Weekend Royals Wrap

We're now staring week four of unemployment square in the face, which means, come Friday, if my phone ain't ringin', Daddy's got to get out there and take some schlep job. Ugh. That's totally going to ruin my streak of viewed Royals games. It was a good stretch while it lasted, especially, when after suffering through last Saturday's gay blackout rule, I thought I'd stifle the network's efforts to make me miss the game, and, why the hell not, just go to it. Seeing as how this dandy stretch of not working has gone hand in hand with not having an automobile anymore, I was forced to take the bus. Normally, I wouldn't mind. See how much it sucked, however, after the hurdle.

The Royals, having swept Jim Leyland's club to open the season only to then lose two of three to the Twins in the next series, come home to face the Yankees and take two of three again. Who comes in to town next? The damn Twins again. They manhandle us on Friday, a contest that seriously cut into my drinking time, then offer free Billy Butler replica jerseys to the first 20,000 to the stadium for Saturday night's tilt. Well, the bus is never late, right? So, I'm early for the 4:15 connect -- again, I've got drinking to do here, folks -- and, yeah, the bus is almost 20 minutes late. That's cool, though, because we then spend 45 freaking minutes riding around on this thing picking up other jackasses that want to go out to The K in 30-degree weather for this game. Needless to say, no jersey. And, uh, this just in: it's bleeping frigid. I suppose the one highlight would be that, anytime I've attended a game solo, I've gotten a good seat. And I spent a solid inning and-a-half in it. I sat there for nearly two lousy innings, shivering, and decided I had to get up and stay moving, or my ride home would be in a heated ambulance instead of the Metro.

It was at this point that I wandered into the gift shop and took this dazzling photo:



of the jersey I clearly wasn't meant to have. I know. I too thought that hundreds of photo editors of national sports magazines would've been beating my door down by now. Their loss.

Anyway, I continued ambling, stoked about pretty much everything, especially that massive image (at the top of the post) of Twins starting pitcher Boof Bonser on our enormous new scoreboard, who pretty much threw a lights out five innings-plus, and suffered through the remainder of the 2-0 game, the last two innings of which it was snowing. I did wind up hammered at the 3 a.m. bars, so there's that.

Then, Sunday's tilt, which had a 37-degree first pitch, featured Brian Bannister tossing a complete game, Butler going 1-1 with three walks, Alex Gordon hitting his third jack of the year, and all kinds of other cool amenities, proved to be a much nicer game, especially since that wacky sun actually showed face for a spell. Now, the Royals are on the west coast for the week, which means -- boo -- nine o'clock starts, and they'll probably fare relatively well against the Mariners tonight (Zach Greinke vs. Jarrod Washburn) and tomorrow (John Bale vs. Miguel Batista), Los Anaheim Thursday (Gil Meche vs. Jered Weaver) and Friday (Brett Tomko vs. John Garland), then Oakland for three straight (Brian Bannister slated to face Chad Gaudin).

At least there'll be no Boof in my Bonser until late May.