorizzi and others to Tampa Bay for James Shields and Wade Davis. The Royals may lose Shields as a free agent this winter, but he has delivered as promised, with quality innings and leadership. Davis, a failed starter, is a breakout star in the bullpen.

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The Royals still struggle for runs and could use a hitter like Myers, at least the version who won the Rookie of the Year award for the Rays last season. But Moore said he owed it to the players he had signed to give them a better chance to win. Shields and Davis have done that.

“Dayton did a good job of getting the right guys in here,” Gordon said. “It took a little time, but with scouting and building through the minor league system, it’s really evolved.”

When he worked for the Braves, Moore saw the evolution of baseball in Georgia, the way the game exploded in popularity at the youth level because of the Braves’ success. He has a 12-year-old son and takes pride in what he sees in Kansas City: children wearing T-shirts of Gordon and Salvador Perez and Eric Hosmer, not just Derek Jeter and David Ortiz.

That feeling explains his comment after last season, when Moore said that in a small way, he felt as if the Royals had won the World Series. In strictly personal terms, he insisted, the turnaround in the community was that significant. Professionally, he was not satisfied.

“It hurt not being in the playoffs,” Moore said. “Every year it hurts, and I understand the hurt in your stomach and your heart when you lose. But this year, I feel like we’ve got to push it through. I feel a sense of urgency, but also humility at the same time, knowing how fragile it is and where we’ve come from.”

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RECENT COMMENTS

Laura Black 2 hours ago
Thanks so very much, Tyler Kepner and the NY Times, for a terrific piece on the Kansas City Royals. It has been a lot of fun down though...
Michael Ebner 2 hours ago
Small market teams -- Royals, Brewers among them -- are so very good for the national pastime. It just shows you that big-market franchises...
Elinor 2 hours ago
The better team will win the Division; that's why I have the Tigers.
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The Star

As a young high school player, Alex Gordon played left field on a summer team that already had a third baseman. It was his only experience at the position until 2010, when the Royals sent him to the minors to learn it again.

The second overall pick in the draft five years earlier, from the University of Nebraska, Gordon had a .194 average and a label as a bust. But he never wanted out.

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Gordon received a Gatorade shower after his game-ending home run against the Twins. The last time he won a game with a home run, in 2010, he lifted the Royals out of last place for a day. Credit Jamie Squire/Getty Images
“There were times when I thought I might be somewhere else just because of the way things were going, but I never thought it would be better if I left here,” Gordon said. “That never crossed my mind. Through all the hard times, Dayton has always stuck with me.”

Back in Nebraska with the Royals’ Class AAA team in Omaha, Gordon poured himself into the task. His first step was poor, so he concentrated on getting as many repetitions as he could. During batting practice, when many outfielders shift around aimlessly, Gordon tried to simulate game situations, following balls off the hitter’s bat, studying the angles and applying his athleticism.

He has now won three Gold Gloves in a row, sticking to the same routine, and his defense helps gives him one of the best Wins Above Replacement values in baseball.

Fans sometimes chant “M-V-P” when he bats, though Gordon’s traditional numbers (a .280 average, with 18 homers and 63 runs batted in) would not suggest that.

“Am I an M.V.P. candidate? I don’t think so,” Gordon said. “That’s just my opinion. But winning makes everything better. I’m glad people notice overall defense and base running because since high school I always look, when the season’s over, at what can I do to improve my overall game.”

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Gordon’s set of skills would make an interesting test case in the open market. He can be a free agent after 2015 if he declines a player option, but he told The Kansas City Star he would exercise it and delay free agency. The statement was not binding, of course, but Gordon sounded sincere when he spoke of staying for the long haul, as Evan Longoria of the Rays and Dustin Pedroia of the Red Sox have done.

