Royals lose their way after Mr. K’s death, strike

To understand why the Royals own baseball’s longest current postseason drought, one must return to the summer of 1993. Aug. 1, to be precise.

Ewing Kauffman’s death bed.

Hours before Kauffman died, Royals general manager Herk Robinson telephoned the team’s owner, out of respect always, but on this occasion also out of duty. The Royals had just traded Jon Lieber and Dan Miceli to the Pirates for Stan Belinda. The boss needed to know, even at around 10 p.m. on July 31.

Kauffman, beloved founder of the club, passed away before the next day’s sun rose, and although nobody knew it at the time, the Royals’ journey through baseball’s wilderness had begun. As difficult as that phone call was to make, even tougher decisions lay ahead.

Over the next two decades, many moments would come to define the Royals’ ineptitude.

Plays? So many humiliating moments from which to choose. First baseman Ken Harvey getting plunked in the back with a relay throw is a favorite. Or how about the night center fielder Chip Ambres and Terrence Long converged on a lazy pop fly for a third out, looked at each other and jogged off the field, only to have the ball fall behind them? Or that the Royals once had an outfield that even included Ambres and Long?

Seasons? The ball-drop comedy happened late in 2005, when the Royals set a franchise record with 106 losses, marking the third time in four years they re-set that mark of futility. That was also the year, 20 seasons removed from the club’s World Series championship (and last playoff appearance), that included a 19-game losing streak and no fewer than three managers.

But as the Royals prepare for their most promising season in generations, the roots of decline are best traced to Mr. K’s death bed.

“If you look at it from 10,000 feet, it’s pretty obvious,” said former pitcher Jeff Montgomery, who spent the 1990s in a Royals uniform as one of the game’s top closers. “The adverse effects of his passing affected the organization for a long, long time.”

At the time, the situation didn’t seem as hopeless as it would become.

Nobody knew such dark days awaited. The proud Royals franchise had been such a model of success that the Colorado Rockies, who played their first game in 1993, openly referred to their blueprint of progress for an expansion team.

The man most often associated with the early years of the club’s downturn is Robinson, now 72, who succeeded John Schuerholz as general manager after the 1990 season and remained on the job for a decade.

Robinson retained a title with the club through 2004, although his responsibilities were limited. Today, he lives with his wife, Kathy, in Leawood. He doesn’t often take in games at Kauffman Stadium but rarely misses a Royals broadcast.

He remembers his decade as general manager as a time of promise sinking into great uncertainty, and finally futility. It’s been 27 years since the Royals’ last playoff appearance, nine years since they had a winning season, 21 years since more than 2 million fans attended home games in a season, which had become the norm.

How did it all go so wrong?

Kauffman’s death marked the obvious turning point for the franchise, but there were many decisions made in the years before his death, and several after, that changed the course of the franchise.

Start with 1990. The Royals were coming off a terrific 1989 season. They’d won 92 games, drawn a record 2.4 million fans and overhauled much of their lineup from the 1985 World Series team. They were set around the horn with promising young players, such as Kevin Seitzer at third and Kurt Stillwell at shortstop, and veteran leaders Frank White and George Brett patrolled the right side of the field.

Young catcher Mike Macfarlane had some pop. Bo Jackson, Danny Tartabull and Jim Eisenreich made up one of the game’s best outfields. The Royals’ starting pitching never seemed stronger, with Bret Saberhagen coming off his second Cy Young Award-winning season and Mark Gubicza entering his prime. Kevin Appier and Tom Gordon were finding their way, too, and Montgomery, the future closer, was on board. Even the Royals’ 1990 rookie class was stout, featuring Jeff Conine, Brian McRae and Terry Shumpert.

Only two teams finished with better records than the Royals in 1989. Unfortunately, one was in the same division: the world champion Oakland A’s.

“Remember those days?” said Montgomery, who had just built his dream house in Cincinnati when he was traded from the Reds to the Royals in 1988. “Then, two divisions and only the winners made the playoffs. You could be the second or third best team in baseball and not make the playoffs. That’s what we had in 1989.”

Believing they were just a move or two away from reaching the top, the Royals signed Padres relief pitcher Mark Davis, the National League Cy Young winner and the biggest free agent on the market. Their other big acquisition was starting pitcher Storm Davis, who had won 35 games the previous two seasons in Oakland.

In 1990, the Royals’ $22 million payroll was the highest in baseball.

But then injuries swept through the clubhouse. Saberhagen, Gubicza, Storm Davis, Jackson and Tartabull all missed chunks of the season. Mark Davis was a bust and was pulled from the closer’s role in mid-May.

The Royals resolved to do more restructuring, but Robinson’s first big trade, after the 1991 season — Saberhagen to the New York Mets for Gregg Jefferies, Kevin McReynolds and Keith Miller — proved unpopular. And unproductive.

But Kauffman never stopped trying to improve the team. Even as his health was deteriorating, he took a final swing at the American League pennant. The Royals lost 90 games in 1992, and after the season, Kauffman brought David Cone into his office. Six years earlier the Royals had traded away the Kansas City product and former Rockhurst High quarterback, and he had become a star with the Mets and won a World Series ring with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Kauffman told Cone he always regretted the move and asked him to come home as a free agent.

With a signing bonus of $9 million, Cone agreed to a three-year contract worth $18 million.

“And I believe that money came out of Mr. Kauffman’s checkbook,” Montgomery said.

With Cone in the pitching rotation, the team improved, winning 84 games in 1993. In the second-to- last game played while Kauffman was still alive, Cone threw a shutout, beating Jose Mesa and the Cleveland Indians 3-0 in front of 31,769 fans. Brett, playing his final season, smacked his 11th home run, and the second-place Royals pulled within three games of the division-leading Chicago White Sox.

