Kansas City Royals: End of the Forever Royal Era
By Jesse Holt
The Kansas City Royals and their fans makeup
As I previously stated, it’s no surprise the Royals began bleeding fans in the mid-2000’s. For good reason. People just don’t get excited to see their favorite team suffer more and more soul-crushing defeats.
The Wild Card game changed baseball in Kansas City forever.
With the historic ineptitude shown by the franchise during that time period, it’s no shocker at all that attendance numbers were dropping for the boys in blue. The Royals had been bad for so long that even an improved team was not drawing. Ned Yost even called out the fans weeks before the infamous Wild Card game for failing to put butts in seats.
"“I mean, what, 13,000 people got to see a great game? We’re in a pennant race, yeah. We’ve been working on trying to build this team for the last three or four years to put ourselves in a position where we can contend for a championship. And not only the division, but we want to contend for a world championship. It’s really, really important we have our fans behind us at the stadium.” – Ned Yost"
The Wild Card game changed baseball in Kansas City forever. In front of a packed house at “The K”, the Royals dispatched of the A’s with their trademark late-game magic and rode that wave all the way to Game 7 of the World Series.
In 2015, neither the Royals or their fans missed a beat. The team took their first AL Central crown and more importantly, won the World Series. During this run, Kauffman Stadium became the place to be in Kansas City with fans rocking the stands each and every night.
2016 and 2017 continued the love affair between the Royals and the fan base with over 2,000,000 fans going through the turnstiles at Kauffman Stadium both years.