For now, Gordon added, all he really wants is to make this year special. That seemed unlikely after the All-Star Game, when the Royals shuffled through a listless three-game sweep in Boston. Manager Ned Yost gave a pep talk after that series, which helped, and two days later, in Chicago, the veteran Raul Ibanez called a 40-minute team meeting. Ibanez, who started the season with the Angels, implored the players to see themselves as the rest of the league does: as dangerous.

“I really don’t feel we brought that energy or passion in that Boston series,” Gordon said.

“That series kind of woke us up, and maybe got us going a little bit.”

The Royals went 24-6 after the Chicago meeting, gaining 11 games in the standings — from eight back in the division to three up. It fueled the hope that the Royals could soon celebrate a team accomplishment in a way they have not since Gordon was a toddler.

“We love the ’85 Royals, but they don’t have any other clips to show up on the video board, so it’s always about back in the day,” Gordon said. “We’re trying to make our own clips.”

The Legend

On Saturday, George Brett pulled on a V-neck jersey and threw out the ceremonial first pitch on Retro Night at the ballpark. The Royals celebrated 1974, right down to the seventh-inning stretch, when Barry Williams, who played Greg on “The Brady Bunch,” sang for the crowd. Nobody mentioned that on the same date in 1974 the Royals were in the middle of an eight-game losing streak.

This team has also cooled, and Saturday’s loss was their fifth in seven games. Brett listened to the Friday defeat on the radio, and was still mad hours later.

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Bret Saberhagen, right, and George Brett in 1985 as the Royals celebrated their only World Series title, over St. Louis. They have not even made the playoffs since, the longest drought in the four major North American team sports. Credit Cliff Schiappa/Associated Press
“This morning when I walked out to get the newspaper, I didn’t have that giddy-up,” Brett said. “Normally, I can’t wait to open the sports page when they’re doing good.”

Brett played all 21 seasons of his Hall of Fame career for the Royals. A bridge leading to the ballpark is named in his honor, the sign declaring him “Kansas City’s Hometown Hero,” even though he grew up in El Segundo, Calif.

Brett retired in 1993, when he was 40, and said he knew it was time during a road trip to Seattle, where he had asked his wife to meet him. By the time he joined her at hotel, after a long flight, it was past 3 a.m. Just like that, Brett said, it hit him: He was over all the travel, ready to settle down.

Brett’s first son was born in spring training of his final season, and two more sons soon followed. He coached them in Little League and flag football. He never left Kansas City, though it was not always easy being the public face of a bad team.

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“People used to ask me, when we had that stretch, ‘You still work for the Royals?’ — and I’d say, ‘Not really!’ ” Brett said. “Now people ask me and I say, ‘Hell, yeah, I do!’ I’m proud to be a member of this organization.”

Officially, Brett is the vice president for baseball operations, but he has no real responsibilities. He sits with Moore during games, offers opinions and lets Moore do with them as he pleases.

The old days come rushing back now and then, like during a recent series in Colorado, when Brett heard chants of “Let’s Go Royals” in the crowd. It delighted him, he said, to know that the Royals might still have a foothold in Denver. Before baseball expanded there, he said, it was Royals territory. On summer weekends, he said, the parking lots were jammed, the license plates from all over.

“They have no idea what it was like back then,” Brett said of the current Royals, “because they weren’t born.”

When the Royals fired their hitting coach last May — they did so again this May — Brett stepped into the role. He loved the players’ team-first attitude, he said, but thought they wore themselves out by taking too many swings in practice.

Brett resigned after two months, weary of the travel but also because he knew the Royals could not fire him, and he doubted he was making an impact. He is content to throw batting practice in spring training and leave the coaching to others.

“I don’t think I’m a good hitting coach because when I was here last year, players didn’t listen,” said Brett, 61. “Maybe I was out of touch with kids today, but I would offer advice and nobody did it. So I just said I must not be really good.

“The mental part, I think they got, but not the technical. It was an experiment that Dayton wanted me to try, I tried it. Some guys had better results, some didn’t. I just felt like I wasn’t really connecting with the players.”

