On the radio pre-game a woman called up upset about the steroid scandal and she asked “What sort of message does this send to the children of today?”
I have two problems with that. First – anyone who wants to be a better player bad enough to take a drug that causes something called “testicular atrophy” is someone I want on my team. I think we should be asking the rest of the players why they feel that their testicles are so much more important than the team doing well.
Second, I don’t get why she added the “of today” part to her “What sort of message does this send to the children of today?” question. The children of the past are either grown up or dead – either way they should be mature enough to deal with some ball players taking drugs. If it’s possible for the children of the future to get the message it means they’ve mastered time travel. If that’s the case, I’d have to think that they have found more interesting things to do than worry about that baseball players taking steroids. I just don’t think she needed the “of today” part of her question.
The Royals actually had a chance to sweep a couple of series I saw. Both times some people brought brooms with them to the game. Get it? Brooms…sweep! My, how clever! I wonder if the people who bring their brooms with them to the ballpark think that the people on the other team will see it and get mad. These guys are so rich they will never have to even touch a broom for the rest of their lives, and you think they’ll be hurt that you brought your broom to a ballgame? If they wanted to, they could bring their staff of round the clock Mexican housekeepers to the stadium. That trumps a broom any day. I don’t know for sure (unfortuntly), but I’d bet that an average salary of over three million a year would give someone pretty thick skin.
The Royals built the world’s largest hi-def video board this off season. Little known fact: It’s impossible to not to look like a dork when they put your face on the jumbo-tron. Like Dylan said, “dignity ain’t ever been photographed”. Most people seem to want to point to something when they’re on camera. What they point to doesn’t seem important. They’ll point at their beer glass if that’s all they can find. They’ve put me on the jumbo-tron a couple of times. I just try to pretend that I don’t know I’m on the screen. That’s dumb too because there is really no way NOT to know that you’re on an 105 ft giant TV. So I’m not fooling anyone.
Last Sunday the Royals played the Blue Jays. That means that they tried to get everyone to sing both “The Star Spangled Banner” and “O’ Canada“. Plus every Sunday they sing “God Bless America” during the seventh inning stretch. Then “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”. Finally, it’s become some sort of horrible tradition for them to have a sing-a-long to that “Friends In Low Places” song every game. I’ve been to concerts where there was less singing. I worry about this trend more that I do about any steroid scandal.
The guy on the left is Jimmy Gobble. He’s a relief pitcher for the Royals. The guy on the right is Rusty Kuntz. He used to play for the Tigers, but now he’s the Royal’s first base coach. Before the Friday night game I saw them standing next to each other – I tried to get a picture of them like that, but someone walked in front of them then they wandered off in different directions, so I wasn’t able to get a picture of the backs of their jerseys together reading “GOBBLE KUNTZ”. Actually, Rusty pronounces his name “Koontz”, but it still would’ve made a cool picture.
These are some pictures I did take that I thought turned out nice. I don’t know why anyone reading this would care about them, but here they are anyway -
