Bradford Lee

The original Field of Dreams.

A few weeks ago, I explored some of the strange things that have happened in Major League history. This week, we look at some of the oddball occurrences surrounding the history of Kansas City baseball.

What could have been?

On a recent trip to Denver to see the Royals play, more on that later, my son and I had the opportunity to make a visit to the National Ballpark Museum. The Museum is located at 1940 Blake Street, just a long home run from Coors Field.

Watching Seth Lugo spin his complete game recently got me thinking about other milestones. Lugo’s complete game, once a common occurrence for pitchers, has become exceedingly rare. The club record, which will never be broken, is held by Dennis Leonard, who threw 21 complete games in the 1977 season. The last complete game for the Royals prior to Lugo’s masterpiece was four seasons ago, a Brad Keller complete game.

I recently went on a road trip across part of our great nation and noticed a proliferation of signs that said, “Visit our historic downtown”. From small villages to medium sized cities, it seems every downtown is now a historic one. About ten years ago someone at a Chamber of Commerce convention must have done one hell of a sales job to convince every town that they have a historic downtown. What we really have is a misunderstanding of history. Did your downtown host any presidential speeches? Maybe a historical event happened there at one time? No? Then it’s not historical, just old. Downtown Boston, historical. Downtown Cedar Falls, Iowa? Charming, but just old.

This summer marked the 35 th anniversary of the release of the movie Field of Dreams. We moved to Iowa 35 years ago July and after my dad and I unloaded the U-Haul, I asked him if he wanted to go see this movie that was getting some buzz in the press. Field of Dreams was the last movie we went to together and will probably remain so, given my dad’s age and health. Fitting, as he was the person who taught me how to play baseball. He spent countless hours teaching me to hit, pitch and how to field grounders. He’d get home from a long day at work and still in his work clothes, we’d start playing. He taught me how to keep a scorebook and how to spot the intricacies of the game. He told me stories about long-retired players and took me to my first professional game. Every boy (and baseball-loving girls) should be so lucky.

Under the category of “you learn something new every day,” this summer I spent a few days in Milwaukee. Having never stayed in Milwaukee before, I spent some time walking around the downtown area, sampling the local cuisine and beverages and came across this sign.

One of the first books I ever read, The Boys of Summer, is a baseball classic written by Roger Kahn, published in 1972. The book was probably my father's, as he was a Dodger fan as a young man. Even now, at 83, my father can recite the Dodgers lineup, position by position, complete with colorful anecdotes about each player. I often wondered how a poor boy from western Kansas grew up to be a Dodger fan. Understand in those days, television was a rarity, and televised games rarer yet. A lot of poor families didn’t even own a television. They would often go to town on Saturday evenings, where crowds would gather in front of the appliance store to catch a glimpse of whatever program was on the screen. The World Series was televised for the first time in 1947. That was two years after World War II ended. Up to that point, radio was the king.

With everyone properly freaking out about the Royals recent seven game skid, and Vegas taking bets on the possibility of them missing the playoffs, let’s all take a deep breath and look at what other Kansas City playoff teams have done in the past.