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Maryland man auctions off 25 years of loyalty
to the Royals Perhaps he would regret selling his 25-year loyalty to the Royals on eBay. Maybe he’d feel so guilty about abandoning the team he’s always loved that he’d call the whole thing off. Turns out, Carroll felt pretty good when the bidding closed, and he was officially no longer a Royals fan. “It really does feel like a big weight has been lifted,” said Carroll, 34, who lives in Maryland. “I can’t tell you how good it feels. I really can’t.” Carroll didn’t have to check the box score from the Royals’ 3-2 loss to Detroit on Monday as he normally would — although he did hear that Mike Sweeney was headed back to the disabled list. “Hurt his back yesterday,” Carroll said. “Same old news.” Now, it’s somebody else’s news. A group of nine friends — bidding under the name “Magdawg69” — joined pocketbooks to buy Carroll’s freedom at 9:02:57 a.m. CDT with three seconds left in the auction. And in case you were wondering what loyalty to the Royals is going for these days, it’s somewhere around $278.47. For Carroll’s friends, led by best friend Dan Young, winning the auction was a partly selfish act — the winner gets to pick Carroll’s new favorite team. But mostly, Carroll’s friends came to his rescue. They outbid the Kansas City T-Bones minor-league baseball team, which was hoping to keep Carroll captive as a fan of Kansas City baseball. They outbid Yahoo Sports baseball columnist Jeff Passan, who planned to write a column asking the site’s viewers to pick Carroll’s new team. If anyone else had won, there was a chance Carroll would be stuck with the Royals for another 25 years. “We didn’t think it would be right if somebody else got to name his new team,” said Young, an Orioles fan. “We don’t know who it’s going to be. We just know it’s not going to be the Royals anymore.” Carroll has never lived in Kansas City. He grew up in the small town of Le Mars, Iowa, and the Royals were the only team his family could follow on the radio. So Carroll and his younger brother, Adam, grew up Royals fans in the early ’80s. Right-handed batters in Little League, they learned how to hit left-handed to emulate George Brett. From then on, wherever his life carried him — Carroll joined the Air Force at 18 and has lived in at least five countries and three states — he took Royal Blue with him. He believed in young, promising players such as Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye and Carlos Beltran, only to see them leave. And each year, he was the first to say, “There’s no way this season could be worse than last season.” In short, Carroll is a fanatic, not just a fan — so much so that he told his friends at the start of this season that the Royals could finish third in their division. “I got suckered in again,” Carroll said. Then came the Royals’ 11-game losing streak and 2-13 record. “They can’t even give you a glimmer of hope,” Carroll said. On April 22 — the Royals won that day, coincidentally — Carroll finally gave up. He put an ad on eBay titled “My loyalty to the Kansas City Royals (jersey included).” He sent an e-mail out to his friends. Young was not surprised. “Year after year, he’d say, ‘Next year’s going to be our year,’ ” Young said. “After a while, you could just see it. He wouldn’t talk as much about the new guys, and he’d talk more and more about the George Brett era. “In our fantasy leagues, he’d always have the inside track on any Royals player. This year, he drafted Ambiorix Burgos. He’s already dropped him. He doesn’t talk about them anymore.” The Royals said they weren’t aware of Carroll’s sale. Carroll’s brother, who is sticking with them, said to Chad, “What’s going to happen in two years when they end up winning and winning and winning? What are you going to do?’ ” Carroll just laughed. “I think he’s still in denial,” Carroll said. Now, Carroll is excited to pull for a new team. He’s had wandering eyes over the past week, and they’ve settled on the Cleveland Indians. Of course, the decision rests with his friends. Young says the new team will be settled over a game of Texas Hold ’em when the friends gather for their yearly baseball weekend at Jacobs Field in Cleveland on July 21. Carroll will wait patiently for the answer. Tuesday afternoon, he started clearing off the Royals wall in his memorabilia room. Young will get the Willie Wilson signed bat and the signed balls from Bob Hamelin and Angel Berroa. The special collectibles, the Brett signed jersey and signed baseballs from almost every ’85 Royal will stay up until May 12, when he and his brother go to their last Royals game together in Baltimore. Then his brother will take them home, and it really will be over. “It started off as a joke,” Carroll said. “But
now I’m completely serious. Now I can concentrate on other
teams in other sports that have caused me pain and misery.” |
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J. Brady McCollough - jbrady@coveringsports.com (email) - 816-868-2621 (cell) |
