Where have all the Royals gone? Gone to better places every one... Hum along if you know the tune .. especially if you know it all too well

Always a seller, never a buyer. Always a bridesmaid. Well, not quite. Usher is more like it. Always the usher, never the bride.

That's the fate of the Kansas City Royals during the annual July 31 player bazaar and everyone in this town knows it will be at some point in late May. No use pretending... though many do find it useful. The Star writers sometimes find it a useful way to stay employed. Some local sports intelligentsia need to manufacture a reason to be hopeful or have something to talk about on endless radio shows -- at least until football begins. The Royals' brain trust.

Can anyone remember a year the local nine were buyers on July 31st? I have a vague memory of one lousy year when they bought... and it came to nothing. But the memory has long faded.

And, like everyone else, I'm growing tired of this blasted heat and the Royals, so I'm going to let it go for a while. We'd all be better off if we just lowered our expectations. Kansas City got its first white major league team from Philadelphia, and that team had been more than miserable for years. We've had, in our white major league history, one shining moment of great baseball in our town and that was it. Call it our Thomas Hart Benton moment. Greatness has not become routine here.

Maybe I'll be eating these words next year. Maybe the home nine will be buyers next year. Maybe they won't need to buy. The second baseman from Omaha will be spectacular, the Moose will regain his stroke, Danny Duffy will be the second coming of The Bulldog. The first baseman in Omaha will hit 50 homeruns. They'll trade Billy Butler, to our great relief, because ALL he can do is hit .300 year after year.

Speaking of trades...

I was thinking about this yesterday. Mike Aviles was in a Boston uniform getting his first base hit for the league leading Red Sox. Detroit took the day off, but Wilson Betemit no doubt enjoyed it a little more knowing his new team was also leading the league. In Philadelphia Sunday, Raul Ibanez doubled for the league leading Phillies, having escaped Kansas City in 2003 due to indifference on the part of the Royal's brain trust. Philly has the best record in all of baseball, by the way. And Sunday, well, Sunday he hit two home runs, one to tie the game in the ninth and a double in the 10th to win it. (And, when you think about the one that got away, John Mayberry Jr., blasted a walk-off home run last night against the Phillies keeping Cincinnati just barely in the pennant hunt.) And Carlos Beltran was two for four yesterday while patrolling right field for the league leading San Francisco Giants. Jeremy Affeldt, by the way, threw two scoreless for the Giants in relief.

Oh yes, and Zack Greinke gave up two runs yesterday in six-and-two-thirds against a potent Cardinals lineup for his ninth win. And, you knew this is coming, his league leading Brewers moved to three-and-a-half games over the Cards. He also laid down one fine bunt -- a key to the Crew's five run fifth.

One time Royals all. Except Mayberry, who should have been. But the Royals' brass seem to do anything they can to keep from mentioning the franchise's one bright shining moment, which might be why they didn't draft him right out of their own back yard.

Okay, time to stop bellyaching. But, somehow this all seems too familiar. It rings up with something awfully familiar from modern American life. More on that later. Joe Posnanski offered the money quote of the hour today: the idea that we now live in a world of "retaliation by posing." You can read him yourself to get the context. I'll try to weave that in, as well. Stay tuned.

In fact, you can get an interesting glimpse at what I'm thinking by reading the comments under Bob Dutton's hopelessly hopeful piece which I just got around to reading today in the Star. The comments are much better than the story. Of course, the comments also contain some of the usual crap, but if you start with JCE3227, you get an idea. He or she points out how major league baseball is like so much else in modern life... to quote a trusty old jazz/blues tune... "Them that's got shall get, them that ain't shall lose..." or something like that.

--Lofflin

Photograph courtesy http://www.reception-wedding.com/bridesmaid_etiquette.htm

Unsocial networking, untwittered, unfacebooked, disconnected and .... dare we think? Happy?

I look forward every fall to the first editorial columns in the student newspaper. They're interesting because the ideas have built up across an entire summer when students haven't had a venue for expressing their opinions. In addition, nothing much has happened at school to write about and they aren't tuned in yet to watching the news for ideas.

So I find something fresh about their ideas every fall. Usually their ideas are a little bit more personal. It’s a chance to glimpse the student mind.

Two student columns this year caught my attention. Two of the columns were about social networking. One was about Twitter. This student talked about not “getting” Twitter at first, then discovering some of its more powerful elements. For example, the student talked about the ability to follow international events through Twitter, how it was infinitely faster and more deeply local than CNN. I experienced some of those advantages myself following the terrorist attacks in Bombay.

The other student wrote about Facebook. His column was more troubled. He looked at Facebook as an activity which drew him away from other people. He talked about the difference between getting to know someone on Facebook then trying to get to know them in real life. He said he had taken a Facebook vacation during the summer turning his Facebook page off for two months, and he talked about how refreshing it was. But his Facebook is back on now.

Both columns were smart and worth reading. Both provided significant insight into the social networking world. But I saw something else in those two columns and it disturbs me to some degree. If you read those two columns carefully you might actually see a plea for help.

I'm sure neither of those students thought of their writing as a plea for anything. But it's there nonetheless. They're enjoying, and utilizing, this brave new world of social networking, a world where MySpace is so over already, but they’re uncomfortable with it. They're uncomfortable with the amount of time they spend doing it. They're uncomfortable with the anonymity of it. They're uncomfortable with the way it removes them from what they know is real social interaction, and puts them into a realm of social interaction that is social only in the broadest definition of the word.

Sure, a century ago people wrote voluminous letters to each other and thought of letter writing warmly as social interaction. But they could hardly write more than one or two good letters a day and they couldn't expect to get more than a few letters back on the best day. But modern students -- I'm not saying this is true of these two columnists -- Facebook for hours, and Twitter constantly. If they're in class for 50 minutes with their Twitter untwittered and their Facebook closed they begin to look like pack-a-day smokers stuck at a family dinner in a smoke-free restaurant.

I also caught a glimpse of frustration and, perhaps, fear, in their words. They seemed a bit weary about social networking. I wondered if deep down they wanted to get out of the chase to be right on time for the next big thing and not stuck in the last big thing when all else who are hip have moved on.

I could be wrong about this. These are two bright students who certainly know their own minds. But somehow I can't help thinking their columns, while praising the virtual life, reveal serious trepidation about it. Of their praise, you might say, the lady doth protest too much.

--Lofflin