The grind can wait: The Royals had celebrating to do, and they did it in style

There is an old line in some baseball circles that opening day is amateur hour. This is the time when people who will not watch or think about baseball again the rest of the year pay attention, and overreact to whatever happens on the field.

It’s not real, is another way to put it. The pomp and the circumstance and the bunting and the overwrought poetry about green grass and sunshine means a production that’s great for television and sportswriters but lousy for the players and coaches who make their livelihoods in the grind that follows.

Here, then, is quite possibly the best exception: Opening day moved to opening night in Kansas City this year so a standalone, national television audience could watch the Royals’ first World Series championship flag in 30 years be raised.

Some lucky band of talented ballplayers wins the World Series every year, but this one lifted a city. The tears. The memories. The parade. So, yeah. You’re damn right the men who make their livelihoods in the grind that follows wanted to enjoy their party.

“This is something we’ve been dreaming about for a long, long time,” Royals pitcher Danny Duffy says. “I know the fans who’ve been with us since before I was born would say, ‘How long have you been waiting? We’ve been waiting 30 years.’ So I am super ready to see it go up, see that flag fly, and then the rings, man. That’ll be dope.”

Twenty-nine opening days separate the Royals’ last championship flag from this one, and they all essentially amounted to varying levels of hopeful optimism. This one was earned jubilation, and on a scale of one to “Salvador Perez,” was, well, “Salvador Perez after the last out.”

The Royals essentially tricked themselves out for the occasion. Gold lettering on their jerseys and hats. Pictures of championship rings on their locker nameplates. World Series trophies on their pictures around the clubhouse, and floor-to-ceiling murals of the dog pile in New York and parade in Kansas City in the room outside the clubhouse.

Fans started showing up at 8 in the morning, so many of them that the Royals opened the parking lot early. Thousands lined the streets downtown for a 9.49-mile game of catch. The Plaza was packed all day, and if you weren’t wearing a Royals logo, you stuck out in the crowd. For much of the afternoon, a line looped around the block to take a selfie with that 3D Perez billboard on Southwest Trafficway. A full 45 minutes before the first pitch, Perez got a standing ovation for jogging into the outfield to stretch.

This is the kind of environment the Royals have worked so hard to make happen. Once, general manager Dayton Moore talked openly of wanting to turn the Ortiz and Jeter T-shirts at Kauffman Stadium into Moustakas and Hosmer shirts. Now, club officials think they can improve on last year’s record attendance, and the front office thinks the crowd support is worth five or more wins over a full season.

Manager Ned Yost said it felt like he didn’t have a winter, and there is an element of that around town, too. Even now, three years into the Royals being awesome again, reality is sometimes hard to grasp.

So ... this ISN’T a fluke?

Now it’s the OTHER team that screws up?

This winter was something like a crash course in catching up. The eighth inning in Houston and the ninth inning against Toronto and Alex Gordon’s home run against Jeurys Familia and Eric Hosmer’s sprint home and everything in between have been watched hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube, and killed untold man-hours of work time while Royals fans soak in the afterglow.

In how many basements does the picture of Union Station during the parade now hang?

By incredible coincidence, this championship opening day had the unprecedented circumstance of a World Series rematch. There are enough remaining wounds that you can’t help but wonder how awkward this night might’ve been if that World Series turned the other way.

Instead, it was a bit like your ex having to sit through your wedding.

The Royals raised the flag, showed highlights from the World Series, and put the trophy up behind home plate for a pregame party that the Mets were forced to watch lined up along the third base line.

Actually, that was a bit like sending your ex pictures of your honeymoon.

The whole night was a weird contrast between the machinations of Major League Baseball and the celebration of a franchise-changing championship.

Wade Davis interrupted his normal pregame work to tell reporters he couldn’t remember which finger he got measured for his ring. Yost, the noted hater of pomp and circumstance, said it was weird to open his binder of notes for the first time since the World Series and find scouting reports of ... the Mets. Joakim Soria talked of both being grateful for his spot in the bullpen and proud for so many old friends winning a championship.

Batting practice was normal, except for the playoff-level media presence, and the fact that some players — Alex Gordon, most enthusiastically — hugged Moore on their way back to the clubhouse. Perez talked about wanting to forget about 2015 to concentrate on 2016, waving a right arm on which he’s had the championship tattooed.

As it turned out, the actual game turned out to be a fairly succinct representation of the Royals. They won with good pitching, enough singles, plenty of speed and much better defense than their opponents. The only thing missing was a comeback.

Before the game, Yost did a news conference in a hot and stuffy room underneath the stands. Normally, this daily briefing is in the dugout. One more difference about this opening day. Anyway, someone begins a question with words to the effect of, I know you don’t usually like opening day because of all the fluff around it, but this year, with everything you did, isn’t it ...

Yost interrupts.

“It’s a pain,” he says.

The grind starts soon enough.

This story was originally published April 3, 2016 at 11:10 PM with the headline "The grind can wait: The Royals had celebrating to do, and they did it in style."