An Unlikely Rivalry

When Royals vs. Yankees was the center of the baseball world.

George Brett and Graig Nettles square up in the 1977 ALCS. (Image credit: Associated Press)

Rivalries are the lifeblood of sports. Yeah, winning championships should be the ultimate goal, but that’s hard to do in any sport, and beating your traditional rival takes the edge off any disappointments a fan might encounter in any given season.

Unfortunately, the modern sports landscape seems intent on killing off rivalries. By far the worst offender is the NCAA. Conference realignment and the greed driving it has either ended or severely diminished many long-standing rivalries, including the one that matters most to me, Kansas vs. Missouri.

Pro sports aren’t much better. Hey, I think it’s great NBA players are all buddies now and don’t want to kill each other off the court anymore, but admit it, don’t you think the game was a little better when they did? I mean, nothing in today’s NBA measures up to the Laker-Celtics or Bulls-Pistons rivalries of my youth.

Baseball has more history than any sport, which should translate to even more rivalries, but I haven’t found that to be true in my lifetime. Sure, Cardinals-Cubs is a traditional rivalry, and so is Giants-Dodgers, but how many people outside their respective fanbases get too excited when they play? Based on the lingering animosity surrounding the sign-stealing scandal and the 2017 World Series, Astros-Dodgers might be one of the most intense rivalries currently going, but even then, I don’t know that it captures the nation’s attention. Part of that is while everyone (or at least a lot of people) hate the Astros, nobody really feels too sorry for the Dodgers.

Yankees-Red Sox is perhaps the one rivalry that has regularly captured the attention of the entire baseball world in my lifetime, and it was its height in the late nineties and early 2000’s. ESPN and the national media became so enamored with it and shoved it down all our throats for so long, however, I think most of us non-affiliated fans soon lost interest.

As for my team, the Kansas City Royals, they’ve never had a true rival in my lifetime. At least not when I was old enough to watch and follow the game. Ever since the introduction of interleague play, MLB has tried to sell us on the idea of a Royals-Cardinals rivalry, but no one’s buying it.

They met in the 1985 World Series and the victory went to Kansas City, which gives us some degree of bragging rights. We’ve won four of the most important seven games in the all-time series. And considering the controversy surrounding Game 6, the seeds for a fantastic rivalry were planted. But because interleague play didn’t happen until 1997, they didn’t play a meaningful game again for twelve years, and the Cardinals have dominated ever since. For a real rivalry to develop, there has to be real doubt about the outcome.

Nor have the Royals developed any true intra-division rivalries in the AL Central, which was born in 1994. Yeah, they had some dust-ups with the White Sox in 2015 and beyond, in the midst of a three-to-five-year window of relevancy, but outside of that, the Royals haven’t been good enough for opposing teams or fanbases to care about them.

That hasn’t always been the case. In the late-seventies and early-eighties, the Royals found themselves in the middle of the best rivalry in baseball. On one side, the upstart Royals, a franchise that wasn’t even a decade old when the rivalry took off. And on the other, the New York Yankees, a juggernaut, the most historically successful franchise in baseball history.

The economics of baseball were different back then, so it wasn’t quite the David vs. Goliath matchup it would be today, but it still featured a big market, east coast colossus against a small market, Midwestern underdog. George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees, was brash, outspoken and quick-tempered. Royals owner Ewing Kauffman was the consummate gentleman, the man who’d given baseball back to Kansas City after Charlie Finley moved the A’s.

There was a fair amount of shared DNA between the two teams in this era as well. Lou Piniella won Rookie of the Year for KC in 1969, but was inexplicably traded to New York after five seasons, in one of the few bad deals the Royals made during that time. Cedric Tallis was the first GM in Royals history and set the team on its successful trajectory, but found himself in the Yankee front office by the time the rivalry took off. Dick Howser managed both clubs.

None of this made for friendly relations though. The two teams hated each other, and the entire baseball world was better for it. From 1976-80, New York and Kansas City played each other four times in the American League Championship Series and the American League pennant ran through both cities. Let’s take a look at the highlights.

EPISODE ONE: 1976 ALCS

The first postseason matchup between the two teams was a back and forth affair that laid the foundation for the years to come. Tied 2-2, the series went back to the Bronx for a deciding Game 5. The Royals came back late, tying the game at 6 in the top of the eighth with a three-run George Brett home run.

That changed in the bottom of the ninth when Chris Chambliss came to the plate for New York. Chambliss led off the inning and took the first pitch he saw from Mark Littell yard for the first walk-off home run in LCS history. It was followed by arguably the most chaotic trot around the bases in baseball history, as fans stormed the field and mobbed the hero in a frenetic scene.

