The Battle for Grass Creek Wyoming Begins!

Another year, another Battle for Grass Creek Wyoming the halfway point in the nation's soul between Kansas City and Seattle. Mariners-Royals has always been a heated, dramatic, epic rivalry, and each year it just keeps getting better and better.

We've seen Raul Ibanez shuttle between both franchises, establishing a unique, bittersweet legacy of greatness, betrayal and prodigality, that has defined being a baseball fan for anyone who came of age in the early 00s. We've seen Gil Meche and Jose Guillen leave the Mariners for the sweet sweet money of the Royals, which some clever folks have likened to joining the Dark Side. There is nothing more clever, funny or appropo, than a Star Wars reference, now is there? One funny thing M's fans have started doing is, no really, requesting that Star Wars music be played at Safeco during Royals games. Sooo cool.

via images.royalsreview.com

It's clear these two teams hate one another, and so do their fans. Nowhere is this divide more obvious than on the borderlands between the two camps, especially the very frontline itself, Grass Creek Wyoming. In recent decades, the rivalry has been so intense, the hatred so vitriolic, that Grass Creek has actually ceased to have a population, with no official residents listed in recent censuses.

In a more fundamental sense, of course, we are all citizens of Grass Creek, the Grass Creeks of the mind. If you walk down the street in K.C. in Mariners gear, you will get verbally assaulted, and, it's almost like you enjoy that. It's part of the fun. Same for getting spotted wearing a Royals cap in Yakima or Tacoma. Drama.

As a Royals fan, I have no doubt that the REAL team will triumph this season, erasing all memories of last year's 6-3 M's win. Jose Guillen is a born leader and all week he's been getting the team fired up with impassioned speeches denouncing the Mariners and all they represent. Meanwhile, in the back of the room, Gil Meche has looked on, saying nothing, but positively emitting grit, emitting veteran presence and leadership. Like a sun, but in this solar system the primary force is winning. Do you think John Buck or Jimmy Gobble could possibly, POSSIBLY, walk by Meche's locker and not give 5000% effort this series? You gotta be kidding me.

My prediction: the Royals will win both games by a combined score of 22-1, with John Bale allowing an unearned run tomorrow night when Guillen fires a single into the stands as an act of bravado, scoring Ibanez (who will be plunked multiple times) from second by umpire's decision.

The Royals have already taken Meche and Guillen from you. It's just a question of who Dayton Moore wants next...

You have no chance,

Royals Review