One quarter of the way through the season is the industry standard for fair judgments on teams, and the Royals are as promising as they’ve been since that fluky 2003 season. Good starting pitching (finally), Gordon starring (finally), Billy Butler coming around (finally).
Branden Albert is standing tall, a 6-foot-5 and 316-pound giant, the most confident and sure face he can muster telling you that whatever problems he might have had with the Chiefs are in the past. He very much wants you to believe this. He very much wants to believe it himself.
Jimmy Nielsen cussed. He first cussed silently in his thoughts, then just a whisper to himself. Soon the words came loud and louder and finally screamed in a string of obscenities because, well, what else is there to do when you find out the world is about to know your darkest secret? "Yes, " he told his wife, "I have a gambling problem."
Think about what KU basketball coach Bill Self pulled off Tuesday in landing consensus No. 1 recruit Andrew Wiggins. The 6-foot-7 Canadian star had long been linked with Florida State (where his parents played basketball) and Kentucky (where John Calipari collects five-star recruits like garden gnomes). Those schools have been in on him for years, building relationships and dreams long before Wiggins became the presumed No. 1 pick in the 2014 NBA Draft.
There has never been a pitcher quite like Mariano Rivera, never a career quite like this. Rivera wanted to retire after last season but couldn’t let his last active day in uniform be tearing his knee on the Kauffman Stadium warning track shagging batting practice fly balls last May.
Don Garber is sitting at the head of a long table in a big conference room talking about the future of his league. The commissioner of Major League Soccer could be here all day, really. This is his passion. His life. What he’ll be remembered for.
The Royals’ best player and example of what they’re trying to do was once their worst player and example of why they never won. This is easy to forget sometimes, now that Alex Gordon is a star. The story of where the Royals have been and where they might go is also Gordon’s story.
The Royals’ longest losing streak this season is two measly games. Two. That’s not a streak as much as it’s a coincidence. By this time last year, they’d already buried the season under a 12-game losing streak. The April before that, they lost six in a row. This is the effect of a new pitching staff for the Royals. “That’s why,” manager Ned Yost says.
Sports are like the bigger world around it, in that there is much room for improvement in gay rights and acceptance. NBA center Jason Collins is now pushing this issue in front of a bigger audience, and what we’re about to see is progress. This is how it’s always worked.
Chiefs general manager John Dorsey and coach Andy Reid don’t always agree — who does? — but they see football through the same lens. These are sure men who take their jobs seriously but not themselves, and maybe they like a little bit of that in their players. Be confident in yourself, while still knowing you need to get better.
Heidi Langegger raised this enormous son by herself, a single mother who’s on her 33rd year working in Volkswagen’s warranty department. As Eric Fisher realized a dream on Thursday at Radio City Music Hall, mom did a little crying and a lot of reflecting. “He was my little man,” she says. “Now, he’s my big, little man.”
In some ways, the Chiefs, in deciding whether to choose Texas A&M’s Luke Joeckel and Central Michigan’s Eric Fisher with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2013 NFL Draft, are likely choosing between a young man raised for this moment and one grew into it.
As fun as it is to make grand declarations about the NFL Draft, it’s worth remembering that the people making those grand declarations are just guessing. There’s no secret to making a great pick: Scouts, general managers and others work hard, but in the end, they play the percentages.
Like the man who opened the door to the major leagues for black players, “42,” the new film about Jackie Robinson, will honor the memories of so many of them at Kansas City’s Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
“An infant girl wakes up this morning without parents, both dead, dad killing mom and then turning the gun on himself,” The Star’s Sam Mellinger writes of the murder-suicide in which Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot his longtime girlfriend Kasandra Perkins then himself. “There are no answers. None that make sense, anyway.”
My 11th birthday came in the spring of 1989, which means I wore striped socks up to my knees and had a huge crush on the lead singer of the Bangles and will fight anyone who disrespects Back to the Future.
