NEW YORK | Matt Hoffman has done everything he can for his son. The boy has a Zack Greinke jersey, Royals batting gloves, and even a little brother named Gordon. There is a ball in the house with five or six autographs from Royals players.</p><p>But Kiefer is no dummy. He&rsquo;s 6 years old, and really starting to understand the game. He knows when the infield should play in, when the runners should be moving, and which counts the pitcher will throw a fastball.</p><p>So, yeah, Kiefer is a smart kid. And he&rsquo;s a New York kid in a town dominated by Derek Jeter, unlike his old man, who grew up in George Brett&rsquo;s Kansas City. Temptation is all around the boy, especially now, as the team his friends root for is one win from a World Series championship.</p><p>&ldquo;He likes the Royals more than the Yankees,&rdquo; dad says. &ldquo;But if they win it all, I might be in danger of losing him.&rdquo;</p><p>New York is the world&rsquo;s melting pot, you know, the most diverse place in the country, so if you look real hard you can even find Royals fans. There are others like the Hoffmans, Royals fans living in baseball&rsquo;s capital, who could easily be forgiven cheering for the most powerful franchise in sports but still tether themselves to the perennially losing Royals.</p><p>Here they are now, watching the team in their city set for a 27th championship in a World Series where the highlight moment &mdash; Johnny Damon&rsquo;s one-man double-steal in game four &mdash; is turned in by a former Royal, while the team they choose to root for will give nearly a quarter of its 2010 payroll to Jose Guillen and Kyle Farnsworth.</p><p>The team in the city they live starts Derek Jeter at shortstop, but they root for the one 1,200 miles away that starts Yuniesky Betancourt.</p><p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ll ever give it up,&rdquo; says Molly Moore, a 25-year-old from central Missouri who now lives in Brooklyn.</p><p>&ldquo;Never never, never, been tempted &mdash; not once,&rdquo; says Erik Gratton, a New York Royals fan from Kansas City.</p><p>&ldquo;Fandom isn&rsquo;t about rational choices,&rdquo; says Scott McKinney, a 39-year-old from Derby, Kan., who now lives in Harlem.</p><p>&bull; &bull; &bull;</p><p>Being a Royals fan here in New York is hard, but it&rsquo;s a different kind of hard than being, say, a Red Sox or Angels fan. You don&rsquo;t hear much in the way of insults. Five different Royals fans living in New York describe it more like, <em>You like the Royals? Oh, that&rsquo;s cute</em>.</p><p>&ldquo;You get an awful lot of Triple-A comments,&rdquo; says Clayton O&rsquo;Toole, 25, who moved to the West Village from Leawood two years ago. &ldquo;Which is kind of how I feel sometimes.&rdquo;</p><p>They all have their different ways of coping. O&rsquo;Toole says his first thought after hearing about Zack Greinke&rsquo;s contract extension wasn&rsquo;t, <em>good for the Royals!</em>, but more, <em>cool, now he can&rsquo;t pitch for the Yankees for at least two or three more seasons!</em></p><p>O&rsquo;Toole has worn Royals gear to Yankees playoff games, his way of staying true, sort of like a married guy going on a date but wearing the wedding ring.</p><p>McKinney says the distance has made his bond with the Royals and distaste for the Yankees even stronger. He has a five-month old daughter, and for reasons that go way beyond baseball, plans on moving from New York before she&rsquo;s old enough to follow any team.</p><p>&ldquo;Until she gets to the age she wants to do the one thing that (ticks) me off the most,&rdquo; McKinney says, &ldquo;and then she will become a Yankees fan.&rdquo;