CLEVELAND | Here we are, barely three weeks into the season, and already there has been a major effort to come up with a Kansas City rhyme. You probably know that in the late 1940s, the Milwaukee Braves had two terrific pitchers (Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain) and a collection of others. And so everyone would hope for &#8220;Spahn and Sain and two days of rain.&#8221;</p><p>Well, the Royals came into Wednesday&#8217;s game against Cleveland with seven victories and all seven came in games started by Gil Meche, Zack Greinke or Kyle Davies. Those three have a combined 1.69 ERA, they have allowed one home run total, they have more strikeouts than innings pitched.</p><p>The other starters, Sidney Ponson and Horacio Ramirez &#8212; have not been as good.</p><p>So, the rhymes: Gil, Kyle and Zack and then fall two games back. Zack, Kyle and Gil and two days until. Gil, Zack and Kyle and then turn the dial. And so on. None quite fit. But the theme is in place.</p><p>So, Brian Bannister knew what he had to do on Wednesday. This is both the gift and burden of being Bannister: He knows the score. Two years ago, he had the best season of any rookie pitcher in baseball (12-9, 3.87 ERA). Last year, his season was a nightmare (9-16, 5.76 ERA). And Tuesday, he got the call, drove from Omaha to Kansas City, hopped a plane to Cleveland, and he walked out Wednesday to be the Royals&#8217; fill-in starter against Cleveland and last year&#8217;s Cy Young Award winner Cliff Lee.</p><p>Yes, he does know the score.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a bit awkward now, coming up,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You don&#8217;t know the inside jokes. You don&#8217;t know what everyone is laughing about. &#8230; But I know my role. I might be up and down all year. I&#8217;m OK with that. My job is to get it back to those three starters.&#8221;</p><p>Bannister did his job. More than that. He pitched beautifully on a miserably cold and rainy night in Cleveland. He threw six shutout innings against the Indians. He pitched with precision, getting Grady Sizemore to fly out on a fastball on the outside corner, getting Travis Hafner to ground out on a change-up, getting Mark DeRosa to fly out on a good slider that broke away, getting Kelly Shoppach to look at a strike-three fastball just over the outside edge.</p><p>The Royals won the game 2-0, their third shutout as a team this season, and on this night you could not help but wonder how good the Royals can be if Bannister could provide them with a solid No. 4 starter. But Bannister is not talking or thinking about that.</p><p>&#8220;I was just glad I could give the team some good innings,&#8221; he said.</p><p>It&#8217;s no secret that Bannister is my favorite pitcher. I like him for a lot of reasons. I like him because he likes baseball statistics like I do. I like him because he has a great story: He is the son of Floyd Bannister, the first overall pick of the 1976 draft, but he does not have his father&#8217;s pitching gifts. He walked on at college and was told many times that he did not have a good enough fastball to get out major-league hitters, but he endured, stuck with it, and he made it.</p><p>More, I like him because he thinks about things. Yes, he thinks about his pitching some in the game. Some say he thinks about his pitching too much, but more than that he thinks about other things, about family, about movies, about politics, about photography, about religion, about what sports mean to people. He explores life, and that&#8217;s pretty rare for an athlete.</p><p>And right now, he&#8217;s trying not to too think too much about the future. Bannister still believes he can be a good pitcher in the big leagues. He <em>has</em> to believe that. It&#8217;s belief that got him this far. He worked hard all offseason on the physical part of the game. He wanted to get his motion right, his rhythm right, he wanted his motion to look the same to a hitter whether he was throwing a fastball or cutter or slider or change-up. He wanted to work on keeping the ball down so that he could get more ground balls.