Last night in the bottom of the 9th Chip Caray, one of my least favorite human beings ever, said two teeth-grinding things:

1) "It has struck midnight for Tampa's Cinderella". Yes, because this was a one game playoff and the Rays are now eliminated.

2) "Tonight, experience has trumped exuberance." The Red Sox scored their first run thanks to the oh so experienced Jed Lowrie, and escaped the eighth thanks to some dude named Masterton. I think both those guys go back to the Nomar Era.

Somewhat arbitrarily I decided that RR would take the first round of the playoffs off in terms of having game threads. Well, thankfully, that boring as hell round is over. Similarly, as a show of fidelity to the good ole American League, we'll only be doing proper game threads for the ALCS here. For NLCS games, look for fanposts and fanshots that will temporarily be on the main page; during the offseason I like to give posts a little more time to breathe the glory of the front page...

As for tonight's game, I have no idea what to expect. I'll be pulling for the Rays of course (unless you are a Boston fan I don't know how you could do otherwise) but because of that I am convinced the Red Sox will win. Still, this isn't a vintage Red Sox team: shaky bullpen, mediocre starters who are outperforming their stuff/peripherals and a lineup that just doesn't quite look as scary as their standard fare. Too much Jed Lowrie, too much Jason Varitek, too much Coco Crisp, too much Mark Kotsay for my liking.

Your pitching matchup is Dice K (2.90 ERA) versus Shields (3.56 ERA).

Following Ryan's recent scandal at corporate, Holly must hold a business ethics seminar.

• So is the guy from Mad Men gone forever now? I was really hoping the "Pam at Art School" storyline was going to develop into something interesting. As of the first episode however, all we got was two minutes of Mr. Perfect feeling annoyed, which lead to him proposing (OMG !!! they were soooo adorable!!!!). So... is she coming back to Dunder Mifflin? Will she pursue some kind of art/graphic design career? Does she still think she's good? Perhaps its just my own similarities to Pam coming out, but I feel like Pam's aspirations and frustrations are the secret core of the show, especially since Jim is now "here to stay" at DM.
• Will we find out what was up with Meredith's face in the first third of last episode? Seriously, what the hell was that? I really didn't like the format of the first episode, but there is a possibility that they were spoofing/playing with the silliness of dockumentaries. Was Meredith's unexplained state just a mini-joke on the inability of a film-crew to actually explain things?
• So Dwight and Angela are having sex in the warehouse (how big is this office complex?)... and... yea. So is that going anywhere?
• Holly's name is apparently "Hollis".

Summers in Kansas City can make one feel like it's 1995. Not because people are still watching Toy Story and Apollo 13 in movie theaters or because Kansas Citians are looking forward to the upcoming season of The Drew Carey Show and Seinfeld. Instead, a mid-90s baseball malaise and sense of resentment continues to hang over Kansas City, nearly a decade after the rest of the country has moved on.

Attendance at Kauffman Stadium Since 1994:

We can make two quick observations from the numbers above: 1) attendance at the K has been fairly stable and 2) the Royals have not been able to keep up with the rest of the American League at the gate. While Royals fans may have not noticed, in the last decade attending baseball games in person has become extremely popular, and from 2003-7 Major League baseball set a new attendance record each season. The overall average attendance? In 2007: 32,785, in 2008: 32,539. The Royals are lucky to draw the Major League average, average mind you, ten times in a season.

Certainly, caveats can be made. To be sure, the Royals have been a consistent and indeed a spectacular loser since 1995, so much so that the team's hot start in 2003 -- and months spent in first-place -- was only able to provide a modest (very modest) bump in attendance. Moreover, Kansas City remains one of the smallest markets in baseball and a middling one economically. (According to Nate Silver's exhaustive and very math-heavy research, Kansas City is MLB's 29th largest market.) Finally, the un-balanced schedule has concentrated well-attended Yankee and Red Sox road games within the AL East, and the AL Central lacks a single team that travels well or that consistently interests casual fans at the gate. Nobody comes to the game just because the Twins are in town. 

What makes the attendance figures since the strike even more telling however is the clear bright-line formed by 1994. In the interests of avoiding another table, going backwards, here are the game averages from 1994 to 1980: 24,356, 23,884, 23,058, 26,686, 27,888, 30,589, 29,195, 29,537, 28,652, 26,700, 22,346, 24,097, 28,203, 24,843, 28,256. The lowest average from that period, 1984's 22,346 is nevertheless higher than any average since 1994. When you consider how much lower attendance was during the 1980s, those totals are even more impressive. Then again, those numbers also underscore just how much the core of the Royals' fanbase has eroded.

How much might winning, real, sustained winning, improve things at the K? While it is difficult to find a truly comparable situation to the one in Kansas City (non-new stadium, small market, beaten-down fanbase) one would have to look at the Twins over the last five years and, weirdly enough, the White Sox as decent data points. The Twins are obvious enough, but the White Sox are roughly comparable as well, given their minority market share in Chicago, negligble regional appeal and convienent yet bland stadium. You might also throw in a variable covering "contentious relationship between ownership and fanbase" as well.

Although attendance at the Cell was something of a punch line for many years, the White Sox have drawn well since winning the World Series, and in fact were rebuilding their attendance base as early as 2000. The Twins meanwhile, were supposedly so poorly supported that Baseball's best option was simply to contract the team. Well, emphasis on "supposedly". Truly, Minnesota's per game averages in the late-nineties were miserable, hovering around 14,500 at the end of the decade before collapsing to the 12,355 average you see above in 2000. The Royals have avoided sinking that low, however given the overall increases in league attendance, Kansas City's recent rut of 18,000 fans per game is hardly better than the performance of the contraction-era Twins.

