Day: January 17, 2020

Six years ago this month, I had one of the most intense arguments I’ve ever had with my family. Tempers flared, things got heated, and for a while we even had to separate just so everyone could cool down – maybe common, in other houses, but definitely a rarity with me and mine.

It was January, 2014. We were in Florida for Christmas and New Year’s. We’d gone across the bridge over the Caloosahatchee River to Cape Coral, to a restaurant Mom had wanted to try there near the riverfront. It was a crowded place, and the NFL playoffs were on. My hometown Kansas City Chiefs had made the playoffs for the first time under their new head coach, Andy Reid, and had traveled to Indianapolis to take on Andrew Luck’s Colts. Everyone in my family was deeply invested in the game – except me. And here the troubles began.

“It’s stupid,” I said, “to invest so much of your happiness in a team like the Chiefs.” I went on, “You don’t know any of the players. They’re a bunch of people you’ve never met, people who aren’t even from Kansas City. Their winning or losing affects your daily life not a bit. And if they win, it’s no credit to you – you did nothing.”

My mother was horrified. “It’s not about the winning and losing,” she said. “It’s about supporting your hometown team!”

I shook my head. “They have no connection to Kansas City! Most of the players, again, aren’t even from Kansas City. They’re basically just hired mercenaries. Basically, they’re just a bunch of people who happen to play geographically near me. I have no connection to them.”

Back and forth we went, each side steadily digging in, and things started to get heated. Meanwhile, on the screen, the Chiefs were thumping the Colts, racing out to a 38-10 lead over the luckless* Indianapolis team.

My position was simple. I refused to get invested, emotionally, in Kansas City’s two professional teams, the Royals and the Chiefs, because they would always disappoint me in the end. The Royals, of course, were the perennial laughingstock of baseball, having had only 1 winning season in the last 20 years and not having sniffed the playoffs since 4 years before my own birth.

In many ways, though, the Royals’ quiet, hopeless futility was better than what the Chiefs did.

The Chiefs would break your heart.

Many of my earliest memories, especially in the winter time, are of my family – all of them, including grandparents, uncles & aunts, cousins – gathered in the living room on Sundays to watch the Chiefs in the playoffs. The red and white sweaters would come out, snacks would be made, and then a lot of yelling and tears would inevitably ensue.

See, unlike the Royals, the Chiefs consistently made the playoffs. They were a consistently tough, well-performing team – in the regular season. In the playoffs, they preferred to implode dramatically.

In 1996, I was 6 years old. I had just started kindergarten at Prairie View Elementary, two years after we had moved to Lee’s Summit, a small but quickly growing suburb of Kansas City. The top-seeded Chiefs lost to a wild card Colts team 10-7 after Lin Elliot missed 3 field goals in the same game.

In 1998, I was 8. My parents were splitting up, Clinton was being impeached, and the Chiefs were in the playoffs against the hated Denver Broncos, again the top seed against a wild card team. This time they lost, 14-10, after more missed field goals, after a touchdown was ruled out of bounds despite replay showing Gonzales clearly in (instant replay review was instituted the next season).

In 2004, I was 14, by now at Lee’s Summit West High School. I had a baby sister and two new stepparents since the last time the Chiefs made the playoffs. But they were back, and hosting the Colts again. The monstrous Chiefs offense didn’t have a single punt the entire game and scored 31 points. Unfortunately, the Colts under a young Peyton Manning also never punted and scored 38.

And so it went.

In 2007, they lost to the Colts again. In 2011 they lost to the Ravens. In between these brief flashes of hoped-for success were long stretches of irrelevant mediocrity or outright failure (as in 2008). And along the way, I slowly drifted away from caring about the Chiefs or the Royals. That way would only bring disappointment and pain, I learned. I graduated high school, I went to college, I fell in love with a girl from St. Louis (and watched her hometown Cardinals go to the World Series, twice, and win it once), I changed my intended career, I started grad school, and all along I knew that sports was a foolish waste of time.

I don’t remember what we ate, that January night in Florida. I just remember the argument, the rising tempers on both sides, and behind us, the Chiefs actually playing well in the playoffs for once. I simply couldn’t understand why anyone would want to invest themselves in the team, and I was irritated that I was being attacked for doing what I considered to be the smart choice. On the other side, Mom was hurt that I was attacking her fandom, and frustrated that I didn’t seem to understand why the Chiefs were important to her.

