Tyler Kepner thinks fucking up is courageous. I think that's his way of making himself feel better about his own life.

So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to channel my inner “Fire Joe Morgan.”

Here is a quote from this morning’s NY TImes story on the blown perfect game by writer Tyler Kepner:

“The courageous call is the one Joyce made. It was so obviously wrong that Joyce, a major league umpire since 1989, clearly had no desire to help Galarraga make history. He simply called the play as he saw it. The problem, of course, is that Joyce’s decision is easily the most egregious blown call in baseball over the last 25 years.”

Wow.  Let me start off my retort by addressing Tyler Kepner.  Mr. Kepner, you just wrote the dumbest thing I’ve ever read about sports.  Seriously.  Making a blown call is courageous?  Are you sure you weren’t looking for “egregious” or “outrageous?”  No, you clearly really did mean that someone fucking something up is an act of courage.  The fact that it was wrong was an afterthought to you?  The most important thing, to you,  was that this guy had conviction while shitting on a piece of history.  If it was a close call, and Joyce had gotten it right, he should have been lauded for not bending the rules to cheapen such an achievement.  But the call wasn’t even close.  He was out by a whole step.  I feel bad for Joyce now that he admitted his huge mistake, but that doesn’t make him a fucking hero for standing up for what was obviously wrong, not just in hindsight, but at the time.  He’s not a martyr.  He’s not a hero.  He didn’t display valor while committing the job performance equivalent of shitting his pants in public.  He’s a fuck up.  And so are you.  Tyler Kepner showed courage in defending the indefensible.  If you would like to express your disgust with Mr. Keppinger, you can find him on street corners arguing with complete strangers in defense of OJ’s not guilty verdict, the Iraq war invasion and WMD claims, and BP saving money on safety measures at their oil wells.

Those poor, poor, Kansas City fans.

As we all know, the Royals have some…. problems. The Kansas City Star devoted their entire baseball preview section to the Royals’ horrid defense. The Royals sign guys like Kyle Farnsworth and Jason Kendall and find nothing wrong with this. They have no bullpen to speak of.

And that’s just the baseball-related problems.

Despite this, the Royals have quite possibly the best cadre of local coverage in all of baseball. Joe Posnanski. Sam Mellinger. Like, three beat writers. Raney. Rob Neyer. And so on and so forth.

It’s easy to see that Kansas Citians (is that the correct demonym?) know their baseball. And I’ve concluded that the Royals fanbase is easily one of the smartest, most cerebral, and most cynically pessimistic in all of sports. And therefore, one of the best.

Look at fans of other chronically bad teams: Cubs fans are, if anything, annoyingly optimistic. Pirates fans don’t care as much that they lose all the time because they have the Penguins and Steelers. Nationals fans don’t exist yet. Padres fans are in San Diego, meaning they have better things to do when the Pads suck. Indians fans are stuck in Cleveland. They’re pessimistic, but they’re hardly cerebral (trust me on this one).

But you’re in Kansas City, what else are you going to do? Watch the Chiefs?

Royals fans know their place, and they know their shit. Last Sunday, about five guys sitting behind us (I went with my dad, who visited for the occasion) had some sort of quip for every Royals player on the roster. They knew EVERY SINGLE stat. They knew things about Yuniesky Betancourt’s VORP that I didn’t even know existed.

When Yuni hit a two-run home run off Verlander that juuuuust cleared the fence, the guys, along with everyone else in the stadium, waited a minute before actually standing to cheer. They had to make sure they believed what they had just seen.

From somewhere behind me, someone yelled, “That was a no doubter!” Everyone giggled.

After that, Billy Butler was put out, and the dudes in back shouted something like, “Hey Billy! How does it make you feel that Yuni’s got a higher OPS than you right now!”

Everyone in the section laughed at this, as if it was normal to taunt your own players using Sabermetric statistics.

‘Am I in some sort of twilight zone?’ I thought to myself. I felt like I had walked into a convention for baseball bloggers. Except there were 45,000 of them and they all seemed like normal Midwesterners wearing blue (estimated that about 1/8 of the blue being worn was Kansas Jayhwaks apparel and not Royalswear, but whatever). A lot of college indie-type kids and a lot of fat guys who look like they eat a lot of barbecue. Definitely not the “mom’s basement” crowd you’d think for the kinds of insults being slung (“Hey Cruz, you realize your ERA is infinity, right?”)

So my whole point here is, I’m slowly becoming a fan of Royals fans. If I wasn’t a Tigers fan, I’d probably be a fan of the team itself. As it is, the Royals and their fans are hard to hate. At one point during the game— that 6-run inning the Tigers put together on that pitiful KC bullpen— I stood up and cheered wildly. It was after Trey Hillman had taken out one reliever. On the very first pitch from the next reliever, one of the Tigers singled.

Anyway, we stood up and cheered. I was wearing my Brandon Inge t-shirt (yes, I own such a thing, asshole). My dad and I were vastly outnumbered, but stood up anyway. At this point, it was something like 6-4 with no outs and runners on second and third. Some guy way in the back of our section yelled “Sit your ass down!”

And that was literally the only vitriol we received throughout the entire game. An inning later I was out in the smoking area talking to a KC fan and told him where I was sitting. “Oh yeah!” he says. “You’re the guy who I told to sit his ass down! How’s it going?” We discussed intricacies of baseball and the economy for the next ten minutes (I’m not even joking).