EPISODE TWO: 1977 ALCS

1977 was (and still is) the best regular season in Royals history. They went 102-60, and looked poised to capture their first championship, only to have their hearts broken by the Yankees again, this time on their own home field.

This series had a number of tense, confrontational moments, highlighting the growing hostility between the two clubs. In Game 2, Hal McRae famously ran through Yankees second baseman Willie Randolph in attempt to break up a double play. He succeeded, allowing a run to score, but it drew the Yankees’ ire and might have woke them up. They went on to roll, winning the game, 6-2.

Game 5 saw the two teams come to blows in the first inning when Graig Nettles kicked George Brett after the latter made a hard slide on an RBI triple. Brett promptly jumped to his feet and punched Nettles in the jaw. The benches cleared and Yankees catcher Thurman Munson famously covered Brett on the bottom of the pile, showing there was at least a little civility left between the teams.

Fortunately, nobody was ejected (because it was 1977) and play resumed. The Royals took a one-run lead into the ninth when manager Whitey Herzog made the questionable decision to bring Dennis Leonard in for a rare relief appearance. Instead of closing it out, Leonard gave up three runs and the Royals fell short of the Fall Classic once again.

EPISODE THREE: 1978 ALCS

The 1978 ALCS marked the first time these teams didn’t go the full five. They split the first two games, and George Brett had a monumental performance in Game 3, hitting three home runs. It was an epic game, but the Yankees still found a way to win it, 6-5. The following night, Brett tripled in a run in the first inning to give the Royals a lead, but Ron Guidry outdueled Leonard for a 2-1 win and the Yankees popped the corks on the champagne yet again.

Both teams failed to make the postseason in 1979. Maybe they were respectfully observing my birth that summer, or maybe they just needed a break from each other. But after a year off, they were right back at it in 1980, setting the scene for the Royals’ long-awaited breakthrough moment.

EPISODE FOUR: 1980 ALCS

The final showdown between the rivals in the playoffs proved to be all Royals. In Game 2, the Yankees trailed by one in the eighth when Randolph was gunned down at home on an improvised relay from Brett after Willie Wilson overthrew UL Washington. Steinbrenner was furious and after the game, he demanded Dick Howser fire his third base coach, Mike Ferraro. Howser refused, and Steinbrenner fired Howser after the season, despite his leading the Yankees to a hundred-win season.

This was fortuitous for KC, who hired Howser as their own manager the following season. Howser oversaw a minor rebuild and led the Royals to their first championship in 1985.

There was still work to be done in 1980, however. The Royals won the first two games and the series moved back to the Bronx. Trailing 2-1 in the top of the seventh, George Brett launched a moonshot home run off Goose Gossage, scoring three runs and giving Dan Quisenberry all the support he needed to close the series out.

Royals fans who witnessed that home run can still tell you where they were at when it happened. It was easily the most important play in Royals history up to that point, and alongside Alex Gordon’s dinger in Game 1 of the 2015 World Series, it’s the biggest home run in team history. The Royals finally succeeded in getting the Yankee monkey off their back, and while they came up short against Philadelphia in the World Series, it was still a monumental achievement. The little guys finally won.

CODA: PINE TAR INCIDENT (1983)

Entire books have been written about the Pine Tar Incident, and in the interest of time, I won’t recount it in detail here. But I think it provides a nice epilogue to the rivalry. By 1983, both franchises were in a state of minor decline. The Royals quickly revamped their pitching staff and found glory again, winning the AL West in 1984 and capturing their first World Series title in 1985, while the Yankees went downhill for most of the eighties, before finally turning it around in the mid-nineties.

Neither team made the postseason in 1983, and despite nearly three years having passed since their last playoff matchup, the Pine Tar Incident illustrates how deep the rivalry ran. Whether it was Billy Martin challenging the play on the field, or Brett losing his mind, or all the shenanigans the Yankees pulled in court to keep the AL from overturning their victory, it goes to show how badly each team wanted to beat the other, even if it was just a meaningless regular season game in late July.

That’s the kind of commitment and emotion that makes a rivalry great. It’s sad that it’s gone now, though we occasionally still get little flickers of it from time to time, like when Robinson Cano snubbed Billy Butler for the Home Run Derby during the All-Star festivities in Kansas City in 2012. The merciless booing Royals fans gave the Yankee second baseman was nothing like the rivalry’s glory days, but it was a reminder the passion behind it still lingers.

That’s why Royals-Yankees will always be my favorite rivalry, even if I arrived on the scene too late to see it firsthand.

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