While looking at the crowd of fans at Kauffman Stadium that made up the “Sea of Blue” at Game 2 of the American League Championship Series on Saturday, October 17, one of the thousands of signs caught my eye. The sign read, “I’m a 3rd generation Loyal Royal”. A question immediately popped into my mind: What does it mean to be a “Loyal Royal”?
The term means a person who is loyal to the Major League Baseball team, the Kansas City Royals. I was raised in a household where we love the Royals, no matter what, and I can attest to the fact that sometimes it is hard to get the loyal part down.
Before 2014, it had been 29 years since the Royals had made the playoffs. It was the longest drought from a playoff appearance for any professional sports team. The only Kansas City fans were the most loyal of the loyal. Once 2014 hit and the Royals inched their way toward the World Series, more and more fans appeared.
As a Kansas City fan, I am grateful for all the support my favorite team has attracted. However, I wonder how long they will last. Once the Royals don’t make the playoffs how many fans will they have? Will any of the newcomers stay?
I can’t say that I haven’t seen tears streaming down my brothers’ faces when the Royals lost, heard any profanities shouted among the walls of my house when one of the players makes a mistake, or listened to my dad complain about how awful the team is. Those things make it hard for fans to hang on for their team, but the true ones do.
A crowd of 38,000 people seems like a lot, but in retrospect it isn’t. We were all the same. We all wanted the same team to win, the same dream to happen, and had the same love for a team that was the underdog. Very few, if any, Royals fans at the ALCS weren’t loyal, and you could tell. The excitement was so electric that it could have powered Hastings for a year. We were all “Loyal Royals”.
I am a “Loyal Royal”. I have loved the Royals even when they were terrible. I didn’t listen to the boys on the playground who told me that it was dumb to like such a terrible team (they were rooting for teams like the Yankees and Cardinals, which makes it hard for me to believe they liked them for any other reason besides being good). I cheered as loud as I could at the games. I knew all the players’ names. I watched the games that make you want to lay on the ground and never get up. I saw my dad give Diet Pepsi to his friend when the Royals lost to the White Sox. I saw my dad get Coca-Cola from his friend because the Royals beat the White Sox. I saw my dad jump up and down when the Royals made it to the World Series for the first time since he was in high school.
The little girl’s sign could not have been any more true to me. After my grandpa and dad, I very much am a third generation “Loyal Royal”, and I am proud of what that means.
