19,653 more reasons to hustle

For the first time in several weeks, I’m enjoying watching the Royals play. When we were getting shelled on Tuesday night against Oakland, we still had guys hustling. The young guys. The hungry guys.

I lost track of the score late in the game, we were down by over ten runs though, and one of many of Seattle’s shots to the gap was ran down by DeJesus before it got to the wall. That was impressive.

And how about our new first baseman Joe Randa? He made a play in the hole on Tuesday night that I don’t think Sweeney or Harvey would have made.

Then last night, in a line up full of rookies, Andres Blanco made two great turns on double plays, sacrificing his body in the process. And he made a great catch with his back to home plate on a Bret Boone pop up in short left field.

And who would have expected Gotay’s snag and subsequent flip to Blanco on a ground ball up the middle to get Randy Winn out?

19,653 fans came out to the ball park last night to see a team that was 33 games under .500. They could have been doing a lot of other things with their time. Especially since so many Royals’ players have shown by their lack of hustle in recent weeks that they would rather be elsewhere. But the fans chose to be there and gave Gotay and Blanco several standing ovations.

I don’t understand why a person who is talented enough to play professional baseball for a living would need any external incentives to hustle, but they had 19,653 of them last night. I hope Pena isn’t quick to re-insert all the veterans when they are healthy. I’m having too much fun watching guys who care.