Anyone who lives in Kansas City knows how tough it is to be a sports fan.

Sports Illustrated just ran a photo essay called “10 Cities in a Sports Slump“. Here was their list:

1. Philadelphia
2. Atlanta
3. Buffalo
4. Cleveland
5. Minneapolis-St. Paul
6. New York City
7. Washington, D.C.
8. Los Angeles
9. Seattle
10. Cincinnati

Look, I can appreciate how frustrating it must be for New Yorkers to have unlimited means at their disposal and to have their baseball team win the World Series only once every 3 years, but…no wait…I CAN’T. Kansas City is perennially disappointed when it comes to sports, both professional and collegiate. The Chiefs haven’t won a playoff game in almost 15 years, the Royals are…well, THE FREAKING ROYALS, and our college teams take quality basketball teams (I’m talking only THIS side of the state line here) almost there, but never all the way.

My last post was a rant about how coastal bias keeps the Midwest out of a lot of consideration and I think this is just another example of that. Why else would LA and NY be included in the list? Poor LA. Only 2 NCAA football titles, 3 Final Fours,  1 National Basketball Championship, 3 straight NBA titles (2000-2002) and that’s only since 1995. New York’s arrogance is proven by what SI had to say:

Even though there are some winning teams, the headlines are filled with the Knicks’ front-office issues and the Yankees’ bloated payroll and their recent split with Joe Torre. The Mets had a historic collapse this season, the Rangers are struggling despite spending lots of money in the offseason, and the Jets’ collapse balances out any success the Giants are having.

Apparently their successes are outweighed by their failures because they have SO MANY TEAMS. Must be rough.

And SI’s reason for including Atlanta: “The Braves made the playoffs for the last 14 years and missed them the last 2.” Really? That’s your argument? OK, I’ll let it slide because of Michael Vick and the Hawks, who have sucked since they lost Dominique Wilkins and Spud Webb.

Is it comforting that we aren’t on this list or is it just another slap in the face, telling us that if you aren’t a major market, you don’t matter? You decide.

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Tonight we went to the Royals game with the young adults from church. It was a lot of fun, but the craziest thing that happened at the game (the Royals didn’t win, nor did they get 12 hits for Krispy Kreme donuts, much to Alli’s chagrin), was that I won the Good Sport Award at the game.

Steve taught me a while back that if you go to Guest Services and sign a piece of paper that says you’ll be a designated driver for your group, then you get a free small drink (a $3.75 value!). You also get entered into a drawing for the Good Sport Award. According to the guys in the Guest Services office, they had more people enter the drawing tonight than they ever had before (to the tune of like 590 people). Out of those 590 people, they pulled me, Shane Adams, out of the box. I was so pumped…my name was even on the scoreboard (although Alli was too slow with the camera to get a picture!). It must run in the family. My mom, when I was about 11 years old, won a car in a Foot Locker drawing from Adidas. It was a Cadillac and she had the option of having it customized by Run DMC. She wisely chose to just pick out her own.

Or maybe the Royals organization just knew that I am a member of the League of Awesomeness and they wanted to reward me. Who knows? Either way, here’s a picture of me triumphantly holding up my “major award” - a Royals rain jacket with a Budweiser Good Sport logo on the sleeve.

Good stuff.

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