**Official 2014 ALCS Thread**

[Dick Allen]

The Royals led baseball is stolen bases. The other 3 teams standing were the bottom 3 in that department.

[shysocks]

The Royals led baseball is stolen bases. The other 3 teams standing were the bottom 3 in that department.

Love this stat.

[cabiness42]

The Royals led baseball is stolen bases. The other 3 teams standing were the bottom 3 in that department.

 

Clearly teams who are in the middle of the pack have no shot at making the World Series. Robin should be fired immediately for not stealing a lot more or a lot fewer bases.

[clyons]

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-colum...cle2535406.html

 

 

 

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-colum...cle2532687.html

 

After celebrating their sweep of the Angels in the locker room at Kauffman Stadium, some Royals players took the party to McFadden’s in the Power & Light District.

 

They got on Twitter to invite fans to join them.

 

KC you guys showed us so much love all year were returning the favor for you guys tonight at @McFaddensKC #allonebigfamily see.u all there

 

— Eric Hosmer (@TheRealHos35) October 6, 2014

According some of the people there, Eric Hosmer pulled out his credit card and helped pay for an open bar for an hour. He spent $3,000 and his teammates shared a $12,000 tab, according to a Royals official.

 

Eric Hosmer just paid for the entire bar's drinks for the next hour. Easily 500 people here. That ain't cheap.

 

— nick wright (@getnickwright) October 6, 2014

The players mingled among the crowd of people there and posed for a bunch of pictures.

 

This is Greg Holland, in the middle of #Royals party at McFadden's, totally mesmerized by the game highlights on ESPN pic.twitter.com/S92XiPXi7R

 

— nick wright (@getnickwright) October 6, 2014

Got to McFadden's right when the Royals did and got ushered into their VIP section by accident. So, this happened pic.twitter.com/YvXqw9cf4D

 

— nick wright (@getnickwright) October 6, 2014

#KC all your KC #Royals are here at McFadden's! Where are you?! pic.twitter.com/ZDuUmAsnH2

 

— McFadden's KC (@McFaddensKC) October 6, 2014

 

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-colum...l#storylink=cpy

 

Very cool. Good for them.

 

[BlackSox13]

Clearly teams who are in the middle of the pack have no shot at making the World Series. Robin should be fired immediately for not stealing a lot more or a lot fewer bases.

 

Thanks for the laugh dude, I actually did laugh out loud.

 

That's what's great about baseball, there are multiple ways to get to the playoffs. Some teams slug the long ball, some teams are deep in starting pitching depth and others play great defense with speed. Its a great game.

[flavum]

Game 1 looking wet in Baltimore. Would be interesting if they had to play 5 days in row.

[chw42]

Game 1 looking wet in Baltimore. Would be interesting if they had to play 5 days in row.

 

Both teams have 5 guys they can start. But not having Shields for game 4 could hurt the Royals more than the O's.

[Dick Allen]

Both teams have 5 guys they can start. But not having Shields for game 4 could hurt the Royals more than the O's.

I like that a lot better than what it was a few years ago, where if you had 2 or 3 great starters, that was really all you needed in the playoffs.

 

With all the off days they used to have in the playoffs, it was a different game than the regular season. That seems dumb to me.

[BlackSox13]

Game 1 looking wet in Baltimore. Would be interesting if they had to play 5 days in row.

s*** dude, I just looked at the weather and its supposed to start raining about an hour or so before game time. That's going to be a cold chilly game if they play it.

[caulfield12]

Why the Royals have become "America's Team"

 

 

Those long-lowly Royals are America’s new “it team.”

 

The nation is speaking, voting online, buying blue. Its sports sages are writing that Kansas City’s baseball franchise has become the popular choice of fans whose teams are out of championship contention.

 

And a decent stack of research supports the leading theory as to why that may be.

 

Studies call it the underdog effect. After 29 years of missing out on postseason play, our boys in blue are being viewed, say the scientists and pundits, in a light similar to how millions of Americans view themselves:

 

As underdogs.

 

A 2014 incarnation, maybe, of the racehorse Seabiscuit. Flyover country’s own Rocky Balboa or the plucky Hobbits of Middle-earth.

