Sullivan: 2015 Royals, a baseball team for baseball fans
From Jeff Sullivan at FanGraphs on November 2, 2015:
By necessity, every baseball season ends with a champ. That’s precisely how the whole thing is designed. Every baseball season, then, ends with a party, and it ends with one team partying, and it ends with one team writing a good story for the people who follow it. Every season, 30 groups of mostly grown men show up to spring training and tell people they believe in themselves, and every season, one group has its confidence rewarded. When 30 different teams declare that the mission is winning the World Series, then in the end, you’re guaranteed one team that you could say knew all along.
Every champ has a good story. Every champ has its surprising moments, every champ has its surprising contributors, and every champ has overcome its own adversity. As baseball goes, there’s nothing real special about the fact that the 2015 Royals just won the title. Somebody had to. It’s not just that the Royals won that makes them so deeply fulfilling. It’s everything. It’s all the context. The Royals have authored one of the great baseball stories, a story that elevates them above some run-of-the-mill other champion.
Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-2015-royals-a-baseball-team-for-baseball-fans/
Originally published: November 2, 2015. Last Updated: November 2, 2015.