Another Rant
I’ve come to believe that two of the most difficult things to do in any sort of writing are expressing emotions and tones of voice within the context of an article or, for our purposes here, a blog entry. There are a few tools available to writers like italics, boldfaced print, and capital lettering that certainly aid in clarifying how something is meant to be read, but even those don’t really hold a candle to actual spoken word.
I’ve begun today’s entry in this fashion because of the way I began (and concluded) yesterday’s. Those two brief paragraphs were just my venting – and nothing more – about my absolute favorite team in professional sports. I’m frustrated, but I’m definitely not going to quit on them. Judging from the e-mails and comments I received, a lot of you are under the impression that I’ve reached a breaking point after the first two weeks of the season and that I’m going to stop blogging about the Royals because of it. Although I can understand why so many of you would think that to be the case, what with my writing “I give up” yesterday, I’m definitely not going to stop writing, at least for the foreseeable future.
However, it’s just plain hard to want to write anything about this particular team right now because the Royals aren’t doing anything right. As I sit here now, the Indians 5-0 are currently bludgeoning them in the seventh inning. As has been par for the course so far this year, they’ve only collected two hits, two walks, and have made two dumb errors in the field. None of that’s acceptable to me. To make matters worse, Zack Greinke allowed five runs in five innings, surrendering home runs to Casey Blake and Ben Broussard, meaning I’ll be able to start watching for his implosion to begin in five days. Hey, it’s happened to almost every other promising young pitcher the Royals have brought along, right?
Am I bitter? Absolutely, but only because I’ve been following this team for ten damn years always wishing that The Year would finally come around and I’d have my season in the sun. That’s all I’m asking for. One year I can actually sit back and enjoy because I know that the team the Royals have on the field is far superior to the team they’re playing every. single. night. As it stands now, I feel like I’m in this famous Saturday Night Live sketch seven days a week:
Like Alex Trebek (played by Will Ferrell) constantly says, “Good Lord!” in frustration when the idiot Celebrity Jeopardy contestants can’t provide the correct question to the preschool-level answer shown on the board, I find myself shaking my head in disbelief when the Royals are out there playing like Little Leaguers. Losing isn’t what bothers me, because losing streaks and injuries and down times just happen over the course of 162-game seasons. However, it’s extremely bothersome when the pitchers can’t finish off hitters when they have two strikes, when absolutely nobody in the lineup is willing to breathe and just WAIT until the opposing pitcher screws himself over, and when mass confusion ensues on infield pop-ups. It’s just becoming ridiculous because they’ve had more than a decade to fix this stuff.
Anyway, I don’t really have a good conclusion for this rant, so I’ll just say goodnight with the wish for a better tomorrow.