From 106 losses to the ALDS!? How the Royals have renewed a once-heated rivalry

BALTIMORE — On the day the Kansas City Royals resuscitated a rivalry that has lain dormant for nearly a half-century, the man who embodied the team in the 1970s strolled by the one who personifies it today.

“You think he’s any good?” George Brett asked.

He was looking at Bobby Witt Jr., the hero of the Royals’ Game 2 victory that expelled the Baltimore Orioles from the American League wild-card round — and the hero, to be more accurate, of the baseball renaissance currently taking place in Kansas City.

“He’s got a chance to be a good player,” Brett continued, and Witt flashed a knowing grin in his direction. As Witt has inherited the mantle of face and voice of the franchise, he has grown to understand Brett’s import — not just as the Royals’ lone Hall of Famer, but as its swaggering, swashbuckling avatar, a role best expressed as perpetual tormentor of the New York Yankees.

Over a six-year stretch from 1976 to 1981, the Yankees and Royals ruled the AL; they met four times in the ALCS. Though the Yankees won the first three series, Kansas City swept New York in 1980. And perhaps the most famous incident of Brett’s career — charging to confront an umpire after being called out for using too much pine tar — came against the Yankees in 1983. In his playoff career against New York, Brett hit .358/.389/.791 with six homers and only two strikeouts in 72 plate appearances.

“Hatred,” Brett said. “If you talk to anybody that played in the ’76, ’77, ’78, ’80 playoffs, it was hatred. I mean, you despise them, you abhor them. Does abhor mean hate?”

Yes, he was informed.

“You abhorred them,” Brett continued. “And they abhorred us.”

Now the rivalry is renewed, with Witt looking to take on Brett’s role at the center of it. After a pair of hard-fought, one-run wins in Baltimore, the Royals are in the Bronx to face the Yankees in Game 1 of the AL Division Series on Saturday. Witt drove in the only run in the first win, and in a postseason career that is two games deep, he owns two game-winning RBIs. The last person to plate the go-ahead run in his first two career playoff games was Jimmie Foxx — an inner-circle Hall of Famer who did it almost 100 years ago.

None of this registers as particularly surprising, because the 24-year-old Witt has spent the 2024 season vaulting himself into the sport’s tippy-top echelon. The objective attributes scream superstar: the .332 average that won him his first batting title, the second consecutive 30/30 season, the Gold Glove-caliber defense at shortstop — whatever you add to the list, if it has to do with baseball, he’s good at it.

His desire for more evinces itself with every meaningful game Witt plays. And there is substantial meaning to these, not only because they’re the first postseason games for the Royals since they won the World Series in 2015 but because they herald one of the great turnarounds in baseball history. Last year, the Royals lost 106 games. Now, they’re trying to mimic their neighbors at the Truman Sports Complex.

“Seeing what they’re doing across the street with the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, I’m just trying to do my part and bring back what Kansas City needs and what they love,” Witt said. “You see it with the Chiefs, and you saw it with what the Royals did in ’14, ’15. We want to create our own legacy.”

The Venn diagram of these Royals’ legacy and Witt’s is a circle. He joined the organization as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 draft, blew away the team’s executives at Kansas City’s alternate site during the COVID-19 shutdown, won every Minor League Player of the Year award in 2021, hit 20 home runs and ripped 30 bags as a rookie in 2022, flashed superstar bona fides in 2023 and put himself in the best-player-in-baseball conversation with Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani this season.

And in his first opportunity for postseason baseball, he shone. In the bottom of the fifth inning of Game 2, the Orioles tied the score on a solo home run, then loaded the bases. Royals manager Matt Quatraro went to the mound to make a pitching change, and the team’s infield gathered on the mound. Witt said, very simply, “This is our game.” By the end of the mound visit, all of them were saying it. They believed.

They escaped that half-inning without ceding another run. And in the next, Witt came to the plate with runners on the corners and two outs. He hit a 109 mph pea up the middle, only for Baltimore second baseman Jordan Westburg to dive and snag it. Westburg sprung to his feet, made an excellent throw — and Witt still beat it by more than a step for an infield single, scoring a run that would be the last of the game.

“The reason we won the game is the Kansas City Royals played baseball the right way,” Royals reliever Will Smith said. “Bobby booked it out the box, and his speed took over. He could easily have coasted. But he didn’t.”

Smith is 35 years old and holds a special distinction among his peers: an incontrovertible winner. Smith captured a World Series with the Atlanta Braves in 2021. He was traded to the Houston Astros in 2022 and got another ring. He signed with the Texas Rangers on the eve of the 2023 season and, yup, a third consecutive championship. And now this, where he gets to bear Wittness.

Witt can only dream of such a résumé, for now. He’s in his debut, still green, feeling privileged to have the opportunity to face a team like the Yankees in an MLB postseason. He liked the spirit at Camden Yards, has discovered a signature style for his postgame celebrations, donned after their clinching game and the wild-card win: ski goggles over his eyes, one Bud Heavy on either side of his head — held by the goggle strap — and a cigar hanging from his lips.

“Excitement, electricity,” Witt said. “Even here, it was great to hear the boo birds, hear ’em yelling at you, getting on you. You just learn to be comfortable and live in that present moment and enjoy it.”

Witt and the Royals will enjoy taking the field behind Michael Wacha, one of their tremendous free agent signings, in Game 1. Ace Cole Ragans — who shut out Baltimore for six innings Tuesday — is lined up to pitch Game 2 as well as a potential Game 5.

For all of the pitching the Royals have between their starters and a bullpen that has morphed into among the hottest in baseball, it comes back to Witt. And now, he has taken them to the most storied stadium in baseball with a chance to become the latest Kansas City team to come out of nowhere, introduce itself to the world and do exactly what Brett seemed to do every time the Yankees and Royals got together: fight.