 

The Harry Truman of “Dewey Defeats Truman.” The Butler Bulldogs of NCAA Final Four showdowns past.

 

“People love the underdog story,” said sports psychologist Christian End of Xavier University. “It’s about effort. It’s about justice. It’s a storyline pitched to us over and over again.”

 

It is not that the Baltimore Orioles — the Royals’ rival in the American League Championship Series beginning Friday in Baltimore — rank among baseball’s privileged overlords. They haven’t gone to a World Series since 1983.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But their payroll is $15 million higher than that of the Royals. Also, the Orioles have faced performance-enhancement issues and basked this year atop the vaunted Eastern Division with its Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

 

Whatever the reason, respondents to an online ESPN poll say they would rather root, root, root for the Royals.

 

It’s not even close. Of more than 100,000 votes cast, 68 percent prefer Kansas City over Baltimore in the ALCS.

 

The Royals pull majority support in 47 states. They rock in California (69 percent favoring the Royals) despite teams in Los Angeles and Oakland falling to our Wild Card bunch in the postseason. The Orioles prevail only in Virginia, Delaware and home state Maryland.

 

Detroit Tigers fan Rick Grieve, who studies sports fan behavior at Western Kentucky University, has climbed aboard what he called “the Royals bandwagon” in part because he’s as much a sucker for underdogs as anybody.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But he also said baseball fans of all stripes are mindful of how the small-market Royals got here.

 

“By doing it sort of the pure way, developing young talent and being patient,” Grieve said. “People appreciate a little more the things in life that take time.”

 

The Royals are “not high-rollers like the Yankees, paying their way to get the top stars,” he said.

 

Case in point: His Tigers late in the season acquired Cy Young Award-winning pitcher David Price from the Tampa Bay Rays. Meanwhile, the Royals tapped a Texas kid named Brandon Finnegan, 21, who in June had still been pitching in college.

 

After some shaky late-season outings, Price and his Tigers were swept by Baltimore in the playoffs.

 

Finnegan, on the other hand, has emerged as a postseason phenom. Could he not as well be your naive, starry-eyed nephew?

 

Destiny’s darlings

 

The Los Angeles Times declared the Royals “destiny’s darlings” and even “America’s team” at the start of the divisional series with the home-team Angels early this month.

 

Since then, sales of Royals merchandise have exploded.

 

Among postseason teams over the past week, the Royals are second only to the Dodgers in merchandise sales through mlb.com/shop, said Matt Bourne, a publicist for Major League Baseball.

 

At Fanatics.com, the nation’s largest online retailer of licensed sports merchandise, Royals sales have led all other MLB teams’ gear since Oct. 1, the day after Kansas City’s thrilling victory over Oakland in the Wild Card Game.

 

A hero of that 12-inning contest, first baseman Eric Hosmer, has zoomed up the Fanatics.com charts and become the third-most popular player among consumers seeking jerseys and other athlete-specific stuff.

 

Some academics suspect the come-from-behind excitement of the Wild Card Game created a broad new landscape of fans for “America’s team.”

 

Human physiology could have played a role.

 

Tight, action-packed games “create this emotional arousal” in spectators partly because of endorphins and adrenaline flooding through the nervous system, said Oregon State University marketing professor Colleen Bee.

 

She is among researchers who have tracked fans’ reaction to sporting events when one side is cast as “underdogs” or “heroes” and the other is designated “top dogs” or “villains.”

 

But a magnificent game can boost admiration for both kinds of teams, she said. And in the case of the nationally televised Wild Card Game, only the Royals advanced.

 

The underdog effect is buoyed by other factors, including one called “emotional economics.”

 

Economists, of course, stand behind the theory: Selecting a team to root for involves a simple but unconsious cost-benefit analysis.

 

“The underdog is a very safe bet,” said Murray State University professor (and longtime Royals fan) Daniel Wann. “If they win, the emotional benefit is huge.

 

“But they’re not supposed to win. So you, as a fan, have an excuse if they fail. There’s not much of an emotional cost to that.”

 

Yet another area of inquiry: Are fans cheering for the underdog, or are they really rooting against the top dog?

