What Can A Vikings Fan Learn From Salvador Perez?
As a Minnesota sports fan, I firmly believed, back in April, that my Minnesota Twins would make it worth my while if I were to plan a road trip to Kansas City on the final weekend of the baseball season—even if it meant missing my Minnesota Vikings play on that Sunday. Since the early 70’s I’ve only missed watching a handful of Viking games, and I don’t take missing the Purple lightly. I should have known that making such plans would virtually guarantee that the Twins would be in last place come the final weekend, and that the Vikings would be playing a crucial early-season contest that I would be forced to follow—with angst and dismay—on my phone.
Last Sunday, after an eventful breakfast where, while we were watching at the counter the Assistant Manager nearly came to blows with the short-order cook while both waitresses bristled with a combination of fear and disgust, my buddy Dave and I headed for the Kansas City Sports Complex, about 15 minutes southeast of downtown. We got there early and we quickly found out there was another, nicer side to the Kansas Citians – at least those not engaged in battle over the proper way to prepare eggs over-easy.
The Sports Complex houses not one, but two well-designed, locally beloved stadiums: Kaufman Stadium, or the “K”, the home of the Kansas City Royals, and Arrowhead Stadium (oh, wait, it’s now called GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, which really rolls off the tongue), home of the Chiefs, who were playing on the road last weekend. The parking lot is, in a word, massive – broadly surrounding both stadiums and providing plenty of room for tailgating, frisbee football, drag races, and zeppelin landings. Nonetheless, the parking crew have tailored a very intricate, tight flow of traffic between a myriad of orange cones and flag-waving attendants that allow each arriving car to slowly snake their way into the relatively narrow space between the two stadiums and around the “K”. For those of us who remember, it was very remindful of the Met Stadium/Met Center/Massive Parking Lot set up from the 60s and 70s.
It was here in the parking lot that Dave and I began encountering Kansas City Nice in a variety of ways, beginning with the huge throng of Chiefs fans, who are also Royals fans. I could relate. There was a considerable throng of fans sitting on lawn chairs, literally in the shadows of Arrowhead stadium, decked out in Royals garb but with the Chiefs on their portable TVs. Dave and I had our Twins jerseys on, but they greeted us warmly as we passed, calling out nice things about the Twins (“if Buxton was healthy all year, you guys would be in the playoffs!”) and the Vikings (“they’re way better than a 1-2 team!”). We had a few conversations and it was obvious that these are not only nice, but knowledgeable, sports fans.
As we neared the ticket office at “The K”, a man approached us and asked if we were from Minneapolis. We are, we answered, and he immediately steered us past the ticket window,saying “we have some extra tickets if you’d like them,” and then almost apologetically added, “they’re pretty good seats.” He and his wife refused any payment for the tickets (they were headed to some even better seats gifted to them by a friend) and we happily entered the stadium and took our seats about 20 rows up, just a shade to the right of home plate. Kansas City Nice, indeed! We were thrilled.
There, one woman indulged us with a detailed explanation of why there was so much buzz around the stadium for a team about to finish its season 19 games out of first place and 14 games under .500. “Salvy is tied for the Royals’ All-Time homerun record,” she told us earnestly, “and we all just want to see him break the record. You guys can win the game, that’s OK – we just want Salvy to hit one out.”
“Salvy”, is Salvador Perez—the 31 year old, catcher who is a 7-time All-Star, member of the 2015 World Series Champion Royals, and owner of a freakishly strong career year in 2021 with 48 homers and 121 runs batted in. It’s clear that these fans love their Salvy, even if the wheels have come off of their Royals in the half-dozen years since their Championship.
The game was enjoyable, and the Twins coasted to a 7-3 victory, and I found myself rooting for Salvy, right along with the other Kansas City faithful, but he failed to hit one out in four plate appearances. In the ninth inning with the Twins securely in the lead, we watched the last Twins at-bats of the season, then slipped out of The K before the bottom of the ninth to get a jump on traffic, and get on our way for the 6-hour drive home.
It was walking to our car that we noticed something very strange: save for two other fans with Twins gear on, we were the ONLY people in the entire, massive, parking lot filled with ten thousand cars all nestled in a tight bunch among the two stadiums. We walked directly to our car, and drove across the empty, parking-attendant-free, seemingly-abandoned asphalt lot unimpeded. In no time at all, we were on the highway and headed home with zero impediments along the way—with the bottom of the ninth looming for the home team in an obvious they’re-going-to-lose, we-should-beat-the-traffic situation. It was seemingly incredible. Why?
Because Salvador Perez was due to bat fourth in the bottom of the ninth.
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Sadly for those fans, the Royals went down one-two-three and Perez didn’t even get his last chance to make Royals history. But the loyalty those fans showed to their favorite guy – it was amazing, and it sure made me think. And on a six hour drive, a guy has some time to think.
Following along on my phone, I knew all about the carnage of the Vikings-Browns game, and knew the Purple were now 1-3. Their start has been a source of near-constant angst (save for the day of their lone win and the following afterglow) for all of us. We have become a fan base with some very high expectations for our team, borne partly from the fact that we have some very talented players and partly from our own intense desire to finally see something more.
But what if we were more like Royals fans, and celebrated the small stuff, and the kind-of-big stuff, and that was enough? Can’t Justin Jefferson amaze us and satisfy our sports cravings by doing so? Can’t an every-other-year playoff appearance or two feel like victory? Can’t we cheer the quarterback sacks and the breakaway Dalvin Cook runs as if they are the main course, and not some sort of appetizer for another bigger, better outcome to come? Can’t we just roll with the losses while savoring the wins?
I’ve written about this before, and I know the answer, for our own sanity, ought to be “yes, of course – we’ll be much happier people that way!”
But realistically–would those Kansas City fans really be so nice if their teams hadn’t treated them to a World Series Champion just six seasons ago and back-to-back Super Bowls (including a win) in each of the past two years?
