{"id":6456,"date":"2014-11-11T11:04:24","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T16:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/?p=6456"},"modified":"2014-11-12T09:37:08","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T14:37:08","slug":"biggest-royals-fan-on-campus-cheers-team-to-world-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/archives\/6456","title":{"rendered":"Biggest Royals Fan on Campus Cheers Team to World Series"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"418774_2949294950795_2029960234_n\"<\/a>By Hannah Hecht–\u00a0<\/strong>With their recent successes over the past season, Kansas City Royals fans seem to be cropping up everywhere across the Midwest, even in places hundreds of miles from the Kansas\/Missouri border. Some are coming out of the closet, so to speak, just now ready to vocalize their appreciation for what was, from 2004 to 2012, one of the worst teams in major league baseball. Meanwhile, others are jumping onto the bandwagon while professing to have been true Royals fans all along.<\/p>\n

Jacob Meysenburg fits into neither of these camps. Many of his classmates remember that back in 2012, one of those seasons in the so-called \u201cdark ages,\u201d Meysenburg, a senior math and English major, would wear a blue Royals cap all day every game day. He is Morningside\u2019s biggest Royals fan, and he has been nothing short of ecstatic with the team\u2019s recent victories.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took a victory lap after the Oakland game,\u201d he said. \u201cI ran down the hall, outside of Dimmitt, and then all the way around campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if you had ever watched a baseball game with Jacob, you wouldn\u2019t doubt the veracity of his claim. After a hit, especially a double or a triple, he\u2019ll jump up from his seat, clap his hands and let out an excited squeal, his longer-than-shoulder-length brown hair falling into his face from the shock. He taunts the on-screen opposition with a mix of baseball terms that would go over a layperson\u2019s head (\u201cThat\u2019s what you get for pulling your starter, Bruce Bochy, even though that was the tactically-correct decision\u201d) to more explicit and direct commentary (\u201cAnyone who cheers for the Giants is a communist!\u201d). He goes beyond insults and excitement, though, and shows sympathy for the players and understanding for the game in a way that only a true fan can. (\u201cIt went off the side of his glove. Cain wouldn\u2019t have usually missed that. You don\u2019t see that much from a center fielder.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u201cWatching a baseball game with with Jacob is the most stressful thing in my entire life,\u201d said his roommate and best friend Josh Karel. \u201cI think he\u2019s going to freak out and break my computer or our entire apartment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watching Royals games started off as something that Meysenburg did to bond with his dad. His father was in his twenties back when the Royals lost the World Series to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980 and when they won the Series in \u201885, and Jacob\u2019s family has followed the Royals ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started watching them in earnest around 2007, I suppose,\u201d Meysenburg said, \u201cAnd we\u2019d watch every single game on TV, which definitely interfered with my school, but that\u2019s okay\u2026 You\u2019ve gotta have priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Royals baseball may interfere with Meysenburg\u2019s schoolwork at times, he has found a way to use his passion to do something he loves while gaining workplace experience and building his resume. During his sophomore year at Morningside, Jacob was hired on as a blogger for the Sports Illustrated-affiliated Kansas City sports blog\u00a0KCKingdom.com<\/a>.\u00a0His blog posts<\/a>\u00a0are sabermetrically-minded, that is, they focus mainly on the analysis of baseball statistics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was actually awful at math in high school.\u201d Meysenburg said, \u201cWell, not awful, just awful relative to my other stuff. Which is why I\u2019m a\u2026 math major?\u201d<\/p>\n

Meysenburg thinks that a lot of Royals fans are uniquely interested in sabermetrics.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a fan of a team that loses a lot, you try and find ways in which your team can\u00a0not\u00a0<\/i>lose. It\u2019s a very stat-minded community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob\u2019s articles, like\u00a0this one<\/a>, combine his writing skills and prodigious knowledge of and ability to crunch baseball statistics (hence the English and math double major) into an easy-to-interpret mine of information for fans. His posts are unceasingly professional, but they retain enough voice that you can feel the college student, giddy with the prospect of his favorite team making their way to the World Series, at the core.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were to write an article right now and post it, it would have over a thousand views pretty quickly,\u201d he said, \u201cI became involved with the site because I wanted to do stat-based articles, but those don\u2019t get many clicks. Click-bait gets lots and lots of clicks, though. I\u2019ll go on there and see \u2018Three reasons that such and such,\u2019 and that will get a lot more views than my heavily research-based article, so that\u2019s a bit of a turn-off, but on the other hand, it\u2019s really cool to have a platform to publish work that you do.\u201d<\/p>\n

His position with KC Kingdom is unpaid, but his experience has helped him to land other internships.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just got hired to write for a company that makes a piece of equipment that is supposed to revolutionize the way that physical therapists treat patients with balance disorders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meysenburg, a senior, hopes to use his skills in writing and statistics to become an actuary. Or at least, that\u2019s the goal that his parents want for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to do work for a baseball team; that would be optimal, but I guess I need to be a little more realistic. And maybe I\u2019m being pessimistic, but it doesn\u2019t seem very likely that I could get a job doing stats for a team,\u201d he says, \u201cAlternatively, the dream job would be doing nothing\u2026 You\u2019ve got to think of the important things\u2026 Yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Royals almost made it through to become World Series Champions of the 2014 season, but they came up just short, losing game seven (in best out of seven play) by just one point: two to three.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was soul crushing,\u201d said Meysenburg. \u201cWatching the seventh game of the world series was like watching Harry Potter, and Voldemort wins. Actually, watching game seven was like watching Miracle, and the Russians win. Actually, wait, game seven of the World Series was like watching Old Yeller, except they don\u2019t shoot the dog at the end; instead he just infects everyone with rabies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By Hannah Hecht–\u00a0With their recent successes over the past season, Kansas City Royals fans seem to be cropping up everywhere across the Midwest, even in places hundreds of miles from the Kansas\/Missouri border. Some are coming out of the closet, so to speak, just now ready to vocalize their appreciation for what was, from 2004…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":6458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morningside-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6456"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6462,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456\/revisions\/6462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}