In terms of both on-field success and market potential, the Twins are the more reachable model, and in part that table above reveals just how valuable actually winning a World Series is: even through a miserable 2007 season, the White Sox were still drawing well.

Unfortunately, with the economy headed south again, it's likely that we'll see attendance figures drop again next season, and depending on just how bad things get, a return to the bad old days of anti-Yankee protests with fans throwing trash and or fake money at supposedly greedy players could very well be possible. Spending 365 days a year on this website and the rest of the Royals blogosphere, I can confidently state that quite a few Royals fans remain on the verge of bitterness over salary imbalances in the game and that resentment towards the game's haves, both franchises and individuals is strong.

The Royals are two good summers away from drawing something like 24-26,000 a night at the K, maybe a notch more depending on how well the renovations go over and how low prices remain. However, if the current batch of players, namely the Alex Gordon Generation fail to materialize into a contender, attendance could drop all the way down to the mid-nineties levels. Unlike so many inside baseball, the Royals spent the boom years barely getting by, leaving them in a precarious position as storm clouds gather.

From a story by Dylan Hernandez in the LA Times last week:

After the hailstorm of criticism he received for his high-priced free-agent signings that didn't work out, Colletti was asked whether he felt vindicated when the midseason trades he made pushed the Dodgers to the top of the NL West.

"I have great confidence in what I do," he said. "I know what my relationship with the McCourts is. I don't need to be vindicated."

Colletti could point to how he plugged several holes this season that were created by injuries to the likes of Rafael Furcal, Brad Penny, Nomar Garciaparra, Jeff Kent and Takashi Saito.

Though Ramirez and Blake might have thrust the Dodgers into the postseason, moves involving lesser-known players such as Angel Berroa, Pablo Ozuna and Blake DeWitt helped keep them in the race.

On the advice of bench coach Bob Schaefer, Colletti acquired Berroa, a former AL rookie of the year who spent the previous year and a half with the Kansas City Royals' triple-A affiliate. A player who cost the Dodgers almost nothing -- the Royals paid what remained of the $5.25 million owed Berroa and received only Class-A infielder Juan Rivera in return -- was their starting shortstop over the last two months of the season.

A month ago, Hernandez profiled Berroa's comeback with the Dodgers. Yes, that's what he called it:

Angel Berroa said the way he has felt over the last week reminds him of when was the American League's rookie of the year in 2003.

"I've got my confidence back," said Berroa, who spent most of the last two years with the Kansas City Royals' triple-A affiliate in Omaha traveling on commercial planes and sleeping in cramped motel rooms.

Oh, Berroa ended up hitting .230/.304/.310 with the Dodgers during the regular season, eating up 246 PAs. Nevertheless, he's like a double next week away from becoming one of Joe Torre's guys, insuring him a place on the roster for the next five years.

Then there's this bizarre Berroa note, also from the LA Times:

The Dodgers are so confident, Angel Berroa bought a Ferrari

Technically, at least. 

The actual car in question isn't, say, one of these bad boys, which run about 200K, but rather a battery powered, 1/10 scale model.  Cherry red with a racing stripe, the kind of car that would get a man pulled over by battery powered, 1/10 scale members of the Highway Patrol.  Berroa, who also has two remote controlled helicopters and a "Robotic Construction System" in his locker, arrived for the Dodgers' team workout today at the Ravine to find his newest toy at the bottom of a stack of boxes on his chair.  The ones on top were filled with useless athlete paraphernalia.  Shoes, gear, etc. "I don't want that stuff," Berroa said, quickly putting it aside and pulling out the big prize, which he unveiled with a kid-at-Christmas smile before the assembled media.

Jonathan Broxton, who didn't realize earlier in the season his locker would soon be Toys'R'Us adjacent, could only shake his head.  "I don't know how he's gonna get this _________ home," he said with a grin. 

By the end, weren't we seeing more than a few "Berroa is very childlike" stories emerging from the KC clubhouse? Seriously, you read stuff like this, mix in your favorite Emil Brown story maybe, and remember, say, a third of the things you've ever read on Deadspin about these guys, and it honestly makes you feel ashamed you even follow sports. Really, to consider the men of Jockdom longtime inhabitants of High School is too generous. Many are still emotionally and intellectually in Middle School.

Via a Royals Press Release:

Kansas City, MO (October 2, 2008) – The Kansas City Royals today announced that the following coaches have been offered contracts to return for the 2009 season.  The list includes:  pitching coach Bob McClure, bench coach Dave Owen, first base coach Rusty Kuntz and bullpen coach John Mizerock.

Mike Barnett (hitting) and Luis Silverio (third base) were not offered Major League coaching contracts for 2009.  Silverio has been offered another coaching position within the organization.  An announcement regarding the full 2009 coaching staff will come at a later date.

• McClure has served as pitching coach since 2006.
• Barnett was hired as the Royals hitting coach on May 1, 2006. Last season the Royals finished 6th in the American League in batting average (.269), but just 12th in OBP (.320) and slugging (12th), en route to finishing 12th in runs. As mentioned earlier this week, the Royals did not reach 700 runs scored (691) for the first time since 1995. Looking at this low-patience, low-power roster however, it's hard to blame Barnett for these numbers too much.