Kansas City Royals: A horror movie for each season of the past decade

2014

Kansas City Royals: 89-73; Won ALCS; Lost in World Series to San Francisco Giants

Movie: 2010’s Insidious

Insidious is, hands down, the scariest movie I have ever seen. Going into this movie–and I mean, literally going into this movie–I had no idea what it was about. I was visiting my girlfriend in Columbia one weekend and we decided to go see a movie. When we got to the theater, we picked Insidious, as neither one of us had seen or heard anything about it. 

About, say, half-an-hour into the movie, one guy gets up and leaves the theater with his date behind him. As he’s leaving, the dude says, “Nope. No more. I can’t do it. I can’t do this anymore.”

About, say, twenty minutes later, my girlfriend utters, “Oh, God.” And though we didn’t leave the theater, she didn’t watch any more of the movie, instead completely turning her body so she couldn’t see the screen. She still jumped, though, because I jumped about every thirty seconds during this bloody scare-fest.

Don’t get me wrong: this is a good movie! I loved it, and I hated it, you know what I mean?

I loved it because I’ve always been on the lookout for a great horror film, and I had finally found it, and quite by accident. But I also hated it because after the movie ended, my girlfriend and I went back to her house, but her roommates were still out, so instead of going into a dark house, we just went to a 24/7 Steak-&-Shake until her friends got back from the bars. I didn’t sleep a wink that night, and not much the rest of the week, either.

Mainly because of this red-faced SOB:

There are some pretty cool parallels between Insidious and the 2014 Kansas City Royals, a team that tiptoed through the tulips en route to making Wild Card game, won it in dramatic fashion before storming through the rest of the American League playoffs, only to get halted in Game 7 of the World Series by the San Francisco Giants.

• The movie starts out with a happy family as the Royals started out riding high on their first winning season in over a decade.
• Things get a little wonky for the Lamberts, the family in the movie, as they figure out one of their kids is haunted*. For the Royals, 2014 was tough in the sense that the team didn’t exactly blow everyone away and had to fight for a playoff spot until the very end of the season.
• Josh Lambert, the family patriarch played by Patrick Wilson in his first of what will be three appearances on this list, finds out he used to be haunted, too, and that only he can go into The Further (an alternate dimension where a bunch of lost souls and demons hang out) to save his haunted son. For the Royals, they finally make the playoffs, but learn they must face ace Jon Lester of the Oakland Athletics to be able to move on.
• Lambert does a hell of a job in The Further, avoiding a bunch of lost souls/ghosts/demons in one of the creepiest movie scenes I’ve ever watched, finds his son, and makes his way back toward the real world. The Royals defeat Lester and the A’s, and then hammer the Angels and Orioles to win the American League Championship Series, the franchise’s first since 1985.

*I have to imagine this is the worst kind of haunting. Haunted house? Sell it. Haunted car? Sell it. Haunted kid? I mean, I’d probably drop him off at the Vatican, but that’s just me.

But that’s where things go off the rails for both Josh Lambert and the 2014 Royals. For Lambert, he decides to take on The Bride in Black that haunted him when he was a kid and who’s trapped in The Further. The Royals, meanwhile, have to face the Giants in the World Series, a squad that won the Series in 2010 and 2012 and starred Joe Buck’s favorite pitcher, Madison Bumgarner.

The Royals, of course, make the series interesting, but lose at home in Game 7 as Bumgarner all but shuts them down. It’s probably worse for Lambert, though, as The Bride in Black manages to take over Lambert’s body and escape into the real world. And when she’s confronted, things do not go well.

For both Lambert and the 2014 Royals: they both got so close only to fall at the very end.