As you’ve probably read elsewhere, Kansas City’s dramatic 2-1 home win over Minnesota Tuesday night was played in front of a sparse (13K and change) crowd, a factoid that didn’t escape the notice of Royals skipper Ned Yost (“we’ve been working on trying to build this team for the last three or four years to put ourselves in a position where we can contend for a championship,”). In the view of the KC Star’s Sam Mellinger — not above reminding his readers of how Yost shit the bed down the stretch in Milwaukee (“a manager fired six years ago with 12 games left and his team holding a playoff spot at least in part because he wasn’t handling pressure well might not want to pick unnecessary fights with fans after the best win of the season”) this was “a stupid thing to say on so many levels”.
Yost must not understand how silly and out of touch he sounds when he talks about “trying to build this team for the last three or four years.”
Many of the people who spent their money and time to watch Yost’s team on Tuesday night have been around for 10 years. Twenty. Twenty-five. And only the ones old enough (and young enough, come to think of it) to remember 29 years ago have had their loyalty and passion repaid with even a sniff of a playoff appearance.
All due respect to Yost’s three or four years of hard work, but the fans he’s talking down to had their hearts broken long before he came here and will be here long after he’s gone.
Maybe he should give them some slack if a great five weeks of baseball hasn’t swayed a generation of stink just yet.