 

According to a 2005 paper by University of South Florida researchers who analyzed student subjects, “support for the underdog was found to be more extreme than rooting against the top dog.” So that settles that.

 

Still, The Wall Street Journal has pushed the anti-top-dog theory to new empirical dimensions with its “Hateability Index.”

 

When the 10 postseason teams were determined at the end of September, the newspaper scored each club’s hateability based on payroll, past pennant success, Sports Illustrated covers, substance abuse problems, even the players’ “excessive beards.”

 

The Journal rated the St. Louis Cardinals as the most hateable.

 

The Royals were rated the least.

 

All about you

 

All in all, scientists think that the underdog effect is a function of fans seeing themselves in the teams they choose to support.

 

You, the fan, are an underdog in life. You work hard to scrap out a living.

 

Society’s top dogs get all the acclaim and rewards, but they’re really no more deserving than you.

 

“When good things happen to your team, it reflects well on yourself,” said Grieve of Western Kentucky University. “Especially if you went with the underdog.”

 

The phenomenon extends beyond sports.

 

A 2009 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that “underdog branding” is effective in marketing products and services ranging from Avis Rent A Car (“We’re number two, but we try harder”) to the blockbuster series of books and films about Harry Potter, a gifted orphan who grew up in a closet.

 

“Consumers react positively when they see the underdog aspects of their own lives being reflected in branded products,” researchers from the Harvard Business School wrote.

 

But let’s step back.

 

Maybe the Royals aren’t the underdogs we think.

 

Just who is an underdog, and who isn’t?

 

That’s the question pondered in the recent book “David and Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell.

 

The Bible’s account of the young shepherd slaying the mighty Philistine is widely misunderstood, Gladwell contends. The nimble David had his sling, which in an instant could put down a lumbering and perhaps medically disadvantaged warrior saddled with armor, a sword and heavy shield.

 

That David won should be no surprise.

 

“David was a slinger,” Gladwell writes, “and slingers beat infantry, hands down.”

 

To reach Rick Montgomery, call 816-234-4410 or send email to rmontgomery@kcstar.com.

 

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansa...l#storylink=cpy

 

[caulfield12]

Why the Royals have become "America's Team"

 

 

Those long-lowly Royals are America’s new “it team.”

 

The nation is speaking, voting online, buying blue. Its sports sages are writing that Kansas City’s baseball franchise has become the popular choice of fans whose teams are out of championship contention.

 

And a decent stack of research supports the leading theory as to why that may be.

 

Studies call it the underdog effect. After 29 years of missing out on postseason play, our boys in blue are being viewed, say the scientists and pundits, in a light similar to how millions of Americans view themselves:

 

As underdogs.

 

A 2014 incarnation, maybe, of the racehorse Seabiscuit. Flyover country’s own Rocky Balboa or the plucky Hobbits of Middle-earth.

 

The Harry Truman of “Dewey Defeats Truman.” The Butler Bulldogs of NCAA Final Four showdowns past.

 

“People love the underdog story,” said sports psychologist Christian End of Xavier University. “It’s about effort. It’s about justice. It’s a storyline pitched to us over and over again.”

 

It is not that the Baltimore Orioles — the Royals’ rival in the American League Championship Series beginning Friday in Baltimore — rank among baseball’s privileged overlords. They haven’t gone to a World Series since 1983.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But their payroll is $15 million higher than that of the Royals. Also, the Orioles have faced performance-enhancement issues and basked this year atop the vaunted Eastern Division with its Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

 

Whatever the reason, respondents to an online ESPN poll say they would rather root, root, root for the Royals.

 

It’s not even close. Of more than 100,000 votes cast, 68 percent prefer Kansas City over Baltimore in the ALCS.

 

The Royals pull majority support in 47 states. They rock in California (69 percent favoring the Royals) despite teams in Los Angeles and Oakland falling to our Wild Card bunch in the postseason. The Orioles prevail only in Virginia, Delaware and home state Maryland.

 

Detroit Tigers fan Rick Grieve, who studies sports fan behavior at Western Kentucky University, has climbed aboard what he called “the Royals bandwagon” in part because he’s as much a sucker for underdogs as anybody.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But he also said baseball fans of all stripes are mindful of how the small-market Royals got here.

