The Boys In Blue are turning their fans blue with their sub .500 play this season. Gone is the euphoria of two straight World Series appearances. Returned is the dullness that marked being a Royals’ fan for the previous couple of decades.
Did you ever wake up from a nightmare and find yourself relieved that it was just a dream, that all of those bad things you were thinking about weren’t really happening? This Royals’ losing streak is just the opposite. We’re waking up from the pleasantness of the past two years to find that the reality is a bad losing streak. An early-season reminder of how bad the Royals were for years. It is not pleasant.
The Royals built their winning ways on good pitching, low-scoring games that put a premium on relief pitching and aggressive running on the base paths. This year the Royals’ starting pitchers have not been good at keeping games close into the later innings where their strength, relief pitching, tipped the game in favor of our guys.
Giving up too many runs early drains away the strength of the Royals offense. You can’t steal bases, you can’t take chances, when you are down 3, 4 or 5 runs in the early innings.
The offense will come, given the chance to play “Royals Ball”. The relief pitching is still there. Still strong. The Royals’ starting pitching has got to deliver, especially in the first four innings. Otherwise fans, you are staring at a .500 season!
The Larned Relays is history
A Track and Field meet that has been a high school tradition for decades will not continue after 2016. At one time it was one of the bigger meets in the state with 14-18 bigger school teams competing.
From the early days at Moffet Stadium to the current location at the Larned High School, schools from all over western Kansas competed. It was a track and field fan’s delight. Some of the best athletes in the state competed at the Larned Relays.
School officials state that they hope to take a few years off and then attempt to bring it back again. Trouble is, when something is allowed to end it makes it doubly difficult to build back again. Let’s hope that is not the case for the Larned Relays.
CHALK TALK:
The Great Bend Black Panthers baseball team showed that they are a team to be reckoned with in the 5A State tournament as they thrashed the Central Kansas League Champion Larned Indians two times last week at Larned’s Moffet Stadium. Speaking of Track and Field, there are a ton of records for the state track meet that still stand that are at least 25 years old. One of those is in 6A and was set in 1983 by Great Bend’s Tina Johnson who won the 100 with a time of 11.8. Two area athletes hold multiple state meet records. Ellsworth’s Shawnee Call set records in 1983 in three events: The 4A 100 in 12.2, the 4A 100 hurdles in 14.3 and the 4A 300 hurdles in 42.5. In 1979 Little River’s Sandra Myers set three records in 1A. In the 200 she ran 25.0; in the 400 56.5; and she leaped 19-7 ¼ in the long jump. Also in 1979 Darryl Thornton of Lyons set a meet record in the 300 hurdles with a time of 38.0 and his teammate, Mike Rogers, posted a record 9:27.9 in the 3200. Both still stand as records in 4A. Athletes get bigger and faster but those records at the state meet have withstood the test of time!
Remember the words of long-time manager of the New York Yankees Casey Stengel: “Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It’s staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in!”
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