The Kansas City Royals have not made it to the playoffs in 29 years, since entering the 2014 post season, now they haven’t lost and are 8-0 this post season. When die hard MLB fans have waited 29 years to see their team in the playoffs, they never want to see them leave. So just like the lecture in class regarding does prayer heal? I thought I would explore the topic can two totally opposite things, hope and starvation.

Hope is something that comes to mind when an illness needs to be cured, or if you want to make the impossible, possible. When people lose hope, it kills an interior part of them and makes them more and more unhappy until sooner or later even the most trivial things can make one depressed. According to http://www.psychologytoday.com/ there are four steps of keeping hope, lets look at them in the case of this scrappy baseball playing Royals.

1. The future will be better than the present.
   1. After sitting at the bottom of the American League Central for all but one year from 2003-2009 the Kansas City Royals and their fans were only hoping that the future was better than the present, and after hoping and believing for so many years, they are headed to the World Series.
2. I have the power to make it so.
   1. The Royals simply had belief. Every player, manager and owner had confidence in this team and even though 6 out of 8 postseason games were decided by one run, they believed that no matter how close, they wouldn’t lose, and they haven’t.
3. There are many paths to my goals.
   1. Some teams take the money path, like the Yankees have for so many championships, spending over 200 million dollars this off season. Or the more respectable route of teams like the Kansas City Royals who build up using organizational depth and speed on the base paths.
4. None of them is free of obstacles.
   1. Sitting at the bottom of the league for half a decade is a huge obstacle that has now been overcome.

Stephen King once said “Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Hope can drive those who believe in it, and that is what the Royals have done.

Now onto starvation, that feeling when you haven’t eaten anything all day and you get your hands on a juicy bacon cheeseburger, that feeling when you haven’t made the playoffs in 29 years and once you are here you never want to go home. These players, coaches and fans have been starving for a playoff berth for 29 years and by this time they want it more than any other team. More than the team with the AL MVP and the NL Cy Young, more than the teams who have made it in the NL to the World Series four out of the last five years, and I think very obviously more than the Yankees who spent over 200 million dollars for Derek Jeter’s last season.

Or does it all come down to skill? Is it as simple as the better team wins, and no matter how much adrenaline goes into a game or how much heart you have, can it really all just be simple numbers? With an ERA below 3.5 as a total rotation in the postseason, it is no wonder the Royals are atop the American League.

Who knows, but from what I can tell the team that wants it the most… wins.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creating-in-flow/201303/can-hope-be-bad

http://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/motivation/section2.rhtml

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/standings/index.jsp#20061002

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/87004-remember-hope-is-a-good-thing-maybe-the-best-of

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/alcs-game-4–royals-sweep-orioles–clinch-first-world-series-trip-since-1985-231547039.html

http://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Epinephrine-(Adrenaline).aspx