But he still cares, and it bothers him that people lump in these Royals with the failed teams of the last 28 seasons. If they win the pennant, Brett said, he would be just as happy as the players. He sees their flaws, but he roots just the same.

“I wish Salvy would just take a pitch once in a while,” Brett said, watching the television in the press dining room as Perez fouled off a breaking ball. “He’s seen seven pitches tonight and he’s swung at all seven.”

Brett got up to leave, and Perez was called out on strikes. He laughed, ruefully.

“He took one,” Brett said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

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On his way to the elevator, the Royals’ best ambassador, the living link to their glory, extended his hand to a visitor and closed with an opening. It is one Brett hopes desperately to say again, to the rest of baseball, this October:

“Welcome to Kansas City.”

09-02-2014, 11:27 PM	#124
teedubya Most Valuable Poster Join Date: Oct 2003 Casino cash: $9480002	From the NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/sp...naissance.html KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Alex Gordon grew up in Lincoln, Neb., a three-hour drive from the glimmering major league ballpark that sits here off Interstate 70. Twice a summer, his family would visit for a weekend, splitting time between the stadium and an amusement park. Gordon has three brothers, one named Brett, after the best player in the complicated history of the Kansas City Royals. Gordon liked the Royals, too, but his favorite player, Ken Griffey Jr., did not play for them. Gordon, 30, has now been a Royal for eight seasons. He has never played elsewhere and does not want to. He once ended a game with a home run, in 2010. It lifted the Royals out of last place for the day, but by the end of that season they were back at the bottom. Continue reading the main story RELATED COVERAGE Chase Headley's single against David Price in Detroit meant he had at least one hit in 29 of the 30 current ball parks.Batting 1.000: Headley Has a Hit in Every Park SEPT. 1, 2014 The Mets’ Dilson Herrera, who made two errors against the Marlins on Monday, bobbling a ground ball in the third inning.Marlins 9, Mets 6: Six-Error Game Is Nothing New to the Mets SEPT. 1, 2014 Jonathan Papelbon and Carlos Ruiz after completing a no-hitter on Monday.Roundup: Four Phillies Team to Pitch A No-Hitter SEPT. 1, 2014 Naturally, things felt different last Tuesday, when Gordon came to bat against Glen Perkins, the Minnesota Twins’ All-Star closer, with a man on first and his team down by a run in the bottom of the ninth. The Royals were in first place in the American League Central. Up in the radio booth, a familiar voice told his listeners that the best teams find a way to win games like this. Of course, Gordon could not have heard that, though the broadcaster, Denny Matthews, did once cover a road game so sparsely attended that the Royals catcher later told him, “Good broadcast today, Denny.” But Gordon knows Matthews the way every Royals fan does, as the soundtrack to the team since its first game in 1969. Matthews, now 71, skips a few road trips these days. But basically he has seen it all, and if he did not exactly predict what happened next, he gave it the proper context. Almost on cue, Gordon connected for a game-winning home run. “You want to be the hero that helps the team win,” Gordon said by his locker a few days later. “Running around the bases, you’re almost like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ ” Matthews could. He made his observation and then let the roar of the crowd tell the story across the airwaves. Maybe, after the longest drought without a playoff appearance in the four major North American team sports, these Royals really will see October. “The way everything had been breaking for the team the last two or three weeks, everything was kind of going their way,” Matthews said. “You think back to all the pennant winners, they won a lot of games in a lot of strange ways, and we’re doing that. “So, is this your turn? I’m a big believer in, ‘It’s your turn.’ In ’85, I just felt like, this was it, it’s the Royals’ turn to win the World Series. It’s just your turn. The baseball gods have declared it to be so.” The baseball gods have a month to render their verdict on which teams advance and which teams go home, as the Royals have done every year since winning their only title in that charmed autumn of 1985. They sputtered at the end of a scintillating August, starving for runs before packed crowds. Still, the Royals, who visit Yankee Stadium this weekend, began September in first place. It was an exhilarating feeling for some Royals people who have felt so much pain and who hope they are seeing a renaissance at last. Continue reading the main story The Voice Sometimes, Denny Matthews wonders what would have happened if he had signed with the San Francisco Giants after his freshman year at Illinois Wesleyan, where he played second base. His double play partner, Doug Rader, played 11 seasons in the majors. His first radio partner, Buddy Blattner, played five. “Buddy said, ‘O.K., what if you had signed and made it to the big leagues?’ ” Matthews said last Saturday, in a suite near the Royals’ radio booth. " ‘You’d have been one of 25. Now you’re one of two. It’s a lot harder to get a big-league broadcasting job than it is to get a big-league playing job. And you last longer.” Photo Denny Matthews, 71, who received the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award in 2007, has been broadcasting for the team since its first game, in 1969. Credit Mike Groll/Associated Press Matthews has lasted the entirety of the Royals’ existence. Only two active broadcasters, Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrin of the Dodgers, have a longer tenure with one team. He got here with ingenuity, and without much experience, after passing on the pros to finish his degree. Matthews, who had called basketball in the winters during college, was intrigued by a chance to be the No. 2 voice for the expansion Royals. He took a tape recorder to a St. Louis Cardinals game and called the action from the stands. He sent Blattner two innings of his work, peppered with the sharp analysis that comes from having played, and got the job. In the early years, Matthews’s background also helped him away from the booth. When the Royals visited their farm teams for exhibitions, Matthews often played a few innings. “I knew you wouldn’t embarrass the club or yourself,” Whitey Herzog, the Royals’ manager, told him. “But the biggest reason was if you were out there and you blew an ankle, you could still broadcast. If one of my regular players was out there and blew an ankle, we’ve got problems.” Those games, Matthews said, gave him credibility with the players, and they socialized together. Over time, he said, he got older but they did not. The average games also got longer, often by an hour or more. But Matthews continues on, with the Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award on his résumé and seven years of calling games for postseason teams, all between 1976 and 1985. The Royals stayed competitive through the 1994 strike season, but had losing records in 17 of the 18 years that followed. “I always thought that if I was only as good as the team, I probably should have accepted the offer from the Giants,” he said, laughing. “But you try to rise above it. I come out here and my hope is, when I sit down to do the game, both teams play well.” The Royals, whose pitching and defense are among the best in the majors, have generally been competitive since last season, when they were 86-76 and stayed in the wild-card race until the final week. To Matthews, though, the expanded playoff field has diluted the meaning of greatness. He does not mean to question fans’ enthusiasm for a playoff berth of any kind. But a lifetime in the game gives him a different perspective. “I’ve never seen such a streaky season for almost every team in both leagues,” he said. Continue reading the main story “There’s no great team. There’s not even close to a great team. There’s some I’d call pretty good teams, certainly not great; and a lot of average teams; and about six or seven teams that aren’t good at all. “I see a game almost every night and I see the quality of play, and I don’t know — if you have three or four really good teams, I think maybe that’s better than having just some good teams. Because I think if you have three or four really good teams, then everybody has to ratchet it up and push the quality of their play and players to reach that. “But if everybody’s just kind of flopping along, average, that’s what you’ve got — you’ve got average.” Then again, even an average team was beyond the Royals’ reach for many years. They may not be great, but they are approaching something that passes for it now. The Historian If you were born in 1968, as Curt Nelson was, then you came of age just as the Royals did. Nelson grew up in Tulsa to parents from Kansas City, and when he was 8, the Royals won their first division title. When he was 17, they won the World Series. He was hooked. “If you had found the 12-year-old me coming to this ballpark and someone had asked, ‘What do you want to do for