2009 Kansas City Royals Season
The Kansas City Royals' 2009 season began on April 7 with a game against the Chicago White Sox at U. S. Cellular Field, which Chicago won. On April 10, the Royals hosted the New York Yankees in the first game at the newly renovated Kauffman Stadium for the Royals' home opener. Interleague opponents included the St. Louis Cardinals, Arizona Diamondbacks, Cincinnati Reds, Houston Astros and Pittsburgh Pirates.
The Royals looked to improve on their 2008 record of 75–87 and sought their first playoff appearance since 1985, as manager Trey Hillman returned for his second season with Kansas City. The Royals' payroll for the 2009 season was $70.5 million, approximately 25 percent higher than their 2008 payroll (and 21st in the major leagues).
There was much optimism for the Royals heading into the season, with some experts saying they had the potential reach the postseason. After a strong start and 18–11 record, the Royals suffered several losing streaks and fell back to a losing record, finishing with a dismal 65-97 record.
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“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court today.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)