The Kansas City Royals have long been the laughing stock of Major League Baseball, even folks in Kansas City can't really take them seriously. I mean, how proud can anyone be of a team which consistently ends a season with 100 or more losses [1]? That being said, it came as a bit of a surprise that the Royals were getting the world's largest HD scoreboard [2]. It seemed oddly fitting; the smallest payroll in the majors and the largest HDTV ever seen by mankind. At first I had assumed the screen would be used to televise a different game so the fans at Kauffman would have something worthwhile to watch while Royals spiral further down.
George Brett is Rolling in His Grave
Yeah, I know, George Brett isn't dead... yet. But still, it's a shame how bad the Royals have gotten. From the 2006 offseason, through 2007, there seemed to be some potentially exciting things happening at Kauffman. The Royals got a new General Manager and some new talent (as opposed to the old talent, which wasn't talented). And yes, of course, the monster high def Jesus-curdling scoreboard. Now I'm not an Inside Baseball kinda guy, I don't claim to know any of the ins and outs of any major sport - but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that if anything can turn around the Royals it'll be a humongasaurus scoreboard.
So here we are, a couple weeks into the 2008 season and how at the Royals doing? Well as of this morning they are 7-2 with something like a hundred and sixty games left. It's a long season from here till September but one can't help but be optimistic given the way the past six or so seasons have kicked off. Clearly something is making a difference at the K. I'm willing to bet that brand new scoreboard has done what decades of trading, drafting and practicing was never able to do. Here is a graph to back me up:
Kansas City Royals: Before and After the Megatron of Brilliance
The blue line shows the past number of winning games while the purplish line forecasts the Royals' record after the implimentation of the new scoreboard. According to my software the Royals are projected to win more games than there are in the season/post season. So there you have it, based on their current record and flawless software predictions, the Royals will dominate the 2008 season thanks to their crazy trillion dollar HDTV LCD 1080i Rear Projection Plasma Screen OLED CRT Flat Panel Dot Matrix Picture Box.
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
This scoreboard could be a harbinger... Once it becomes clear that the Royals owe their success in 2008 to their new scoreboard, other ball clubs are sure to pick up insanely huge and ridiculously expensive HD scoreboards to turn their records around. Humongorous Retardotrons don't come cheap, and the economic impact of a buying spree would surely lead to a boom in the high def market and create jobs, feed the hungry, cure the sick, adopt stray pets, plant new trees and probably even raise the dead. Why not... if the Royals can turn around their record anything is possible.