 

“By doing it sort of the pure way, developing young talent and being patient,” Grieve said. “People appreciate a little more the things in life that take time.”

 

The Royals are “not high-rollers like the Yankees, paying their way to get the top stars,” he said.

 

Case in point: His Tigers late in the season acquired Cy Young Award-winning pitcher David Price from the Tampa Bay Rays. Meanwhile, the Royals tapped a Texas kid named Brandon Finnegan, 21, who in June had still been pitching in college.

 

After some shaky late-season outings, Price and his Tigers were swept by Baltimore in the playoffs.

 

Finnegan, on the other hand, has emerged as a postseason phenom. Could he not as well be your naive, starry-eyed nephew?

 

Destiny’s darlings

 

The Los Angeles Times declared the Royals “destiny’s darlings” and even “America’s team” at the start of the divisional series with the home-team Angels early this month.

 

Since then, sales of Royals merchandise have exploded.

 

Among postseason teams over the past week, the Royals are second only to the Dodgers in merchandise sales through mlb.com/shop, said Matt Bourne, a publicist for Major League Baseball.

 

At Fanatics.com, the nation’s largest online retailer of licensed sports merchandise, Royals sales have led all other MLB teams’ gear since Oct. 1, the day after Kansas City’s thrilling victory over Oakland in the Wild Card Game.

 

A hero of that 12-inning contest, first baseman Eric Hosmer, has zoomed up the Fanatics.com charts and become the third-most popular player among consumers seeking jerseys and other athlete-specific stuff.

 

Some academics suspect the come-from-behind excitement of the Wild Card Game created a broad new landscape of fans for “America’s team.”

 

Human physiology could have played a role.

 

Tight, action-packed games “create this emotional arousal” in spectators partly because of endorphins and adrenaline flooding through the nervous system, said Oregon State University marketing professor Colleen Bee.

 

She is among researchers who have tracked fans’ reaction to sporting events when one side is cast as “underdogs” or “heroes” and the other is designated “top dogs” or “villains.”

 

But a magnificent game can boost admiration for both kinds of teams, she said. And in the case of the nationally televised Wild Card Game, only the Royals advanced.

 

The underdog effect is buoyed by other factors, including one called “emotional economics.”

 

Economists, of course, stand behind the theory: Selecting a team to root for involves a simple but unconsious cost-benefit analysis.

 

“The underdog is a very safe bet,” said Murray State University professor (and longtime Royals fan) Daniel Wann. “If they win, the emotional benefit is huge.

 

“But they’re not supposed to win. So you, as a fan, have an excuse if they fail. There’s not much of an emotional cost to that.”

 

Yet another area of inquiry: Are fans cheering for the underdog, or are they really rooting against the top dog?

 

According to a 2005 paper by University of South Florida researchers who analyzed student subjects, “support for the underdog was found to be more extreme than rooting against the top dog.” So that settles that.

 

Still, The Wall Street Journal has pushed the anti-top-dog theory to new empirical dimensions with its “Hateability Index.”

 

When the 10 postseason teams were determined at the end of September, the newspaper scored each club’s hateability based on payroll, past pennant success, Sports Illustrated covers, substance abuse problems, even the players’ “excessive beards.”

 

The Journal rated the St. Louis Cardinals as the most hateable.

 

The Royals were rated the least.

 

All about you

 

All in all, scientists think that the underdog effect is a function of fans seeing themselves in the teams they choose to support.

 

You, the fan, are an underdog in life. You work hard to scrap out a living.

 

Society’s top dogs get all the acclaim and rewards, but they’re really no more deserving than you.

 

“When good things happen to your team, it reflects well on yourself,” said Grieve of Western Kentucky University. “Especially if you went with the underdog.”

 

The phenomenon extends beyond sports.

 

A 2009 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that “underdog branding” is effective in marketing products and services ranging from Avis Rent A Car (“We’re number two, but we try harder”) to the blockbuster series of books and films about Harry Potter, a gifted orphan who grew up in a closet.

 

“Consumers react positively when they see the underdog aspects of their own lives being reflected in branded products,” researchers from the Harvard Business School wrote.

