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Shroyer: Royals, Yankees icons re-live rivalry

Players talk about dirtier, more aggressive baseball of 1970s

By Shawn Shroyer

Monday, October 29, 2007

Kansas City, MO — I’d seen the footage. I’d read the stories. But last Thursday night, I arrived at historic 18th & Vine, the location of the Negro League Baseball Museum, to listen to the tales of the 1977 American League Championship Series between the Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees.

There was a time when the Royals-Yankees rivalry was every bit as heated and competitive as the Red Sox and Yankees. Four out of five years from 1976 to 1980 — the days before the Divisional Series, when the ALCS was best of five games – Kansas City and New York duked it out for a trip to the World Series.

The Royals lost the first three of these meetings before sweeping the Yankees in 1980 in the series most Royals would probably rather remember. But 1977 was the year the rivalry climaxed. With players such as Reggie Jackson, Billy Martin, George Brett and Hal McRae, how could it not?

This was an era I missed out on. I was a mere three-months, eight-days old when the Royals appeared in and won their last and only World Series in 1985. Today, the Royals have had four 100-loss seasons out of their last six and have had just one winning season since the strike in 1994.

But, for one night, I went back in time to catch a glimpse of Royals baseball in its heyday.

The stage is set

Rather than Kauffman Stadium or Yankees Stadium, the stage was set at the Gem Theatre, just across the street from the Negro League Baseball Museum, which was sponsoring the event: “Damn Yankees: Tales of a Royal Baseball Rivalry.”

The late Buck O’Neil could talk for days on end about 18th & Vine, and, coincidentally, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced the night before that it would dedicate a lifetime achievement award to the legendary baseball ambassador. A buzz was already in the air.

Inside the theater, the battle lines were drawn: To the left was a table with four Royals hats, the connecting “KC” logos shimmering under the spotlights; and to the right, a table with four Yankees hats, bearing the dreaded, overlapping “NY.” Only former Royal and moderator for the night Willie Wilson separated the two tables.

Accompanying the Royals hats were four mainstays of Kansas City baseball: Amos Otis, Frank White, Dennis Leonard and Fred Patek. The four played a combined 53 seasons in Royals uniforms.

Imagine Manny Ramirez at age 60 (and without the dreadlocks), and you get a picture of Otis’ personality, although Otis is a little more volatile. I don’t think it was by chance that he was seated farthest from the Yankees with White at his side. White, of course, is one of only three Royals who have had their numbers retired by the franchise. Leonard, unfortunately, is better known for getting the loss in Game 5 of the ’77 ALCS, rather than his four-hit, 97-pitch complete game in Game 3. Patek is best known for his size (listed at 5’5”, 148 pounds when he played), but plenty of players with more desirable size never played the game as well as he did.

Opposite the Royals were four Yankees who stayed in New York just long enough to earn rings: Jimmy Wynn, Dock Ellis, Paul Blair and Jay Johnstone.

Wynn played just 30 games for the Yankees in ’77 before they cut him, but the team voted that he receive a World Series ring anyway. Not to be outdone, Ellis pitched in only three games for the Yankees that season before being traded to Oakland. Still, he was the most outspoken of the four Yankees. Blair had the longest Yankee career of the group, playing two-plus seasons in New York, and he gave the most thoughtful answers from his table. Johnstone didn’t actually join the Yankees until 1978, so I’m not entirely sure why he was there.

The tale of two cities: The dedication Otis, White, Leonard and Patek had for Kansas City, and the pride Wynn, Ellis, Blair and Johnstone had for winning rings in pinstripes.

Still rivals

It only took one question from Wilson to see that even 30 years couldn’t thaw all the hatred these teams felt for one another.

“How much did you guys really dislike each other during the rivalry?” Wilson asked.

“I didn’t like Dock Ellis,” Otis snapped. “I liked hitting against him.”

Ellis countered, in his drawn-out manner of speaking, “You guys might have thought we had a rivalry, but we didn’t care about Kansas City.”

New York went 100-62, winning half of its 10 meetings with Kansas City during the 1977 regular season. However, Kansas City was arguably the better team, going 102-60, including a stretch where the Royals won 24 of 25 games.

“You guys didn’t have to do that,” Leonard said of the streak to the Yankees. “You were in a weak division.”

The two-hour discussion calmed after the first few minutes, though, and the mood lightened as the Yankees shared memories of their divisive clubhouse entity: Reggie Jackson.

“Out of a 25-man roster, 23 guys hated his guts,” Blair said.

Interestingly, if the Royals had held onto their lead in the ninth inning of Game 5, Jackson never would have become Mr. October in the ’77 World Series.

As the mood mellowed, the players began contrasting the game when they played to the game today. Blair started in, talking about how pitchers were expected to last nine innings every outing, not like the “five and fly” pitchers of today.

“All the set-up men and closers today are just so managers can take credit for winning games,” Blair said.

The ’77 ALCS was also notorious for hard-nosed slides that took place at second base, most notably one by Hal McRae into Yankees second baseman Willie Randolph to break up a double play.

“Hal was a dirty player,” Ellis recalled. “He’d try to kill you. But that’s how the game was played.”

White concurred: “It’s a tamer game today. Guys just don’t play as aggressive today. You’ve got to play the game with an attitude.”

Patek joined in: “You wanted to run them into a brick wall.”

Although the players obviously disliked each other when they played, there was a sense of mutual respect among them as they sat across from one another. Patek had the best explanation for this change in attitude. He said that despite the hatred that built up between the teams while they were players, after he retired, he remembered how his opponents played the game the right way and that he respected them for that, creating a bond between them.

But something else that became obvious before the night was through was that the fans never forgot how the players played in that era, either.

Throughout the discussion, a woman in the audience sitting front row center, was overly enthusiastic toward the Royals, often erupting with applause after a Royals player finished his answer.

When it came time for the question and answer session with the audience, she was the first to grab the microphone. But she didn’t have a question.

“To you guys over there,” she said to the Yankees, “you talked about what it meant to win your rings in New York, and that’s great, but you guys,” she said to the Royals, “were a part of us, a part of the city.”

Breaking down to tears, she continued: “You guys meant so much to us, we would have done anything for you to have won those rings. We bled Royal blue.”

The few seconds that woman clutched the mic gave me all the insight into the 1977 ALCS I’d hoped to find that night — a tale the footage and stories don’t do justice.

­­—Edited by Chris Beattie

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