Even I’ve lost patience with the Royals. Let’s get the pitchforks!

It's more our fault than his. We're not patient enough. We don't have enough blind faith in the fruitless 7.3-year-and-counting Process. We ought to be ASHAMED.

I’m a happy person, generally. My momma taught me to find silver linings everywhere, and give people the benefit of the doubt. Someone cut me off in traffic? Maybe there’s a woman in labor in the backseat. Hit a crappy tee shot?* Well, what an opportunity to work on shooting out of the rough. I’m in the line at the grocery store with the world’s slowest checker? Ahhh, an opportunity to grow in patience.

*though I was on the varsity team all four years of high school, I was a crappy golfer. This ‘silver lining’ skill came in handy.

And in general, I keep the Royals’ woes in perspective. They’ve been horrible my whole life and then some, but even at their worst, there are much bigger problems in the world at large, and even in my own life. So, whatever. Let’s go drink a Royal ‘Rita at The K and hope for a win. If they lose, whatever, we’ve seen this before but the world won’t end.

But I dunno. Something is different about this round, somehow. It’s more infuriating even though, in a lot of ways, it’s the same old Royals. We’re watching a manager stick a guy with a career .311 OBP in the leadoff spot because grit and hustle are apparently more important out of the #1 slot than avoiding outs. The same manager finds a way to blame us, the fans, the ones who pay money to watch his baffling lineups fail to score any runs ever, for the team’s continued failures.

Nedward apparently learned this refrain from his boss and his managerial predecessor, because they’ve both scolded us for being too impatient even though we’ve suffered for decades AND given Dayton Moore seven years to accomplish the amazing feat of losing 15 of the last 19 games. And the “best farm system ever?” It’s now just a slightly less bare cupboard than the one he inherited. Additionally, we have an insufferable TV broadcast duo, who, after today’s starter gave up four home runs AGAIN, agreed that he pitched “really well.”

This is the same old Royals. We were led to believe that somehow, this time would be different, and it’s not different. So sorry, James Shields, your wonderful starts are being wasted by the roster around you, an offense who likes to run into outs all over the damn diamond because again, grit and heart are more important than logic or conserving precious outs.

I’d like to say that I had some magical gut feeling after the first inning when I started tweeting incredibly grumpy things this afternoon. But it doesn’t take special prescience to know that when the Royals see 7 whole pitches from Billy Freaking Buckner in the first inning, it’s just another Royals game in a decades-long string of the same old crap.

This has been a banner week for stinging takedowns of these ‘Come to Play’ Royals, who are barely distinguishable from the humiliating ‘Our Time’ Royals, the laughable ‘True. Blue. Tradition.’ Royals, the ‘Your Hometown Team’ Royals, and so many the other Royals before. I don’t have much new to add to the refrain, because all of us are mad in a way that makes us stare at the team’s B-Ref page in a rage-tinged disbelief, wondering how anyone thought that this team would actually ‘Come to Play.’

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