I had the pleasure of watching the Royals play last night. Holy craaaap is that a shit show.
Got to see Luke Hochaver back up a relay throw then saunter back to the mound with his head down while the batter went from first to third before he noticed the play was still going on. Then, John Bale comes in in relief, promptly loads the bases with one out, gets a comebacker, and instead of going home, he inexplicably spins toward second base…and throws the ball into right field. That’s right, I said right field, not center field.
I guess it wasn’t so inexplicable…he does play for the Royals after all.
Quote Bob Dutton of the KC Star this morning: “Just 31 more games, Royals fans. Thirty-one freakin’ games….”
I don’t really know the reason that I’m writing this this morning. If you want the stories of hilarious ineptitude, read Poz’s bolg. If you want mindless optimism, read Rany. If you want the white flag, read Craig Brown.
It’s hard for me to even muster a fart joke.
But here’s one anyway: The Royals have just extended Dayton Moore thru 2014.
This seems to me like more of a death sentence than a vote of confidence. Moore has made so many inexplicable moves over the past 12 months that nobody would be able to lead the Royals out of the cavern of bad contracts and less than average talent that they are currently in.
I could go thru every move, pointing out why each was such a reach, and how any dummy could have seen the contracts given to Guillen, Jacobs, Farnsworth, etc. would blow up like the Hindenburg, but that’s not really the point.
Point is, this is the team that has been built, and the team that we are unfortunately going to be stuck with for the 2010 season. The payroll is already tied up with the contracts mentioned earlier, so there are very little changes that can actually be made. Moore played his hand before the beginning of this season, and that hand had burst into flames…you might as well keep him holding the cards.
I can only believe that, like any other person in sports, nothing hurts more to Dayton Moore than losing. Firing him is not a punishment. Ensuring that he goes down with the ship is.
Not everybody can be fortunate enough to find a life raft. This week’s lucky recipient of the “Get out of Jail Free” card?? Chan Gailey!!
Todd Haley will for now take over the Chiefs play-calling dooty (spelling correct). So, firing your Offensive Coordinator before the season even starts does not exactly inspire confidence in your team or fan base, but seriously, what did you expect??
Whitlock would have you believe that this was a move inspired only by Haley’s arrogance, and unwillingness to listen to anybody but himself, and if this were the case, Gailey should have been let go at the end of last season.
But, you have to think that these two men, being professionals, thought that they could at least get close to getting on the same page. While we now know that this isn’t the case, would you have rather gone into the regular season hanging on to a relationship that you knew wasn’t going to work??
I tend to take the side of Larry Johnson in this particular case. He believes that these two men, having had success in the NFL before, were too bullheaded to co-exist in the same offensive scheme, and the sooner they got out of the way of each other, the better.
There’s no need to drag a dysfunctional relationship out into the regular season. This franchise has had a penchant for dragging those relationships out for years longer than necessary; it’s good to see we’re not making the same mistake again.
Still, the honeymoon for Haley and Pioli seems to coming to a close. We all knew the Cheifs were going to suck, but we at least thought there would be some modest improvement. We’ll see how good the tough-guy act works when after we get smoked 37-3 by the Giants.
Look at the bright side, though…at least Chan got to keep his jaw as a parting gift.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:20pm
This is just how it goes at this point, I guess. I mean, I leave for a vacation thinking that maybe, just maybe, I might come back to some sort of astonishingly great news about KC sports, and this is what I get. Stay tuned for my live blog from the Dome here in St. Louis on Thursday with one of my favorite contributors, Hippolito Pichardo. We should be drunk by game time.