a living?’, I would have said, ‘I want to work for the Royals,’ ” he said. First Nelson worked in the University of Missouri athletic department. He tried to open a sports bar, and went into publishing. But the Royals pulled at him, and he moved to Kansas City without a job. Photo Curt Nelson, the director of the Royals Hall of Fame, which opened in 2009 as part of a stadium renovation, wanted to work for the team since childhood. Credit Tyler Kepner/The New York Times The Royals had a seasonal opening — $7.25 per hour, maximum 30 hours a week — to help in group sales and pregame events. Nelson would be a 30-year-old intern, but all he wanted was to be in the building, to work in view of the outfield fountains and the famous crown scoreboard. Soon he made his mark. “I got to be known as the guy who knows a lot about Royals history,” Nelson said. “Somebody wanted to know something, it was like: ‘Go ask Curt. He’ll know.’ I kind of got that reputation.” Nelson now serves as director of the Royals Hall of Fame, which opened in 2009 as part of the renovation of Kauffman Stadium, the team’s home since 1973. He can tell you where Paul Splittorff went to college (Morningside, in Iowa); where he was drafted (the 25th round in 1968); and produce a photo of Splittorff’s first minor league team, in Corning, N.Y., and a baseball from his 166th victory, the club record. He can also tell you that Don Denkinger, the umpire who mistakenly called Jorge Orta safe at first to start the Royals’ fabled rally in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, called his very first game in the Royals’ franchise opener in 1969. He knows that it snowed the day the stadium opened, when the fountains were not yet working. The museum sits above left field, part of a fan plaza that includes a carousel, a batting cage and a miniature golf course. Before the renovation, fans did not have access to the area beyond the outfield. It was meant to be admired, not experienced. Continue reading the main story “For those of us that have been coming to this ballpark since 1973, it’s a completely different view than you would normally have,” Nelson said. “It’s striking.” The Royals opened their Hall of Fame before the other Missouri team, the far more successful St. Louis Cardinals, opened theirs. In the 1970s, Nelson noted, the Royals outdrew the Cardinals, the reverse of recent trends. The Royals ranked in the top half of A.L. teams in attendance in each of the first 18 seasons at Kauffman Stadium, through 1990, when their roster included George Brett, Bo Jackson and Bret Saberhagen. They have not ranked in the top half since, although this year’s average attendance figure, 23,750, going into Tuesday’s game, is their highest in 20 years. “Hopefully we’re rebuilding that, and I think we are,” Nelson said. “I think that’s coming. We have to be consistent about it, too. Last year we were 10 games over. This year we’re in a pennant race and trying to push it over the finish line. “It can be done, that’s the thing, because it’s been done before. There’s no reason it can’t be done again.” The Scout Art Stewart never had a choice. He was a baseball man from the start. “I was born on Babe Ruth’s birthday, the year he hit 60 home runs,” said Stewart, referring to 1927. “That’s what my mother always said when I was a little guy: ‘You’re meant to be in baseball.’ It’s been the love of my life, and nothing has changed.” At 87, Stewart is still going strong, and this year he scouted dozens of prospects for the amateur draft. He is high on the team’s first pick, the left-hander Brandon Finnegan, who has already reached the majors. Photo At age 87, Art Stewart, a longtime Royals scout, reviewed dozens of prospects for the amateur draft and released a book, "The Art of Scouting." Credit Steve Hebert for The New York Times “He stays down in the zone and he’s got a Steve Carlton slider — a wipeout slider and a big-time out pitch,” Stewart said. “That’s why he’s on the fast track.” Stewart is a senior adviser to General Manager Dayton Moore, whom he first met when Moore was a 17-year-old infield prospect in Omaha. Stewart was the Royals’ scouting director then, and he asked Moore to fill out an information card. He did not draft him. But in the 1990s he did draft Johnny Damon, Carlos Beltran and Michael Tucker, who was traded for Jermaine Dye. The Royals had the makings of an outfield that could have stayed together, and been productive, for many years. But their timing was off. Ewing Kauffman, the Royals’ first owner, died in 1993, and the franchise went into a trust until 2000, when the Glass family bought it. The mandate of the trust was not to