As good as 1993 was, 1994 was even better. The team jelled under manager Hal McRae, and in late July the Royals embarked upon a 14-game winning streak, with 12 of those games played in front of enthusiastic home crowds.

Then the strike hit.

The games of Aug. 10 ended the season. No playoffs — this was to be the first year of the wild card, and the Royals were squarely in contention — and certainly no World Series.

Complicating matters, the Royals had no owner.

Upon Kauffman’s death, control of the team was given to the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, an IRS-approved move that ensured the Royals would remain in KC. Kauffman also left $40 million to cover the team’s future losses.

Current owner David Glass, Kauffman’s hand-picked successor, was appointed chairman of the club’s board of directors in September. But Glass removed himself as a candidate, which prolonged the succession plan until 2000, when baseball approved his $96 million bid to purchase the team.

From 1993 until 2000, with no owner and a strong desire to keep the team attractive for a prospective buyer, the Royals’ expenses were maintained at shoestring levels.

Payroll included.

“We didn’t want to put that (financial responsibility) on new ownership,” Robinson said.

That’s why the Royals didn’t make a serious play to retain Cone and his $5 million salary after 1994. He was traded back to the Blue Jays for three players, the best of whom was utility player Chris Stynes.

“We wanted to keep David,” Robinson said, “but we knew we couldn’t do it.”

Montgomery remembers getting into his car that April — the strike lasted through early 1995, and Major League Baseball was prepared to open the year with replacement players until a settlement reduced the season by 18 games — when he heard the news: Cone to the Blue Jays, and Brian McRae, whose salary had jumped from $378,500 in 1993 to $1.9 million in 1994, to the Chicago Cubs.

“The writing was on the wall,” Montgomery said. “We were cutting payroll.”

And going with new leadership. In another sign of the club’s altered direction, popular manager McRae was dumped after the 1994 season. McRae loved having veterans in the clubhouse, but the Royals were looking to save money. The organization, brimming with young talent, had been named baseball’s best by several outlets in 1994, and the front office knew those prospects would be in KC soon.

“We just didn’t think it was fair to Hal to bring him back under those conditions,” Robinson said. “We were going to start anew.”

The page was turned after the Royals lost to the Seattle Mariners on Aug. 11, 1995. In one day, the Royals brought up Johnny Damon and Michael Tucker and dropped veterans Vince Coleman, Chris James and Pat Borders. Kansas Citians remember it as the “Friday Night Massacre.” When the Royals took the field the next day under manager Bob Boone, there were 11 rookies on the 25-man roster.

Clearly, the agenda had been set. Problem was, the Royals were competing in 1995. When the moves were made, they were just four games under .500 and very much alive in the wild-card race.

Couldn’t the future at least wait until they were eliminated from postseason contention?

“We were going to scrap this thing? Now?” Montgomery said. “It was just another dose of reality, but we felt like, ‘Give us a chance to finish this thing off.’ ”

The massacre wasn’t a disaster — the Royals played .500 baseball with the new blood — but the new direction had been established, and what few outside of the stadium knew at the time was the Royals didn’t have the tools to compete.

The cuts went deeper than players’ salaries.

“We couldn’t hire employees,” Robinson said. “We were being battered at the front-office level. There just weren’t secure jobs because of the uncertainty. We were strapped.

“Scouts, for example: They knew it was just a matter of time before ownership would change. Unless we found somebody who was out of work, they weren’t coming here. Some that were here jumped ship, and you couldn’t blame them.”

The $40 million left by Mr. K to cover losses would only go so far. Poor results, especially in the draft, started to pile up. The Royals all but stopped drafting and developing starting pitching with any expertise.

From 1992 to 1999, the Royals used their first-round picks on Jim Pittsley, Jeff Granger, Matt Smith, Dan Reichert, Jeff Austin, Kyle Snyder, Mike MacDougal and Mike Stodolka. Of that group, only MacDougal found any kind of sustained success in the majors.

As signing-bonus money started to soar, the Royals started looking at talent they could sign without prolonged negotiations, and for less money.

“The unfortunate word we kept hearing in those days was ‘signability,’ ” Montgomery said. “It became a word we hated to hear.”

Through it all, baseball’s economic gap between large and small markets was growing wider by the year. Teams like the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves were driving up the costs of free agents — the Royals’ payroll in 1996 was $18.6 million — which made the Royals’ second youth movement more difficult to accept.

In 1999, one of the brightest young talents produced by the organization, Carlos Beltran, was voted the American League’s Rookie of the Year. He played center field, with Damon in left and Jermaine Dye in right. But without having developed or acquired dependable starting pitching, the Royals lost 97 games — and worst of all, it was becoming apparent to their fans that the team wouldn’t be able to afford to keep its budding stars.

“Players had to be sold on the open market, and none of the deals we made were very beneficial to the Royals,” Robinson said. “That was the direction we had to go.”

In 2000, after seven years of belt-tightening, the Royals finally had an owner. Glass’ bid was accepted by baseball and the city rejoiced. The instability was over.

“It’s a great day,” Glass said after hearing the news at the baseball owners’ annual meeting in Houston. “I’ve waited for this day for a long time.”

That summer, Robinson was replaced as general manager by assistant general manager Allard Baird. At the time, no general manger in the American League had held his position longer than Robinson, who would stay on with the title of chief operating officer. He joked that it was a good move because he would no longer have to deal with agents, and that the Royals were poised for a positive future.

But that vision of the future proved elusive. Even with ownership stability, the Royals’ first decade of the new millennium proved to be even worse than the 1990s.

Act II: Royals plunge deeper into despair, and Mike Sweeney is the fall guy

This story was originally published March 30, 2013 at 11:00 PM.