MentalDisabldLst said:
I guess I see your point, and I like a good underdog. I just saw this game as the two best underdog stories playing each other, so there wasn't really a top dog to root against.
Regardless, KC is pretty fun to watch, so I'll be rooting for them next round. At least Shields gets another shot at not-sucking. And yeah, Frat, a Pittsburgh-KC world series would be incredible, not least for the great ballparks involved.
So I was watching the game last night with a dyed-in-the-wool Kansas City fan. I mean this guy's a fan from birth - his parents had tickets to Game 7 of the '85 World Series. He has never, in his entire remembered life, watched the Royals play a meaningful game in October; in fact, apart from last year's halfhearted attempt at a playoff run (or maybe the weird 2003 year where the team collapsed in September), he'd never even seen the Royals play a meaningful game in September before this year. Rooting for the Royals has, in every year where he's been old enough to be a fan, been an April to July occupation where there's never been a reason to turn the TV on in September. Mind you, he's currently 31 years old.
Now, "The fans have never seen a playoff game" is a statement that's been made many times in the run-up to the postseason, but it's hard to really understand the implications of that if you don't get to see it up close. Everything, and I mean everything, was new to my friend about watching October baseball with a rooting interest. [SIZE=13.63636302948px] [/SIZE]
Watching him go through the game last night was like watching a toddler go through an amusement park for the first time; it was exciting and stimulating and frenetic and he couldn't process any of it. At one point, TBS said something about the TBS Postseason Show coming up after the game, and he turned to me and said, "I've never seen a Royals game where they've had a postseason show afterwards."
([SIZE=13.63636302948px]I mean, think about it - before this year, KC fans would have killed for a season like, say, the 2009 Red Sox.[/SIZE]
)
I would have rooted for the A's to beat pretty much any other team in the field. But let's be honest - if the A's won last night and then got swept by LAA next week, A's fans would consider the season a disappointment. But with the Royals' winning last night? KC fans will be talking about that game for the next 50 years. Last night was the greatest thing that he (or I) can remember [SIZE=13.63636302948px]ever [/SIZE]
happening to the Royals.