As a true Royals fan, I’ve thought the thought, “this year is the year” literally every season since I was seven. As anyone around Kansas City knows, none of those years were “the year.”

“The year” for many teams means a championship however for Royals fans it simply means making the playoffs. This is true because the idea of the playoffs would be such a huge accomplishment. The Royals have the longest streak without going to the playoffs for any team in all four major US sports. Not a single team has this long of a drought.

The last time the Royals made the playoffs they not only made it to the playoffs but they won their one and only World Series as well. This was all the way back in 1985.

The Royals had good teams in the 70s and 80s and believe it or not the Royals were much like the Red Sox of baseball at the time. They had easily one of the best teams in the league and their main rival was the New York Yankees. For five years the Royals faced the Yankees in the playoffs. KC lost to them every time except twice, in which both of those times the Royals made it to the World Series.

With amazing talent such as George Brett and Frank White leading the way the Royals won 6 division titles and two pennants. Fans would pack Kauffman Stadium and would create one of the best atmospheres in baseball. People forget that Kansas City really does have some of the best baseball fans around.

People in KC now however are pessimistic when it comes to the Royals and many have simply given up. The losing seasons year after year for many have been too much for them. Another reason is that they are too young to have ever seen a winning baseball team in KC so they just see the team as losers.  For myself, I will always be a passionate Royals fan no matter how much we are losing, but I understand how year after year of losing seasons makes it really, really hard to watch and stay positive.

For the Royals in my opinion “this year is the year.” Not just because I am a true fan who will always be a big supporter of my team, but also because this year it looks like we have finally developed the young talent and made the trades needed to compete for a division title.

As a positive Royals fan all I can hope for, just like last year and the year before that, is that this year will be “the year.”