All of a sudden, with the Royals ascendance on the baseball front, the Chiefs continued NFL dominance and Taylor Swift hanging out there like she does, Kansas City seems to be THE happening place. (Good article here on the KC’s resurgence (click here.)
I thought of this when checking out today’s starting time for the Royals/Yankees’ game. (6:38 in case you too are wondering.)
I am rooting for the Royals of course. However, I am afraid that the Yankees won’t go as quietly as the Orioles did. Soto and Judge alone have a little too much firepower for the Royals to prevail over 5 games. Trivia question for you: Judge and Sota became the 3rd pair of Yankees to each hit 40 or more homers in one season. (If you are any kind of baseball fan, you should be able to guess who the other 2 pairs were. Answer(s) below.*)
I am also fairly certain that the Royals scoring just 3 runs to beat the Orioles twice won’t be enough for them to replicate winning 2 in New York. However, if the Royals could snag 1 of the first 2 games in New York and then head back to Kansas City with their 2 aces Ragans and Lugo awaiting to pitch, well, as they say in the papers, it is a whole new ball game. (Plus the Yankees still have this Clay Holmes’ closer thing going on so who knows?) I can see Taylor singing the National Anthem for the Royals in Game 4 to send it back to New York for Game 5. Now that would be something.
The team that I really like however and think has a great upset shot are the Padres. I told my San Diego-based daughter Reagan to start looking into getting us some World Series tickets if the Padres do manage to advance.
The Padres have been hot and are playing good ball of late and even though the Dodgers are the overall favorites with the gambling folks to win it all, I like the Padres’ chances. Plus it would be fun to watch them take the bad ass, most wins Dodgers to the wood shed.
So how’s about a Padres – Royals World Series? Granted, it is a very long shot bet, but you heard it here first.
*Ruth and Gehrig 3 times (in 27, 30, 31); Maris and Mantle in 61. Only three times have teams had 3 players hit 40 homers in a season (click here for that story.)
Great Chris Botti tune set to a great video for you:
P.S. I did take a smidgen of solace when hearing some talking head proclaim that the Yankees were very glad that it was KC and not the Orioles they have to play for the Division title. That and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee (maybe.)