By Seth Herrold
Maybe it’s the chilly temperatures or maybe it is the announcements made by the Royals this week, but this sports editor has a full-blown case of “Spring Fever.” It’s not too surprising; it seems to set in for me every year around this time. I’m one of those people who likes March Madness well enough, but I will spend as much time reading headlines from spring training in Arizona as I do filling out brackets.
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This week the Royals announced their theme for 2012, “Our Time.” They also released the promotional giveaways for the 2012 season. For a huge baseball fan like myself, those two announcements pushed me over the edge. I’m so excited for this season and this year there will be a whole lot more to look forward to in the late season than one of the annual bobblehead giveaways.
For years Alex Gordon bobbleheads, Billy Butler powder blue jerseys and George Brett statues were the primary draw to Kauffman Stadium. Before that it was Mike Sweeney bobbleheads, Royals umbrellas and powder blue trucker hats putting fans in the stands. I will admit, my schedule of games to attend revolved around the merchandise being handed out at the gate.
That isn’t to say I don’t want to get my hands on an Eric Hosmer bobblehead, Mike “Moose” takas antlers and a George Brett mini pine tar bat, just some of the highlights on this year’s promotional calendar. But this year, you will be able to hit up the K for a mid-week game where the only draw is the product on the field and be excited and have a great time. The obvious reason why is that last season the waves of talent that had been talked about forever in the minor leagues finally began to hit shore. First it was Hosmer, then Danny Duffy, then Moustakas, then Johnny Giavatella, then Salvidor Perez and so on.
The Royals were an exciting team to watch down the stretch last season for the first time in a long time. The team the Royals were putting on the field was the team that – hopefully – will be on the field five, six or seven years down the road. There were wild amounts of raw talent at every position. And there was something else; they were winning. The Royals posted a winning record in September as the youngsters began to get more and more experience. There was a time when you could walk up to the gates of Kauffman Stadium in the month of September, have some guy give you tickets for free, sit right behind the Royals’ dugout, catch a hot dog from Sluggerrr and get Matt Stairs to toss you a ball as he ran into the dugout after catching the final out of an inning. I’m speaking from experience on that one. You couldn’t do that at Kauffman Stadium last year, though, and you won’t be able to for a while… hopefully a long while. Kauffman was as full, or fuller, than it was at any point during 2011 in September because the Royals had one of the better teams in baseball on the field.
Now, I sit here in January anxiously awaiting the kids to return to the field for 2012. They are still just that, however, kids. Follow Hosmer or Giavatella on Twitter and you are going to see a lot of tweets about video games. There is still learning to be done, but that experience gained at the end of last season has them well ahead of the curve and there are still more waves coming in. Lorenzo Cain and Mike Montgomery should settle in with the big league club and Wil Myers, who I am very excited about, isn’t far behind.
It’s safe to say the Royals have the talent to compete for an American League Central championship in 2012 and their first playoff appearance since 1985. You don’t have to know much about baseball to know what happened then.
So I will sit here and patiently wait for “Our Time” to officially begin. When it finally does, I will be more than ready.