Now, I’ve been to Tigers-White Sox games on the South Side. I’ve been to games in Cleveland: That kind of thing would never happen there. Those guys are assholes. I’ve never been to games in Boston or New York, but I’ll guess it’s the same. In those places, you’re just the enemy. (On the same token, I’m proud to say that in Detroit, unless you root for the White Sox and not being an asshole in return, you’re generally cool with us. Now, rooting for other hockey teams are a different story…)

Listen folks, maybe it’s because they’re bad, or maybe they just accept their fate as clown princes of baseball. But the whole point of this post is: I consider myself a proud fan of Royals fans. You should too. I think you’ll love them.

Now that baseball is actually back, I’m going to try and post more often. Anyone miss me? (You don’t have to lie).

How every Michigander feels right now.

There is a no more succinct way of talking about the game I do not want to discuss ever again than this video (sorry Deadspin… guess I also could have chosen this song from everybody’s favorite Detroit band… the Twins pulled the plug on the party, damnit!).

I smoked about a quarter of a pack of American Spirits in the time it took this game to end. I almost died about three times due to heart failure. I gave up on the game in the tenth inning after the dumbest outfield play I have ever seen. I stumbled upon the game on the radio in the car two minutes later. I almost died again, but this time of sheer joy and relief.

I tuned back in. I heard the Tigers load the bases, and screw up. The Twins win was anticlimactic.

After that entire night of pain (I definitely gnawed on my own hand) that final stab of the dagger just didn’t hurt anymore.

I hope the Yankees sweep them and we never have to see the Metrodome and those damn Hankies ever again.

Then there was a bench-clearing brawl between the Red Sox and Tigers after two days of bean balls between the two teams and their star batters.  Finally, Kevin Youkilis decided he was sick of it, as he does get hit often, though it was his team who kept hitting Miguel Cabrera, so maybe he should take it up with his own pitching staff is he doesn’t want to receive the retaliation.  But either way, he charged the mound and ended up getting body slammed by a 20 year old kid, Rick Porcello.  Punches were exchanged, people piled on, other people had to be held back by their boys, mad drama ensued, etc.  In the end, there were suspensions handed out to Porcello and Youk, though not to the original instigators from the night before, or the Red Sox pitcher who bean Cabrera on he second night.  Seems odd to me, you’d think they would either suspend everyone involved or no one.  But then, the MLB offices try to pretend that this sort of thing “doesn’t belong in baseball,” despite the fact that it has always been a part of the game.  If I made the rules, I wouldn’t suspend anybody.  They’re going to regulate themselves either way.   People are always going to get hit, and occasionally things will boil over and someone will charge the mound, then players will blow off steam, and everthing goes back to normal.  That is the natural order in baseball, and suspending players isn’g going to change that.  Bench-clearing brawls are a part of the game of baseball, and there is nothing that anyone can do about it, so we might as well all just accept it and move on.

But last night, there was a horrific string of incidents that proved in the most repulsive way just how violent a game this is.  Two batters, Ian Kinsler of the Rangers and David Wright of the Mets, took a fastball to the head, while pitcher Hiroki Kuroda took a come-backer to the forehead.  Kinsler was somehow able to stay in the game, though he was furious.  He had already dodged a ball high an in at the chin in an earlier at bat, and was shouting at the catcher and pitcher about why they would need to “send him another message.”  The sick thing about his situation is that he was hit because he hit a home run earlier.  That’s bullshit, and anyone who doesn’t think so needs their head examined.  This wasn’t retaliation for one of their players being hit, it was “revenge” for their pitchers failing to get the guy out or to keep hit hits in the park.  The fact that this incident also involves Red Sox pitchers really makes me wonder what the hell their pitching coach and pitching staff are thinking.  They are essentially assaulting other teams star players as either “retaliation” for them beating the pitchers fairly at a game, or preemptively hitting them for being good and wanting to “get in their heads” as they did with Miguel Cabrera the first time.  Well if someone else isn’t going to say it, then I will: threatening someone’s life because they hit a homer off of you, or because they potentially could, should warrant a serious suspension.  Beaning players is one thing, but going after somebody’s head is another.  And especially if it’s because you’re being a baby about having been beaten fair and square.  Maybe instead of putting guys in the hospital, these pitchers should do their jobs and focus on getting guys out.

The other incidents were even worse though.  David Wright took a fastball to the temple from Matt Cain, which was obviously not intentional.  You could see Cain’s mechanics falter as he delivered the pitch, which he said afterward was to try to correct for his grip slipping.  But either way, Wright got sent to the hospital.  True to the unwritten rules of the game, Johan Santana responded by throwing a ball behind Pablo Sandoval, which earned warnings to both benches.  Sandoval responded by destroying a pitch off the facing of the second deck in left field for a homer.  But then, Santana went all bleeding vagina on us and hit Bengie Molina afterwards.  Again, concentrate on getting the guy out, don’t hit people because you served up a homer.  It’s a pretty crybaby move.  Oddly, Santana didn’t get tossed from the game, which Giants manager Bruce Bochy had no problem pointing out to the umpire.  In the end, Wrights CT scan came back negative.

UPDATE: After his release from the hospital, Wright was placed on the DL.  Mets manager Jerry Manuel said that he may miss the rest of the season, depending on the outcome of further tests.  The latest reports are that he is still suffering from post-concussion syndrome.

In the third incident, Dodgers pitcher Hiroki Kuroda took a ball off the forehead after his pitch was hit by Diamondbacks’ hitter Rusty Ryal.  Kuroda seemed ok when trainers rushed to him, asking jokingly if anyone had caught the ball to get the out after it hit him.  But in the end, he was taken off the field in a stretcher and diagnosed with a concussion.  Kuroda spent the night in the hospital due to the threat of bleeding in the brain in the 12 hours after an impact like that on the head.

So now that we’ve seen so many incidents of spectacular violence in baseball, will people finally realize that this is not only a contact sport, but an extremely violent one at that?