We drove home around halftime, back across the bridge and around to the house. We went to separate rooms, while my brother put the second half on the living room television. I was proven right. The Chiefs let us down again, as the Colts somehow clawed out the second-largest playoff comeback of all time, and won, 45-44.

I didn’t take much satisfaction.

I think of that argument today, because I was wrong. It is important to support your teams. They do give something valuable. And they’re not just a bunch of strangers – no, not at all. There is a connection, and it’s important.

I’ve told this story before, but it’s one that merits multiple tellings. That January, 2014, was probably the low point of Kansas City fandom. The Royals’ drought entered its 29th year. The Chiefs’ inability to win in the playoffs entered its third decade. And since then, everything has changed.

The moment I became a fan of Kansas City sports was September 30th, 2014.

As you know, the Royals won the wild card, a wild, improbable, come from behind win, a moment of redemption for a franchise that had been nothing more than a speed bump for thirty years, the guys to play the patsies in other team’s highlight reels.

But Papa, the biggest Royals and Chiefs fan in the world, didn’t get to see it. He passed away from complications from heart surgery at the same time the Royals’ crazy playoff run began.

I’ll never forget that fall. I was home, for the first time in years, after so much time spent in college and grad school. My whole family gathered for the funeral, to say farewell to maybe the best man I ever knew. And what a sendoff he had.

The atmosphere in Kansas City was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced before. The Royals were playing the best team in baseball, the Angels. And suddenly, in 11 innings – they’d taken a game. Then, in 10 innings – another game. And now they’re only one game away from advancing to the next round, one game that they have three chances to win. And people started to talk about how far they could go, and even started to think something once unthinkable: that we could see the Royals – the Royals – in the World Series. And every person in the street had a Royals thought, or wore a Royals hat, or asked a Royals question.

I wasn’t a Royals fan, not at that time, but when I came home, the city enveloped me. Everyone was a part of the Royals kingdom. Everyone was united, like the old city had never been before, everyone sharing in one experience of joy, excitement, dread, and exhilaration, every night, as the Royals hurled themselves at the tallest mountain in sports: the World Series.

Every evening, I’d come together with my family, and though we still mourned our loss, and it hurt, deeply, to think about Papa’s absence, when the game was on, it didn’t hurt so much. He would have been overjoyed with everything happening. He would have shared in the city’s united exuberance more than anyone. Watching the games, I knew that. And so when I watched the Royals, just for a few hours every evening, it was like I still had my grandfather. And suddenly I got it.

Now, the Royals fell short that fall, 90 feet short, thanks to Madison Bumgarner, but the next year they clawed their way back and won the whole damn thing, a feat no other team has managed to pull off since. It’s a long, long story, worthy of a book of its own**, but the Royals rewarded my faith beyond all belief. And since those fall days, I have faithfully followed my Kansas City teams, because those teams are important to me.

When I cheer for a team, I remember that feeling of unity. I remember everyone in Kansas City, coming together to support their team. And I remember how it helped me salve the hurt of losing my grandfather. When I support the team, it’s because I know he supported them, and it’s in his memory. It’s not about me, and it’s not about Kansas City. Not really. It’s about Papa. And Mom***. And my aunt Traci. And my dad, and my brother, my friend…It’s about being part of something larger than myself, and sharing in something that I know is important to the people I care about.

So that’s why I support my hometown teams. That’s why I went from someone who hated sports to someone who loves to watch the games, to follow the competition. That’s why I like to wear my Royals cap here, or my Chiefs jacket. Because it’s not for me. It’s for Papa. And for Mom. And my father, and my brother, and my cousins, and uncles, and aunts, and my old friends in Kansas City. When I support the Chiefs, I’m not alone – I’m with my family. And I will always support my family:

This post is long. But it’s not done. There will be part 2, tomorrow.

Because while the Royals reached the top of the mountain, Kansas City’s other team has not.

*ha
**A book I’ve sort of already written. I’d like to polish the baseball parts there up and maybe seek publication some day.
*** Mom – this also is me admitting I was wrong 6 years ago, and you were right. I’m sorry.