Whitlock: Young Royals are choking on the pressure

Why Does Whitlock Got to Be So Sad?

Someone on this roster might have to go Jose Lima to loosen this squad up. The pressure isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it’s likely to rise now that Opening K is over.

Kansas Citians love to fill Kauffman Stadium for the home opener and get liquored up. It’s St. Patty’s Day II, only everyone wears powder blue and pretends to love the Royals. The rest of the spring and summer, the same Royals diehards worry about the Chiefs’ draft and minicamps, spring football at Kansas and Missouri and highway construction going to the Lake of the Ozarks.

The “New K” makes perfect sense when 30,000 fans are inside. It won’t make any sense at all if the Royals keep scoring one run a game, fall to the bottom of the American League Central and draw 15,000 in June.

This season can’t be a repeat of the last decade. Not after a $250 million, taxpayer-financed stadium renovation. Not after David Glass upgraded the club’s payroll to an almost-respectable $70 million.

This stadium will start to feel totally inappropriate if the Royals fail to be competitive. The Royals have terrible luck. They unveiled their new stadium in the middle of America’s greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.

If no one is riding the center field merry-go-round in July, the right-field party deck is empty and the left-field Hall of Fame poorly trafficked, it’s going to seem as if Kansas Citians bought a multiple-ARM, escalating mortgage.

Thanks to Subway Squawkers.