Kansas City Royals: Drama With Athletics Should Die Down

The Kansas City Royals square off against the Oakland Athletics this weekend in a three-game series. Don’t expect the drama from last year to carry over into this season.

Most Kansas City Royals fans last year had one thing in common – They hated the Oakland Athletics.

This was a team that the Royals humiliated in the Wild Card game back in 2014, coming back down four runs to eventually win the game in walk-off fashion. The Royals went on to win the American League pennant that season and made it to Game 7 of the World Series before ultimately falling 90 feet short.

One of the teams to show some annoyance with the Royals early on last season were that very same team that started the Forever Royal insanity – the Oakland A’s.

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Only two weeks into the 2015 season, the Royals hosted the A’s at Kauffman Stadium. The A’s were trying to regain the lead, and Brett Lawrie made an infamous slide into second base, plowing right into Alcides Escobar in the process.

Escobar was taken out of the game and Lawrie was called out, but the craziness continued. Lawrie became public enemy number one in Kansas City that night with his dirty slide into Escobar and was booed consistently throughout the night. The Royals won that game by a score of 6-4.

The following evening, Yordano Ventura proceeded to bean Brett Lawrie after one of his teammates hit a three-run homer to make it a 5-0 game. The fans continued to boo Lawrie all night, as the Royals dropped that game.

The next day was when the fun really began, as then Athletic (then Astro, now Dodger) Scott Kazmir hit Lorenzo Cain with a pitch in the first inning. He wasn’t thrown out, but both benches were warned.

Kelvin Herrera entered the game in the seventh inning with the Royals trailing 2-1. Lawrie came up to the plate, and Herrera threw a 100 MPH fastball behind the third baseman’s head. Herrera was immediately ejected from the game, and the fans cheered the move by Kelvin.

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The Royals went on to complete yet another comeback, winning the game 4-2, and providing one of the weirdest and most dramatic weekends of baseball the 2015 season saw.

When the teams met again in late June, nothing weird happened between the two sides, and I fully believe that’s how things will be this season between the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland Athletics.

The only reason Royals fans hated the A’s after that first game was because of Brett Lawrie. Lawrie now plays for the Chicago White Sox, whom the Royals will see 19 times in 2016 (he picked the other public enemy for Kansas City fans) so the beef with Oakland should evaporate this season.

Billy Butler is a member of the Athletics too (though he’s only appeared in six games to this point), which should help the Royals to forgive the A’s.

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The KC Royals are currently 7-2 (as of Friday afternoon) and have proven that they’re still flying high after winning the World Series in November. They need to shut out any distractions and remember that they’re the reigning World Series champions. No other team can say that.

It’s that reason (well, and Lawrie being on another team) that the Royals can forget about the crap with Oakland last year and start fresh against them in 2016. Sweeping them wouldn’t be a bad way to go, though.