lose money, and so the franchise routinely lost its best players. There were other reasons for the many lean years, but Kauffman’s death is considered by far the biggest. “That’s when the organization went downhill,” Brett said. Brett wrote the foreword to Stewart’s book, “The Art of Scouting,” released this year and written with Sam Mellinger. Few in the organization predate Brett, a second-round draft pick in 1971, but Stewart does. He was recruited by Kauffman from the Yankees in 1970. Continue reading the main story Stewart wears a sports coat almost everywhere, always with a gold logo pin affixed to the lapel. It has two small diamonds and a sapphire, commemorating his 40 years of service. Stewart was there when Kauffman created the Royals Academy, an instructional school in Florida that found 14 future major leaguers, including Frank White and U.L. Washington, the double-play duo for the team’s first pennant winner, in 1980. Kauffman made a fortune in pharmaceuticals and challenged those who worked for him to think of new ways to gain an edge. He demanded results, Stewart said, but paid well and treated employees with dignity. He designed the 1985 World Series ring, which Stewart always wears, to include 26 two-point diamonds, representing the number of clubs in the majors at the time, encircling a one-carat diamond on a blue face. Stewart believes in the Royals’ future, largely because of the scouting staff Moore has assembled and retained. For all that has happened in the last two decades, Stewart does not hesitate when asked what the Royals stand for. “Excellence,” he said. “It stands for excellence, and to be the best in the game. I’ll never forget Mr. Kauffman saying this, in one of our first meetings: ‘You must always remember ‘excellence’ is the word. I want you to dress like a big leaguer, behave like a big leaguer, carry yourself like a big leaguer and talk about the Kansas City Royals as an organization of excellence.’ That was his philosophy. I never forgot it.” The Architect The Royals’ first playoff appearance ended in heartbreak in 1976 when Chris Chambliss homered off Mark Littell to clinch the American League pennant in the Bronx. Dayton Moore, a 9-year-old from Wichita, Kan., wept. Nine years later, Moore was driving through Missouri with a friend on a Sunday night in late October. They were heading back to Garden City Community College in Kansas after visiting friends in Illinois. The seventh game of the World Series beckoned. “We decided we were just going to stop and watch the game,” Moore said. Photo Royals Manager Ned Yost, right, and General Manager Dayton Moore before a game against the Indians on Sunday. Credit Charlie Riedel/Associated Press He meant in person. They had no tickets, so they joined other fans on the grassy embankment along I-70. The Royals beat the Cardinals, 11-0, behind Saberhagen, the best 19th-round draft choice in franchise history. Moore would coach in college, scout for the Atlanta Braves and then move up the ranks in their front office. He came to the Royals in 2006, the end of a five-year stretch in which the team lost 100 games four times. He and his staff were committed to a methodical rebuilding process. “The Glass family’s been extremely patient with us,” Moore said. “If they would have gotten rid of us after Year 3 or 4, nobody would have probably said anything.” This was the plan: Turn the existing top prospects Gordon and Billy Butler into quality major leaguers, then sign them to long-term contracts; add more homegrown talent and sign that group, too; then use the farm system to trade for veterans to supplement that core. After the sixth full season of losing under Moore, he implemented the third phase of his plan and sent outfielder Wil Myers, pitcher Jake Odorizzi and others to Tampa Bay for James Shields and Wade Davis. The Royals may lose Shields as a free agent this winter, but he has delivered as promised, with quality innings and leadership. Davis, a failed starter, is a breakout star in the bullpen. Continue reading the main story The Royals still struggle for runs and could use a hitter like Myers, at least the version who won the Rookie of the Year award for the Rays last season. But Moore said he owed it to the players he had signed to give them a better chance to win. Shields and Davis have done that. “Dayton did a good job of getting the right guys in here,” Gordon said. “It took a little time, but with scouting and building through the minor league system, it’s really evolved.” When he worked for the Braves, Moore saw the evolution of baseball in Georgia, the way the game exploded in popularity at the youth level because