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It's hard to imagine the Kansas City Royals being the feel-good story of the summer. Teams that exhibit such rampant futility rarely are. But if you happened to be watching the Royals-A's series this weekend, you saw how lovable these losers can be.
They've been mocked and taunted. To be charitable, they have a four-A roster -- too good for Triple-A, not quite big leaguers. Their ownership is frugal to the point of embarrassment.
And yet there was Jose Lima on Friday night, with his team losing its 19th straight game, sitting on the steps of the dugout in Oakland, cheering his teammates to the last out of a 4-0 loss. Lima pitched the first six innings of the game, then stayed in the dugout the rest of the way. More often than not, a starting pitcher heads for the clubhouse after being removed from a game.
The next night, when the Royals broke their losing streak with a 2-1 win, Lima led a charge out of the dugout at game's end. It looked more like a team winning the pennant than a team ending a near-historic losing streak.
Lima, of course, is always interested in finding the red lights of the television cameras. Without getting too deep into it, the Royals provided a fascinating case study. They weren't embarrassed about getting excited about breaking their losing streak. It felt good, and they weren't too cool to let it show.
Saturday's starting pitcher, Mike Wood, said, "It felt like a playoff game." Really. It looked like one, too, and that's not a criticism. Strange to say, but it was a good look.
This Week's List:
• And now for the anti-Royals: Joe Torre, apparently fighting for his job.
• Besides, after a long train ride it's tough to head for the commissioner's office and make a case for yourself: One of the most anachronistic traditions in professional sports is Major League Baseball's outdated rule that a player has to wait till his team plays in New York to get his hearing.
• There are many ways to get rich -- the lottery, savvy stock picks, California real estate -- but here's another way that might be quicker and easier than all of them: Move to Westbrook, Maine, and become a barber. Judging from the Little League World Series, there's nobody cutting hair in that town.
• It would be hard to get him to sit still for the guy sculpting his bust, but thinking about Leo Mazzone's track record made me wonder: Will there ever be a time when a coach gets consideration for the Hall of Fame?
• At the risk of sounding like an old guy complaining about outfielders' catching the ball with one hand: The reliance on pitch counts and the concept of the "quality start" -- six innings, three-earned-run maximum -- have taught starting pitchers to change their goal from winning the game to putting their teams in a position to win.
• Not to pick on a rookie who probably can't say exactly what he feels, but here's A's pitcher Joe Blanton after he pitched seven shutout innings and was removed because of a pitch count even though he struck out the side in his final inning: "Hopefully we'll be able to pull out the win, but that's my job, to keep us in the game."
