Jeff’s Dark and Early Blog

Some mornings are stressful.  Others are just flat out busy.  Today was just fun.

I woke up this morning at my usual 3 a.m., still a bit overcome with disbelief.  Had that game actually happened?  Had the Kansas City Chiefs really pulled off the impossible?

Once I hit the streets in search of fan reaction, I knew it wasn’t just a dream.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking to Chiefs’ fans this season.  There was the hiring of a new coach and a new GM.  There was drama with Larry Johnson.  There was more drama with Larry Johnson.  The list goes on.  But nothing compared to this.

For the first time since the Dick Vermeil era, I actually get a general sense that fans are starting to believe in this team.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  None of them are predicting a huge winning streak.  Most of them think San Diego will probably win on Sunday.  But what they do think….and this is the important part….is that this team CAN win again.  They’re buying into what Todd Haley is selling.  In short, they believe again.

I only hope that whatever happens on Sunday, the Pittsburgh game was the beginning of something good.  This town needs a winner yet again.

I am writing this prior to any official announcement that Zack Grienke has or has not been named the 2009 American League Cy Young Award Winner.

I’m doing so because I think it fitting to pay tribute to someone who captivated our newsroom and kept fans on the edge of their seats during yet another season of Royals baseball that failed to live up to expectation.

On days when we might have been interviewing fans about how poorly the team was performing, or how fantastically improbable it is that no one who carried a bat to the plate seemed to know how to bunt, we were instead talking about Zack.

Those thousands of fans who packed the new Kauffman Stadium night after night were there in part because of the renovations that may well have landed us the All-Star game in 2012.  But I’d venture to guess that a good majority of them were there to catch a glimpse of the best arm the organization has seen since I don’t know when.  Zack Grienke is good for Kansas City.  And Zack Grienke is good for baseball.

In an era when so many fans are still scarred by the cheating ways of oversized sluggers who stole history from the ghosts of the past, it is refreshing to see the fans get excited about scoreless innings streaks, nasty breaking balls and the art of upsetting the timing of a big league hitter.

From the streets of Kansas City with a microphone in my hand, to my own neighborhood where Mr. Kevin Fox and his three boys caught a case of Zack Fever that lasted well into late September, I saw the impact this young phenom had on a city that loves its sports and loves its heroes.

Zack Grienke deserves the Cy Young award not just for being the best pitcher in the league.  For there is no doubt about that.  But he deserves the award for being the most valuable player on his team, and possibly in his city.  And he deserves the award because baseball desperately needs players like Zack Grienke to help bring it back to what it was long before the hidden needles began turning up in proverbial locker rooms all across America’s pastime.

We’ve been talking about it a lot in the newsroom, and on the air.
The weather was so perfect, so unseasonably warm this past weekend, that some across the metro decided to get ahead of the game and put up the Christmas lights before the cold sets in.
I was one of these early birds of winter festivity.
On Saturday afternoon, wife and son alongside, I braved the ladder with a staple gun and a dream.
Call me Clark Griswold if you’d like. But you’ll never call me Scrooge. And when you’re out there on your own ladder in the freezing cold in early December, you might even call me smart.

This blog is almost always about radio.  In fact, I’ve made it a personal rule to always try to tie what I’m writing about into my job as a reporter.  Today, however, I must break that rule.  This story was too good not to tell.

A few months before we met, my wife bought a dog.  I’ve blogged about this furry family member before.  His name is Cooper.  He’s a schnauser-poodle mix, commonly known as a ’schnoodle’, and he’s a barrel of fun.

When my wife bought Cooper, he was just a puppy, and she had a hard time deciding between him and his sister, who were both for sale at the same place.  After playing with both, she made the tough decision of going with the male and naming him Cooper.  As it turns out, it wouldn’t have mattered either way.

My wife is a dental hygienist, and yesterday, through a conversation with a patient, she came to realize that he had purchased Cooper’s sister right after she bought him.  All the facts made sense.  Same store, same time of year, same schnoodle.

It turns out this patient had purchased Cooper’s sister for his in-laws, as a thank-you for helping out with their wedding.  And by some strange set of circumstances that can only be explained by something out there in the cosmos, Cooper’s sister was promptly named…….Cooper.

So as you can imagine, we now have to get Cooper and Cooper together.  As my dad put it, “George Foreman named all his kids George, and now Cooper’s parents named all their kids Cooper”.

What a world.