Ned Yost calls out Royals fans for some reason

Your team is in first place, apparently playoff-bound for the first time in many fans’ lifetimes and you just won with a dramatic walkoff homer. What do you do? Well, if you’re Ned Yost you complain about attendance:

“I mean, what, 13,000 people got to see a great game? . . . We’re in a pennant race, yeah. We’ve been working on trying to build this team for the last three or four years to put ourselves in a position where we can contend for a championship. And not only the division, but we want to contend for a world championship. It’s really, really important we have our fans behind us at the stadium . . . I know there’s different things you can do. You can watch it on the Internet. You can watch it on TV. But there’s a real need for our fans to be a part of this. We had a great crowd last night, and I was kind of hoping we’d have another great crowd tonight, and we really didn’t.”

Sam Mellinger of the KC Star eviscerates Yost over his comments, showing that Yost’s claim that the team performs better with more fans in the seats is simply false. And noting that, hey, you just had a pretty electric win with a small crowd. Showing that, contrary to some of Yost’s other comments (which you can read at the Star) those Braves teams for whom he coached in the early 90s did NOT have tons of people in the stands every night. Mellinger also not-at-all-subtly reminds everyone that the Royals have sucked for ages, that maybe, just maybe, it takes a bit more than a nice run in August to convince the fans to all come back and that shaming fans despite decades of disappointment by the team they love is not exactly cool.

It’s a justified evisceration. Mellinger is not the kind of guy who just spouts off for no reason. He’s not a sportswriter who looks for stuff to be mad about. He’s legitimately irked here, and it’s very hard to blame him.

There’s cool stuff going on in Kansas City right now. Maybe Yost should focus on the cool stuff.