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Back in the Game

Royals complete biggest year-over-year rebuild in major-league baseball history. Eye the Penant.

By Dennis Boone

PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 2024

Raise your hand if, on last March 28, you thought the Kansas City Royals would be in the playoffs come October. 

If your hand is in the air now, shame on you—we all know better. Unless you’re John Sherman or J.J. Picollo or Matt Quatraro. They just might have seen this coming: In the 123 years since the founding of major-league baseball, The Kansas City Royals are the first team to win a playoff series the year following a 106-loss disaster of a season.

The longest of longshots when the season opened with a 4-1 loss to the Minnesota Twins, the Royals endured a year of streaks—seven straight wins here, eight straight there—interspersed with enough losses to keep the doubters doubting. After climbing into first place in the AL Central Division—after the All-Star break, even!—they nearly saw it all fall apart with a seven-game losing streak as the regular-season wound down.

They did indeed hold on to earn a ticket to the Wildcard dance, tying the Detroit Tigers for the final spot. They then quickly dispatched Baltimore in just two games in a best-of-three series, taking each contest by the narrowest of margins, 1-0 and 2-1.

Ahead lay New York and the Yankees. If you’re old enough to recall the names Thurman Munson, Graig Nettles and Chris Chambliss, you know of which we speak when we talk about Royals fans’ distaste for all things pinstriped. Will this edition of the Royals make it to the final round? Is a pennant in their future? Can they reclaim the lost glory of 2015?

Maybe. Maybe not. But either way, the team’s performance has elevated the spirits of an entire city. 

And that, as they say, ain’t nothing. 

The frosting on that cake? It was all unfolding as the defending Super Bowl champions from across the parking lot at the Truman Sports Complex were starting the NFL season 4-0.

Good times, indeed. Perhaps the best in this city’s checkered sports history.

Enjoy them while they last. But don’t get cocky, KC. Always recall the slave’s whispered caution to Roman generals and Caesers during their victory parades: “All glory is fleeting …”