#Royals #AlexGordon About a year ago all I could talk about was how did this team with average starting pitching, an offense with 4.02 runs per game just below the league average (4.07 runs per game) get 90 ft away from tying Game 7 of the World Series in the 9th inning with 2 outs? I came up with several plausible answers, but none as pertinent as this. We drafted some of the best position players America had to offer last decade. What we couldn’t get here we procured in our Latin American Academies. What we couldn’t get there we traded for. Then they were thrown together on fields without crowds in cities many of us have never heard of, and they won. They won the AA championship in 2010, and in pieces won back-to-back AAA championships.
Though the scouting of the highest drafted players we acquired has yet to measure up to the national baseball media’s standards and sabermetrics, they were a team, and they took that fellowship back into 2015 and conquered the World Series. Something many Royals fans never saw or remembered. I only have glimpses of the 1985 World Series, but my memories of the 2014 & 2015 postseasons can never be erased. The Captain of both of those post-season squads did so not through words but actions. He was the truest ballplayer I ever saw. With a groin tore from bone, he walked out on the field of Kauffman Stadium to be honored as an All-Star at the last home game before the break. Today we lost a 5-tool player. We can reminisce about the fantastic plays he made, but after the decades pass and we are old; he will be remembered as a quiet and humble man, with a cannon for an arm and a body cast from of stone. Goodbye Alex Gordon.