by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

KANSAS CITY–The Oakland A’s were leading the Kansas City Royals 7-3 in the wild card game at the end of September with A’s ace Jon Lester on the mound the Royals came back and they won it and they haven’t lost since. They have won eight games in a row a new playoff record, beating Oakland in one, sweeping the Angels in three and sweeping the Orioles in four. I like it now when you have to play wild cards.

The Royals are really scoring, they have great pitching and they own the all time new MLB playoff record for consecutive wins in the post season and their headed for the series. They have timely hitting they can steal more and this will be a very interesting World Series. The San Francisco Giants have more experience in the post sesaon on their side coming into the series with Pablo Sandoval, Tim Lincecum, Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, and Sergio Romo guys like that who have been with this team when the won the World Series two years ago.

The Royals have their act together and everybody is playing to their potential like the Royals outfielder Lorenzo Cain who might be the best athlete on both of these teams. Your talking about a team that is in good standing they’re undefeated in the playoffs. The Royals have home advantage opening up at Kaufman Stadium on Tuesday and this being their first series since 1985.

So it’s a beautiful story really and Kansas City is a small city, it’s in the middle of the country, it’s a small TV market. People at the TV networks are not going to be happy at Fox and why is that? Because they didn’t want a San Francisco-Kanas City World Series. These are two regional teams and if you walk in the streets of San Francisco everybody is wearing their orange and black.

You might see that in the East Bay and in Marin County too, but when you leave the Bay Area the Giants don’t have that many fans. In Kansas City it’s the same thing, their in the middle of the country, what the network wanted was teams like the L.A. Angels against the Washington Nationals or the Dodgers and the Angels it’s the big rivalry of L.A. and the number two TV market.

Baltimore a team on the east coast might be a club that they would like to have on TV, but believe me the networks did not want the Royals and the Giants in the World Series. I’m going to come out and make a prediction this is going to be one of the lowest rated TV World Series in history. Not a lot of people are going to watch it. People around the country have already said they’ve seen the Giants twice now in the last four years and here they come back on again (yawn) and the Royals are small town baseball.

Nationally you have the Bay Area team the Giants and then you have small town Royals and it doesn’t have that appeal. I want to make this point the St.Louis Cardinals they have a lot of fans in this country and their a traditional team. They never moved, they’ve played in St.Louis forever and you talk about the Cardinals they do have more fans than the Giants and the Royals and it’s too bad they didn’t make it.

It would have been a wonderful story if the Cards made it to the series it would have been the Royals versus the Cardinals because both teams play in the same state of Missouri or the I-70 series. It would be a repeat of the 1985 World Series. It would be a better television draw than these two teams this season the Royals and Giants so let’s hope they have a good series.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary each week on http://www.sportsradioservice.com

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