Kansas City Royals: Loyal Fan Gives Heartfelt Thanks
By Paul York
Photo by Alexis Guetzlaff with Studio 178
It all eventually comes full circle.
The curtain eventually closes on those days in the sun, and I’m left with exactly what I started with–my Kansas City Royals. I feel extremely fortunate to have spent many an Opening Day with my mom, and get to talk baseball with her pretty much on a daily basis.
Dad, well, he was a little more work.
My dad ditched professional baseball after the strike in ’94. So, for about 20 years, I was robbed of sharing those moments of talking Royals baseball with my dad. Place the blame wherever you will, but I just know it sucked. I guess the silver lining to that is that we didn’t miss talking about much over those 20 years because the Royals were a dumpster fire of an organization, from top to bottom.
Well, time heals all wounds, I guess. As the Royals started winning again, and as the old man could hear the genuine excitement in my voice about our hometown Royals, I think it may have given him some flashbacks of getting to enjoy some of those Royals golden years with me, and little by little he started following baseball again.
Now, he lives in middle-of-nowhere Minnesota, so getting to watch the games with him isn’t a possibility. Last postseason, however, we got to share a few phone calls and texts filled with excitement about the Royals.
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This postseason, a few more texts, and sharing World Series Champion texts meant I got to enjoy two World Series titles, in some way, with my dad. I’d have given almost anything to get to watch these games with my dad, and while my excitement about the Royals winning it all was high, it would’ve been higher. It just felt a little incomplete.
Ah, but there’s a remedy to that. In this case, I filled that void by putting my three-year old son, Alexander, on my shoulders, and introducing him to 800,000 of my closest Royals fan buddies at the parade for OUR 2015 World Champion Kansas City Royals.
So, thanks Dad. You did your job.
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I’ve now passed the Royals-fever baton on to my son, and look forward to our hometown baseball team being the host of many more father-son memories for the foreseeable future.