It's always hard when you lose your first love

No, I'm not talking about some girl I dated 40 years ago. I mean baseball. Or at least baseball where I felt my team had a chance to compete. My first love was the Kansas City A's. Every spring I'd feel we finally had a chance to compete. This would be the year where Rocky Colavito, Jim Gentile or Rick Monday would become the next Mickey Mantle. Of course they didn't. It was mostly a string of 9th or last place finishes, but they were my team. Finally we saw some light at the end of the tunnel as they began to draft players such as Jim "Catfish" Hunter, "Blue Moon" Odom and Reggie Jackson.

Then after the 1967 season, they took it all away from us and the team moved to Oakland. They went on to play in multiple world series and ruled the Western Division of the American League for years. Meanwhile, we were given another chance and the Kansas City Royals were born. We watched players like George Brett, Hal McRae and Amos Otis grow into stardom and the team improved. Finally, in 1976 we won our first Division title and met the Yankees in the playoffs. We lost that year as well as the following 2 season. Adding insult to injury, the Yankees were led by Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson. After missing the playoff in 1979, we were rewarded in '80 by finally sweeping the Yanks and qualifying for our first world series, which we promptly lost. Then came the drug scandals and it seemed we'd sink back to obscurity. But then came a new manager in Dick Howser and a magical run in 1985. Coming back from 3-1 down against the Blue Jays in the playoffs and the Cardinals in the series. The pitching staff was young and the future looked bright. It was our last playoff appearance. We had a little run going in 1994, but the strike finished those hopes.

Now baseball is dominated by the big money teams and our heroes put up gaudy numbers fueled by steroids. The most we can hope for is to catch lightning in a bottle like Tampa Bay did and make the playoffs. I'm certainly not saying that the Glass family hasn't been partly to blame for this with their reluctance to spend money, but let's remember what's happened when they did fork over the cash. Mike Sweeney, Juan Gonzalez and Mike Jacobs to name three. But I'll still make a couple more trips out to the K this summer and I'm sure I'll be full of hope next April when we start out 10-5 and are in 1st place.
Damn you major league baseball!