Royals Realm

Luckily American Idol’s David Cook was there or I would have had a bad time at the K tonight.

It’s a good thing he sang the national anthem and “Take me out to the Ballgame” because that took my focus off the fact that the Orioles have now beaten Kansas City 11 straight times.

I am now totally not upset about the 7-4 stifling and am looking forward to the next Idol showcase for the pseudo Royals fan…oh wait, that was most of the other people in the stadium. I on the other hand spent a completely miserable three and a half hours at Kaufmann tonight watching thousands of fake Royals fans gush over some guy I’d never heard of while our team continued its near-impossible stretch of futility against the boys in orange.

What made matters worse was the loss came at the hands of Steve Trachsel, a 37-year-old journeyman with a 6.75 ERA. Incomprehensible defeat. Still unsure of how it all went down.

I guess I was too busy getting angry with fans singing along to Garth Brooks and this Cook guy when their alleged team is down three runs to a terrible pitcher.

Gil Meche continued his series of less-than-stellar performances, giving up two home runs and five runs overall. This is starting to get me worried that his 2007 season was a fluke and that he’ll never be able to go beyond six innings without throwing 120 pitches. The man is a foul-ball machine and even the most putrid of offenses have his pitch count in trouble by the fourth inning.

Alex Gordon gave the supposed No. 1 starter a two-run cushion with a home run in the first, but Meche allowed a Melvin Mora bomb in the third. While the game was still tied in the fifth, it felt as though KC was down by two or three as the crowd was disinterested and Meche had run his pitch count to more than 90.

Well, when Trey Hillman’s curious decision to walk No. 3 hitter Nick Markakis to get to the cleanup hitter Aubrey Huff (?) backfired in the form of a Huff three-run shot, the night made sense.

The Royals did manage to muster 10 hits, but Ross Gload and Miguel Olivo grounded into brutal inning-ending double plays in the seventh and ninth to strand a total of five runners on base. This sort of thing has become commonplace against Baltimore.

The loss did not appear to hurt the Royals, but the division-leading Twins, who were down 6-5 for four innings, got to Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon in the ninth to put Kansas City three and a half games back in the Central.

It is unusual to only see the Royals down by less than four games, as this is usually the time they are trailing by 10 or more, but no AL Central team seems to be breaking away from the pack like in years past. This helps Kansas City by time while its hitters continue to struggle, but it’s only a matter of time before these losses to sub-par pitchers begin to cost them.

It would just feel better for those losses to come against New York or Boston, but this Baltimore streak has stretched beyond the point of embarrassing.

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