of the Braves’ success. He has a 12-year-old son and takes pride in what he sees in Kansas City: children wearing T-shirts of Gordon and Salvador Perez and Eric Hosmer, not just Derek Jeter and David Ortiz. That feeling explains his comment after last season, when Moore said that in a small way, he felt as if the Royals had won the World Series. In strictly personal terms, he insisted, the turnaround in the community was that significant. Professionally, he was not satisfied. “It hurt not being in the playoffs,” Moore said. “Every year it hurts, and I understand the hurt in your stomach and your heart when you lose. But this year, I feel like we’ve got to push it through. I feel a sense of urgency, but also humility at the same time, knowing how fragile it is and where we’ve come from.” Continue reading the main story RECENT COMMENTS Laura Black 2 hours ago Thanks so very much, Tyler Kepner and the NY Times, for a terrific piece on the Kansas City Royals. It has been a lot of fun down though... Michael Ebner 2 hours ago Small market teams -- Royals, Brewers among them -- are so very good for the national pastime. It just shows you that big-market franchises... Elinor 2 hours ago The better team will win the Division; that's why I have the Tigers. SEE ALL COMMENTS WRITE A COMMENT The Star As a young high school player, Alex Gordon played left field on a summer team that already had a third baseman. It was his only experience at the position until 2010, when the Royals sent him to the minors to learn it again. The second overall pick in the draft five years earlier, from the University of Nebraska, Gordon had a .194 average and a label as a bust. But he never wanted out. Photo Gordon received a Gatorade shower after his game-ending home run against the Twins. The last time he won a game with a home run, in 2010, he lifted the Royals out of last place for a day. Credit Jamie Squire/Getty Images “There were times when I thought I might be somewhere else just because of the way things were going, but I never thought it would be better if I left here,” Gordon said. “That never crossed my mind. Through all the hard times, Dayton has always stuck with me.” Back in Nebraska with the Royals’ Class AAA team in Omaha, Gordon poured himself into the task. His first step was poor, so he concentrated on getting as many repetitions as he could. During batting practice, when many outfielders shift around aimlessly, Gordon tried to simulate game situations, following balls off the hitter’s bat, studying the angles and applying his athleticism. He has now won three Gold Gloves in a row, sticking to the same routine, and his defense helps gives him one of the best Wins Above Replacement values in baseball. Fans sometimes chant “M-V-P” when he bats, though Gordon’s traditional numbers (a .280 average, with 18 homers and 63 runs batted in) would not suggest that. “Am I an M.V.P. candidate? I don’t think so,” Gordon said. “That’s just my opinion. But winning makes everything better. I’m glad people notice overall defense and base running because since high school I always look, when the season’s over, at what can I do to improve my overall game.” Continue reading the main story Gordon’s set of skills would make an interesting test case in the open market. He can be a free agent after 2015 if he declines a player option, but he told The Kansas City Star he would exercise it and delay free agency. The statement was not binding, of course, but Gordon sounded sincere when he spoke of staying for the long haul, as Evan Longoria of the Rays and Dustin Pedroia of the Red Sox have done. For now, Gordon added, all he really wants is to make this year special. That seemed unlikely after the All-Star Game, when the Royals shuffled through a listless three-game sweep in Boston. Manager Ned Yost gave a pep talk after that series, which helped, and two days later, in Chicago, the veteran Raul Ibanez called a 40-minute team meeting. Ibanez, who started the season with the Angels, implored the players to see themselves as the rest of the league does: as dangerous. “I really don’t feel we brought that energy or passion in that Boston series,” Gordon said. “That series kind of woke us up, and maybe got us going a little bit.” The Royals went 24-6 after the Chicago meeting, gaining 11 games in the standings — from eight back in the division to three up. It fueled the hope that the Royals could soon celebrate a team accomplishment in a way they have not since Gordon was a toddler. “We love the ’85 Royals, but they don’t have any other clips to show up on the video board, so it’s always about back in the day,” Gordon said. “We’re trying to