Seattle’s loss moves the Royals closer to the land of sweet postseason dreams

The irrational fear of jinxes or ghosts of the past and the entirely rational conditioning of 28-plus years of futility might make this a jarring point to consider:

But because their magic number for a wild-card berth shriveled to two on Wednesday despite a 6-4 loss to Cleveland, your Kansas City Royals surely will have champagne stashed at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago on Thursday.

Because the bottom line is that the Royals inched closer to securing postseason life when Seattle lost to Toronto on Wednesday.

Never mind that it would guarantee only what is essentially a one-game play-in.

It turns out that champagne can prosper with age, according to Wine Spectator, if it’s high-quality stuff and well-stored. Even so, it’s also safe to assume that the double-secret reserve won’t be vintage 1985.

Any leftovers from that World Series celebration, after all, surely lost all fizz as the franchise evaporated into the dregs before this recent revival.

Yet with the Royals at the very verge of the edge of the brink of their first playoff berth in the eternity since then, the matter of how and when the bubbly will get uncorked — and with how much gusto — makes for an intriguing curiosity and maybe even a complication.

If that’s true for the Royals, it’s probably true for fans, too.

Go crazy … over a wild-card berth?

Be excited that the Royals crept closer to the playoffs even on a night they lost at Progressive Field to drop two games behind Detroit in the American League Central race with just four left to play?

Is the true triumph just to sneak into the one-game roulette of the wild-card … or to actually win the division?

The answer is, well, yes to both.

Of course for the Royals a wild-card entry would be cause for celebration, even if it remains what manager Ned Yost likes to call Plan B.

In fact, there’s no reason to think it even would be restrained revelry … unless it’s the anticlimactic scenario of, say, clinching at 1 a.m. Central on Saturday morning via a Seattle loss to the Angels.

If it’s not quite right to say that would be backing into it, that still would be about as watered down as it gets for such a watershed moment.

Cavorting around over the wild card needn’t be a concession of the division, far-fetched as that seems now.

Besides, the Royals probably would find it within themselves to muster a second shindig if the occasion were called for.

“Quite easily,” Yost said.

It’s obviously a much more desirable scenario to win the division and be guaranteed an entire series to show what they’ve got.

But it also would take some nerve to quibble after 29 years, though, even if what they’d be celebrating in some ways is a slippery consolation spot … with the more stable prize of the division still within their grasp.

After all this time, of course, it would be nice for all concerned if there were a dramatic, cathartic moment that defined the breakthrough.

It may or may not play out that way, of course, and for the record no one with the Royals is taking anything for granted.

Yost won’t so much as offer at any discussion of potential pitching match-ups for the postseason, which in theory could begin with a 163rd game on Monday in Detroit if the Royals are tied with the Tigers.

“I’m not going there,” said Yost, who also playfully chastised a reporter on the phone by telling him to tell his wife no one knows if he’ll be coming home Sunday or not.

He added, “There’s still too much going on. There’s still too many variables.”

It is all in flux, and that’s no comfort for the flustered who can’t help but wonder if there is a way for the Royals to bungle this.

It would take a massive series of improbable turns for it to happen now, including an epic collapse that people would still be talking about 29 years from now.

“Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen,” Yost said earlier this week, “and I’m not going to stay up all night wondering, you know?”

It’s a matter of when now, not if … and how and when to celebrate.

This story was originally published September 24, 2014 at 11:30 PM with the headline "Seattle’s loss moves the Royals closer to the land of sweet postseason dreams."