Your Royals won 75 games last year. Getting into the low 80s seems like a decent goal from here, in December, when what we see on the Royals roster is more or less what we'll get on opening day.
Your Chiefs won two games this year. Not making Leno's monologue seems like a decent goal from here, especially after reading Poz's predictably entertaining column this morning.
Now, one blog topic that I meant to get to this fall but didn't was a discussion about which of the Truman Sports Complex teams was in worse shape.
That discussion seems pretty silly now, and has for most of the last two or three months, with the Royals showing continued signs of improvement -- .500 is realistic, and if everything goes right, who knows, there's no powerhouse in the AL Central -- and the Chiefs just having one of those seasons your mama wouldn't want you to talk about.
So what we'd like to do here in this little corner of the internets is ask you a simple question: is it worse to watch and root for a miserable football team or a miserable baseball team?
Most of you are Royals fans, and that's usually a pretty good demographic to find Chiefs fans, too, which means a whole big lot of you fine folks have lived through miserable seasons in both sports in recent years, so I'm declaring this piece of turf the best place to tackle one of life's meaningless questions.
Keep in mind we're not asking you which is worse in comparision to watching good teams. That's a whole different argument, the daily drama and score-watching and playoff feel of a baseball team in contention into September vs. the week-long anticipation and absurdly detailed breakdowns leading up to appointment TV with friends every Sunday.
No, let's stick to what we know, and this being Kansas City, where the one-winning-season-since-the-strike Royals and two-for-their-last-25 Chiefs dominate our sports conscience, we know bad.
Unless I've lost too many of you with an extended vacation from Ball Star -- sorry about that, but c'mon, Olathe is beautiful this time of year -- the comments section will provide a better breakdown that the next few graphs but here goes anyway.
The argument for baseball: They say the baseball season is a marathon, but when you're watching a dreadful team, that's just not true. No, watching a 100-loss baseball team all summer means the season is more Iron Man Triathlong than mere marathon.
The meaningless games run on forever, and the losses run together, until the only thing you know for sure is which player climbed the wall to catch a fly ball that bounced on the warning track (Kerry Robinson), which player was hit in the back with a cutoff throw (Ken Harvey) and which player was picked off when he literally fell off first base (David DeJesus).
One of the payoffs of rooting for a miserable team is a high draft pick, but that high draft pick is less valuable in baseball than any other sport. First, you have to hope your team can sign the guy, who will probably be represented by Scott Boras. Then, you have to hope he's more Evan Longoria than Colt Griffin, because no sport has more flops drafted high than baseball.
Heck, there's even high draft picks that make it but take years to develop. Carlos Pena was drafted 10th overall in 1998 but went through at least six organizations before his breakout 46 HR season in 2007. The Royals took Zack Grienke sixth overall in 2002 but had to stick through a 17-loss season in 2005, him walking away from the game in 2006, and then some middle relief before Zack developed into one of the game's best young starting pitchers.
Also, bad football teams are routinely in the playoffs the next year. Look at the Falcons or the Dolphins or the Ravens. When the Rays go from worst-to-first, there's a reason it's a season-long story.
Bad baseball teams are usually bad the next year, too. And unless you're a Mariners fan, there's a good chance that the miserable baseball team you root for is being out-payrolled by two or three to one when compared to the usual playoff teams. The payroll thing is more excuse/obstacle than anything else, as the Rays and Twins and A's and Indians (not to mention Yankees and Tigers and Mets) have shown, but for a fan who sees his team 22 games back in August, it sure can feel like a death sentence.
The argument for football: A miserable, 100-loss baseball team still wins nearly 40 percent of its games. That means, on any given night, the chance that you'll see your team win, show you some sliver of hope, is roughly the chance of Reggie Miller -- one of the best shooters of all-time -- making a three-pointer.
Now, a miserable football team loses 12 games. Fourteen if they're the Chiefs, and roughly all of them if they're the Lions. Did you know that if a baseball team lost the same percentage of its games as the Chiefs did this year it would go 20-142? Even the Cleveland Spiders think that's bad.
There were two weeks this year where Kansas Citians had a winning team to talk about. Two. The whole flipping year. And even those came well after we all could see this would be a miserable, lost season. Two wins.
That's the same number of presidential videos released by Paris Hilton.
What's more, a bad football team doesn't just get beat. No, a bad football team gets beat up. A bad football team can't stop anybody on third and short. A bad football team uses three different quarterbacks in one game. A bad football team sets NFL records for fewest sacks in a season.
A bad baseball team might take one or two games in a series with a playoff team. A bad football team hopes to cover the 14-point spread against a playoff team.
You can still buy a cheap ticket and have a good time drinking beer and eating nachos while watching your bad baseball team, and that's not a bad way to spend your summer.
The nature of football means you'll be cold and cursing while watching your bad football team, and that's a terrible way to spend your fall and winter.
For me, it all comes down to weather. When your football team stinks, it is getting cold outside and going to a game is both miserable and uncomfortable. And while there are cetainly things to do outside in the winter, it's not like you spend the season outdoors.
With baseball, though, it's summer and you can still go watch your team play and, if nothing else, enjoy sitting outside on a sunny day or a warm evening. Plus, if you want to put the misery of a 100 loss team into the back of your head, then you can just find something to do outside.
And then, at the end of the baseball season, when you don't think you can quite take any more losses, it's football season! And you can be optimistic at least for a few weeks, until the losses start piling up and winter starting rolling in...