69 days ’til Opening Day

There’s 69 days left until that best day of the year, baseball’s Opening Day. 69 is also the number of wins the Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles had in 2007.

Both of these franchises have been horrible recently, but just how bad is surprising.

Question: Which team has had more winning seasons in the last decade, Baltimore or Kansas City?

Answer: Kansas City, with one (2003).

That’s ridiculous. If you were to conduct a survey among baseball fans about which franchise is worse, I’d guess the majority would say Kansas City, and deservedly so. But the Orioles have been really bad too.

Baseball fans around my age (in their mid-twenties) can remember Baltimore being good at some point in their lives. They made the playoffs in ‘96 and ‘97, and played in the infamous Jeffrey Maier game. But they haven’t had a winning season since ‘97. We can’t ever remember Kansas City being good (last playoff appearance in 1985) other than that fluky 2003 season, in which they stayed in the AL Central race despite having a mediocre record of 83-79.

As much as I love baseball, this is one complaint about the sport I can’t argue. I couldn’t imagine being a fan of Kansas City, Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh or Cincinnati where every season seems hopeless and there’s been no real competitive season in 10 years or longer. To those of you who are real fans of those teams I salute you. I don’t know if I could keep it up as long as you people have.