Rany on the Royals: Reason #6: The Writer.

Pivotal Joe McGuffin’s abound!.....Rany on the hotbed of baseball writers, Kansas City.

Bill James has moved on to Boston, he now has a pair of world championship rings on his fingers, and now has his own website, and while I’m sure he has some residual affection for the Royals, I don’t imagine that he stays up at night wondering if the Jose Guillen signing will pan out. In his place, we’ve been blessed with another writer every bit James’ equal, and who writes about the Royals with more frequency, more passion, and – thanks to the internet – with much more influence than James had at his peak.

Joe Posnanski is the reason I decided to start this blog, because if he can write about baseball (and movies and pop culture and politics and whatever else catches his fancy) while still maintaining his Kansas City Star column and writing a book about the Big Red Machine (which will be hard-pressed to top his book about Buck O’Neil), then I figured I could blog about the Royals in my spare time. But Posnanski is also the reason I almost decided not to start this blog, because how the hell can I expect to compete with him?

Posnanski may not be the best sportswriter in America (although he probably is), and he may not be the best analyst in America. But no mainstream sportswriter understands the numbers of baseball – both what the numbers tell you and what they don’t tell you – as well as Posnanski. And no analyst comes within a country mile of Poz’s writing skills.