Kansas City Royals Team History

When the Kansas City Athletics moved to Oakland after the 1967 season, Kansas City was left without major league baseball or, for the first time since 1883, professional baseball at all. An enraged Senator Stuart Symington threatened to introduce legislation removing baseball’s antitrust exemption unless Kansas City was granted a team in the next round of expansion. Major League Baseball complied with a hasty round of expansion at the 1967 winter meetings. Kansas City was awarded one of four teams to begin play in 1971. However, Symington was not satisfied with having Kansas City wait three years for baseball to return, and pressured MLB to allow the new teams to start play in 1969. Symington’s intervention may have contributed to the financial collapse of the Royals’ companion expansion team, the Seattle Pilots, who had to begin play in 1969 before they were ready the league required new franchises to enter in pairs to preserve symmetry for scheduling purposes. Pharmaceutical executive Ewing Kauffman won the bidding for the new Kansas City team, which he named the Royals after the American Royal, a livestock show, horse show, and rodeo held annually in Kansas City since 1899. Some sources say it was in honor of the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro League team. The team’s logo, a crown atop a shield with the letters “KC” inside the shield, was created by Shannon Manning, an artist at Hallmark Cards, based in Kansas City.

Kauffman Stadium was built specifically for baseball during an era where building multi sport “cookie-cutter” stadiums were commonplace. It is often held up along with Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles as one of the best examples of modernist stadium design.

It is one of two ballparks in the American League to currently be named after a person (Ewing Kauffman), the other being the Rogers Centre for then-owner Edward Samuel Rogers which was renamed in 2005 from the SkyDome. The stadium is 40 years old, making it the sixth-oldest stadium in Major League Baseball. Kauffman Stadium recently underwent a $250 million renovation, which began after the 2007 season and was completed in July 2009.

In the 1985 World Series against the cross-state St. Louis Cardinals (nicknamed the “I-70 Series” because the two teams are both located in the state of Missouri and connected by Interstate 70, the Royals again fell behind 3–1. The key game in the Royals’ comeback was Game 6. Facing elimination, the Royals trailed 1–0 in the bottom of the ninth inning, before rallying to score two runs and win. The rally was helped by a controversial safe call at first base by umpire Don Denkinger, which allowed Royals outfielder Jorge Orta to reach base safely as the first baserunner of the inning. However, the Royals gave this out back later when Orta was thrown out at 3rd after a botched sacrifice bunt. Following Orta’s single, the Cardinals dropped an easy popout and suffered a passed ball, before the Royals went on to win with a bloop base hit by seldom used pinch hitter Dane Iorg. Following the tension of Game Six, the Cardinals pitching and defense came undone in Game 7 and their offense was shut down by Saberhagen leading to the lowest batting average to date (.188 by the Cardinals, later broken by 2001 Yankees) and fewest runs (13 for the Cardinals, still stands) of any team in a 7 game series, and the Royals won 11-0 to clinch the franchise’s only World Series title. The Royals are the only team to win a 7-game League Championship Series and a 7-game World Series in the same year.

David Glass became the interim CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Royals on September 23, 1993, following the death of the founding owner, Ewing Kauffman. Under Glass’ leadership, the board cut the payroll budget from $41 million to $19 million. During the Major League Baseball strike of 1994 – 1995, Glass opposed any settlement with the players’ union without a salary cap, and supported the use of strike breaking “replacement” players, despite a court ruling that the use of replacement players violated federal labor law.

On April 18, 2000, Glass became sole owner of the Royals, purchasing the organization from the Kauffman estate for $96 million. The Board approved his offer despite a competing bid of $120 million by Miles Prentice. However, MLB rejected Prentice’s offer because he didn’t have enough net worth to withstand substantial losses. With none of the area’s wealthy families willing to even consider making a bid for the Royals–or any other existing or prospective professional team in Kansas City Glass was the only credible bidder who was interested in keeping the team in Kansas City. An original stipulation of the sale was that any profits from Glass’ sale of the Royals must go to charity, but that clause has since expired.

The 2015 World Series was the 111th edition of Major League Baseball’s championship series, a best-of-seven playoff between the National League (NL) champions New York Mets and the American League (AL) champions Kansas City Royals. The series was played between October 27 and November 1, with the Royals winning the series 4 games to 1. It was the first time since the 2010 World Series that the World Series extended into November. The Royals became the first team since the Oakland Athletics in the 1989 World Series to win the World Series after losing in the previous year.
The Royals had home field advantage for the first two games of the series because of the AL’s 6–3 victory in the 2015 All-Star Game. It was the 13th World Series in which home field advantage was awarded to the league that won the All-Star Game. The series was played in a 2–3–2 format: the Royals hosted Games 1 and 2, and the Mets hosted Games 3, 4, and 5 (there was no Game 6 or 7, which the Royals would have hosted).
The Royals won Game 1 in extra innings, tying for the longest game in World Series history. The Royals also won Game 2 with a complete game by Johnny Cueto, who allowed only one unearned run and two hits. With the series shifting to New York, the Mets won Game 3 with home runs by David Wright and Curtis Granderson. The Royals came from behind to win Game 4 after an error by Daniel Murphy led to a blown save by Jeurys Familia. Game 5 also went into extra innings, where bench player Christian Colón drove in the go-ahead run for the Royals, who clinched the series. Salvador Pérez was named the World Series Most Valuable Player.