 

But let’s step back.

 

Maybe the Royals aren’t the underdogs we think.

 

Just who is an underdog, and who isn’t?

 

That’s the question pondered in the recent book “David and Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell.

 

The Bible’s account of the young shepherd slaying the mighty Philistine is widely misunderstood, Gladwell contends. The nimble David had his sling, which in an instant could put down a lumbering and perhaps medically disadvantaged warrior saddled with armor, a sword and heavy shield.

 

That David won should be no surprise.

 

“David was a slinger,” Gladwell writes, “and slingers beat infantry, hands down.”

 

To reach Rick Montgomery, call 816-234-4410 or send email to rmontgomery@kcstar.com.

 

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansa...l#storylink=cpy

 

[Brian]

Who's proclaiming these franchises as "Americas Team"? I'm not pulling for KC or the Cowboys.

[caulfield12]

Who's proclaiming these franchises as "Americas Team"? I'm not pulling for KC or the Cowboys.

 

 

KC writers, haha.

 

And some poll where 68% of respondents were hoping for them to beat the Orioles...despite their last World Series appearance being two years prior, 1983 vs. 1985.

 

That and the poll that had the Royals wildly popular all around the country except for D.C./Maryland/Virginia....and weirdly enough, Delaware, where KC had the Wilmington Blue Rocks minor league team.

 

 

And I always thought the Braves (because of TBS) and Cowboys were those "America's" teams, at least they claimed to be.

 

 

The Los Angeles Times declared the Royals “destiny’s darlings” and even “America’s team” at the start of the divisional series with the home-team Angels early this month.

 

Since then, sales of Royals merchandise have exploded.

 

Among postseason teams over the past week, the Royals are second only to the Dodgers in merchandise sales through mlb.com/shop, said Matt Bourne, a publicist for Major League Baseball.

 

At Fanatics.com, the nation’s largest online retailer of licensed sports merchandise, Royals sales have led all other MLB teams’ gear since Oct. 1, the day after Kansas City’s thrilling victory over Oakland in the Wild Card Game.

 

A hero of that 12-inning contest, first baseman Eric Hosmer, has zoomed up the Fanatics.com charts and become the third-most popular player among consumers seeking jerseys and other athlete-specific stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 10, 2014 by caulfield12

[caulfield12]

There isn't a f***ing chance I'm reading that entire article. Just post the damn link.

 

 

My entire goal with the posting of this is for you to cheer against the Royals and for the Cardinals...part of the master plan.

 

 

I'm guessing War & Peace, Ulysses, Moby Dick and Infinite Jest weren't on your summer reading list.

Edited October 10, 2014 by caulfield12

[BlackSox13]

My entire goal with the posting of this is for you to cheer against the Royals and for the Cardinals...part of the master plan.

 

 

I'm guessing War & Peace, Ulysses, Moby Dick and Infinite Jest weren't on your summer reading list.

Of course not, he was delivering milk. Duh.

[caulfield12]

13 of the last 18 teams to lead the majors in homers haven't even made the playoffs...

 

Only 2 of the last 30 teams to lead the majors in homers has won the World Series (something about good pitching/defense/bullpen nullifying good offense in the post-season.)

[Swingandalongonetoleft]

Escobar no diggity.

[Kyyle23]

Gotta hand it to the Royals, once the door opened they were ready and ran through at full steam ahead

[caulfield12]

Shields scuffling for three post-season starts in a row, although he only gave up 2 runs in 6 his last time out, it was a battle nearly every inning. Obviously, BALT has a tough line-up, even without Machado/Wieters/Chris Davis.

 

Battle of bullpens tonight.

[caulfield12]

Royals really fortunate to have escaped with a tie game there in the 6th.

 

Lots of troubles for Finnegan, and plenty of bad luck and uncharacteristic defensive misplays as well.

 

 

[Swingandalongonetoleft]

Chris Singleton has gotten pretty good at his job doing color for ESPN Radio's call.

[Brian]

Britton a little tight?

[Rowand44]

Hokus Pokus says the Orioles.

[LittleHurt05]

Billy Butler GIDP. Some things never change

[GGajewski18]

I hope De Aza ends it on a walk off lol.