Kansas City: Premier Destination For Portly, Imprisoned Baseball Fans

Don’t you just hate it when you really have your heart set on catching the Red Sox/Royals series, and then you go and get busted for “interference with official acts and violation of a protective order”? Yeah, us too! I mean, here you are looking forward to seeing a mediocre baseball team play a team with the most insufferable fans in the game (“Sully! We drove wicked fah to see the Sawx in this town with bah-becue!”), and then an arrest comes your way. Sigh; life is unfair. Oh, unless you happen to be imprisoned in Keosaqua, Iowa, in which case: have fun at the game!

An Iowa man serving a 10-day jail sentence walked out of jail on Wednesday to attend a baseball game in Kansas City with his family…

Barker will attend the Red Sox game in Kansas City with his father and brother. Barker’s father, Norman, said Wednesday that the family had been planning the trip for 3 months and they haven’t been able to attend a game in 25 years.

Waggoner said Barker’s request was approved “as a special consideration for the family.”

Um. Hadn’t been able to attend a game in 25 years? Perhaps you could have done so had you avoided every Dunkin’ Donuts outlet you passed in that time, sir. And what’s with the general subversion of justice here? Wayne Knight Mr. Barker was convicted of a crime (harassing a local family by calling as many as 60 times a night) — and thus forfeited his right to attend any and all sporting events during the period of his sentence. Nah, nothing about this adds up at all. Glad you chose our city, though.

Photo via KMBC.

Royals win fourth in a row; still own second-worst record in majors. Bravo, guys.

Royals Fans Celebrate Greinke Achievement With Stuttering, Faux-Cyrillic Signage

Man, we hope these folks kept the reciept from the Novelty Letter Shoppe…someone sold them some bum “K” panels.

Reason #6 To Continue Watching Royals: Betancourt Can Expel Baseballs From His Benchwarmer

This follows the fine tradition of Royals players not only playing like crap, but…well, you see where we’re going with this.

Royals BaseBowel: True. Brown. Tradition.

Royals Fail In Baseballing, Excel In Good Ol’ American-ing

This is a photo I took myself at game 2 of today’s Angels/Royals twofer. As you can see, a Kansas City resident is proudly digging into his Sheridan’s custard in an attempt to win… a free t-shirt. Bravo, be-sunglassed competitive eater. Tonight was a glorious night for baseball, and I decided to share a few more snapshots of the state of affairs over at “The K” (because the team always insists on putting annoying quotation marks around the stadium’s nickname), where baseball is not quite the organization’s specialty and laughter is plentiful. Unfortunately, the LOLing too often comes at the expense of the team and the franchise. Read on for a glimpse of life at the Truman Sports Complex.

Underwhelming Royals ‘Hitter’ Guillen Feels Guilty Over Salary, Almost Promises To Give Some Back

Been out to a Royals game lately? If so, you know that outfielder Jose Guillen — that erstwhile slugger signed by the team to a ridiculous 3-year, $36 million contract — is hardly living up to his reputation. What he is doing, though, is coming clean about his personal regret over his sorry performance. See, he doesn’t deserve the money he’s making if he’s going to play like this. And he’s the first to admit it — right before he lulls you into a “suck”-tinged hypnosis:

“I hate making excuses,” he said. “If I suck, then I suck. And I suck. That’s the way I’m playing. If you suck, you suck. You have to take responsibility in this game. Right now, that’s the way I feel.

“Yes, I suck.”

To sum up: there’s some sucking going on. Which seems obvious. But the bigger question is this: if athletes can load their contracts with all kinds of performance incentives, can the organization actually demand the return of money if a player does not live up to expectations? (See “Jones, Andruw.”) Put another way: will Jose now offer to buy tickets for everyone that doesn’t make $12 million a year? Well… very nearly so.

“Sometimes, I feel I should take money out of my own pocket and buy tickets for every fan. Because you know what? For a $12-million man, these are not the numbers you should be expecting. I admit it. I’m not playing to my potential.”

Aha! Sometimes he wants to. Of course, we’re guessing that if that time arrived, he’d cave. As for the mystery of Jose’s lack of production: is it really such a mystery? Take a look at Jose’s career stats. Average in 2003? .311. 2004? .294. Every year since has seen a decline, starting in 2005. OBP and slugging have also taken a nose dive. Gee… what else started in 2005 that could possibly explain a drop in offensive production?

KC Star Threatens Vengeance Upon Readership With Ominous Front Page Warning

Surely the intention of this headline was to urge patience for a future ball game, but it comes off as something Snidely Whipflash would say while shaking his fist after his latest plot has been foiled:

Defiant Royals Aficionado Creates Saddest Fan Video Ever

KC’s hometown baseballers are not known for anything resembling “winning.” But that’s not going to stop Royals fans from spending valuable time manufacturing meticulously created videos to boost fan morale. Here’s a particularly sad one, set to the karaoke staple “Don’t Stop Believin'”:

Aw, how cute. What’s especially sad is that his alleged 2009-centric video only lasts about 90 seconds with images from the current season, then is forced to resort to old photos of Bo Jackson and the ’85 championship squad. Meanwhile, the team the video supports is an uninspiring 37-48, left its best pitching behind in the month of April, and is watching its manager slowly morph into Wyatt Earp.

435 South Still Poisoning Local Minds With Unreadable Prose, Mephistophelian Commercial Focus

Back in our State of the Line days, yours truly turned a mocking critical eye to 435 South, the execrably bad lifestyle magazine of Leawood and the tonier portions of Overland Park. (Olathe’s on its own, I guess.) That, however, was in February; surely that journalistic abomination would have slipped the surly bonds of print and faded into the ether of magazines past by now, right? Ha, no. It’s still around, and its web site is a gloriously hedonistic snapshot of what life is (apparently) like in that particular corner of Johnson County. Today we take a look at a very special message from publisher Kathy Boos. She’d like to recommend a summer activity to you: it’s called a “baseball game,” and it’s some newfangled sport brought to town by that debonair rogue Abner Doubleday.

Royals Lose Again to Major League Baseball’s Most Unfortunately Moniker’d Team

Seriously, can sports media stop using the term “D-Backs” to refer to the Arizona Diamondbacks? I end up in a fit of juvenile sniggering every time I hear the nickname due to its audible similarity to another popular colloquialism.