make our own clips.” The Legend On Saturday, George Brett pulled on a V-neck jersey and threw out the ceremonial first pitch on Retro Night at the ballpark. The Royals celebrated 1974, right down to the seventh-inning stretch, when Barry Williams, who played Greg on “The Brady Bunch,” sang for the crowd. Nobody mentioned that on the same date in 1974 the Royals were in the middle of an eight-game losing streak. This team has also cooled, and Saturday’s loss was their fifth in seven games. Brett listened to the Friday defeat on the radio, and was still mad hours later. Photo Bret Saberhagen, right, and George Brett in 1985 as the Royals celebrated their only World Series title, over St. Louis. They have not even made the playoffs since, the longest drought in the four major North American team sports. Credit Cliff Schiappa/Associated Press “This morning when I walked out to get the newspaper, I didn’t have that giddy-up,” Brett said. “Normally, I can’t wait to open the sports page when they’re doing good.” Brett played all 21 seasons of his Hall of Fame career for the Royals. A bridge leading to the ballpark is named in his honor, the sign declaring him “Kansas City’s Hometown Hero,” even though he grew up in El Segundo, Calif. Brett retired in 1993, when he was 40, and said he knew it was time during a road trip to Seattle, where he had asked his wife to meet him. By the time he joined her at hotel, after a long flight, it was past 3 a.m. Just like that, Brett said, it hit him: He was over all the travel, ready to settle down. Brett’s first son was born in spring training of his final season, and two more sons soon followed. He coached them in Little League and flag football. He never left Kansas City, though it was not always easy being the public face of a bad team. Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story “People used to ask me, when we had that stretch, ‘You still work for the Royals?’ — and I’d say, ‘Not really!’ ” Brett said. “Now people ask me and I say, ‘Hell, yeah, I do!’ I’m proud to be a member of this organization.” Officially, Brett is the vice president for baseball operations, but he has no real responsibilities. He sits with Moore during games, offers opinions and lets Moore do with them as he pleases. The old days come rushing back now and then, like during a recent series in Colorado, when Brett heard chants of “Let’s Go Royals” in the crowd. It delighted him, he said, to know that the Royals might still have a foothold in Denver. Before baseball expanded there, he said, it was Royals territory. On summer weekends, he said, the parking lots were jammed, the license plates from all over. “They have no idea what it was like back then,” Brett said of the current Royals, “because they weren’t born.” When the Royals fired their hitting coach last May — they did so again this May — Brett stepped into the role. He loved the players’ team-first attitude, he said, but thought they wore themselves out by taking too many swings in practice. Brett resigned after two months, weary of the travel but also because he knew the Royals could not fire him, and he doubted he was making an impact. He is content to throw batting practice in spring training and leave the coaching to others. “I don’t think I’m a good hitting coach because when I was here last year, players didn’t listen,” said Brett, 61. “Maybe I was out of touch with kids today, but I would offer advice and nobody did it. So I just said I must not be really good. “The mental part, I think they got, but not the technical. It was an experiment that Dayton wanted me to try, I tried it. Some guys had better results, some didn’t. I just felt like I wasn’t really connecting with the players.” But he still cares, and it bothers him that people lump in these Royals with the failed teams of the last 28 seasons. If they win the pennant, Brett said, he would be just as happy as the players. He sees their flaws, but he roots just the same. “I wish Salvy would just take a pitch once in a while,” Brett said, watching the television in the press dining room as Perez fouled off a breaking ball. “He’s seen seven pitches tonight and he’s swung at all seven.” Brett got up to leave, and Perez was called out on strikes. He laughed, ruefully. “He took one,” Brett said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY 13 COMMENTS On his way to the elevator, the Royals’ best ambassador, the living link to their glory, extended his hand to a visitor and closed with an opening. It is one Brett hopes desperately to say again, to the rest of baseball, this October: “Welcome to Kansas City.”
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