The most important day of John Sherman’s ownership of the KC Royals since the first
Four hundred and ninety-three days have passed since John Sherman’s investors group officially bought his hometown’s Major League Baseball team, and that is an almost cruelly long wait to be able to share it.
The world flipped upside-down in that time, but now we’re starting to see straight again. So nearly 17 months after Sherman’s $1 billion purchase of the Royals was approved he can finally watch a game with other fans when the team he’s cheered for years plays the Rangers at 3 Thursday afternoon on baseball’s opening day in front of about 10,000 fans.
“It will be emotional,” Sherman said. “There have been a lot of emotional moments over the last year, for different reasons, things we didn’t plan on or expect. It will be an emotional day. One part of my brain will still be focused on making sure we’re doing the stuff right out here. That everything works. That the technology works. That we’re making this a great experience for our fans.”
Sherman will host some friends, family, and business associates in the owner’s suite. That place is gorgeous, as you’d expect. Everything you need. Food, drink, service, statistics, TVs. Everything. Well, almost everything.
There are parts of a ballgame that just don’t feel the same from a suite, which is why Sherman won’t watch the entire game there.
David Glass used to call himself a fan with a great parking spot, but here’s a weird and true thing about Sherman: buying the team meant downgrading his seat.
Sherman had two sets of season tickets for years — one in the Diamond Club, and another a little closer to the field.
He said he’s not sure how this will go now that he owns the team, but instead of hosting and small talk in the suite he prefers his baseball experience to be more of a fan’s.
“I like to walk around,” he said. “I like to get a feel for the stadium, the crowd. I really like watching the ballgame a little bit closer, where the fans are. I’ll see how that works out.”
This is not Sherman’s first game as owner, or first season, of course. He has been in charge long enough to institute real change throughout the organization — change that we’ll get into more as the season goes on — and further develop a reputation throughout the industry.
The Royals made themselves a leader in the sport by continuing to pay their minor-leaguers, avoiding COVID-related furloughs and layoffs and limiting pay cuts to executive leadership.
Dayton Moore is baseball’s second longest-tenured general manager, and is often credited with that path. And to be sure, he advocated for it. But it still had to be Sherman saying yes, declining an excuse that other owners didn’t have to cut costs.
Publicly and privately, these first 493 days of his leadership have come with employees hearing a familiar refrain: do everything possible to ensure the Royals come out of the pandemic stronger than they entered.
We’re not out yet — capacity is limited, after all — but Sherman answers quickly when asked if he’s confident the franchise is better than it was a year ago.
“Yes,” he said. “I’d answer that question pretty emphatically. I’ve thought about this a lot. I’ve been really impressed and inspired by some of the leaders in this organization.”
You would not be the first to point out that Sherman had some of the worst timing in human history — spending a fortune on a baseball team almost exactly four months before the world shut down, cutting a season from 162 games to 60, eliminating ticket sales, and MLB’s revenues slashed from $10.5 billion to $4 billion.
Sherman’s response is consistent. You don’t buy a team for the next season, or even the next five. You do it with decades in mind. So rather than pull back, Sherman’s group has invested extra, even taking out loans to do it.
They’ve reorganized much of the franchise’s internal structure, continued and grown research-and-development pushes, and updated Kauffman Stadium (check out the new video boards next time you’re there). The Royals’ opening day payroll is about $85 million, which ranks 19th in baseball and is higher than Sherman originally planned.
Before he could welcome a single fan to a game he authorized the biggest contract in franchise history — $82 million guaranteed for franchise icon Salvador Perez, who was already under contract this season.
These are not decisions made by a front office obsessed with squeezing maximum value for every dollar, or an owner worried about how the portfolio looks two years after buying the team.
These are the actions of a franchise guided by that challenge: how can we come out of the pandemic stronger than we entered?
“My sense is there are a lot of — not just in baseball or sports — but a lot of business organizations weren’t asking that question when it was all ‘stay at home,’” Sherman said. “The idea of being stronger on the other side, obviously you have to survive financially. That’s step one.
“But once we knew that was going to happen, it’s really about what’s the culture going to feel like and if you have a good culture (then) adversity should make it stronger. I think that happened. And then in the offseason, we had some different directions we could have taken but we chose to invest in the team. The idea of getting better quicker, and not just wait for some of the young guys to graduate. You know, pick up the pace a little bit and have a sense of urgency.”
The work has been intense, and it’s not for everyone. The results are not in yet, and won’t be for a while.
But this is a mile marker, and the most important day of Sherman’s leadership since the first. This is the first day he’s able to share his team with his hometown, the first time those fans will be able to see Sherman’s vision in person, the first time he’ll be able to walk the concourse and say thank you.
This story was originally published April 1, 2021 at 5:00 AM.