Words is Words, ALCS Division

Jarrod Dyson is a very fast man. Jarrod Dyson said some stuff. The stuff, and I'm paraphrasing here, is that the team he plays for, the Kansas City Royals, is going to win the playoff series they're currently contesting, in five games at most. Another bit of stuff he said suggested that if the team his team is playing got down 3 games to none, they wouldn't think they could come back and win it.



And in one of the most refreshing elements of this so-far remarkable post-season, nobody really made a big deal out of it. Oh, they sort of half-heartedly tried, but really all but the crankiest commentators looked at that, looked at the fact that the Royals have had more lives this post-season than a Batman villain and that Dyson - whose hit tool is generally graded "we don't do negative numbers" by scouting types - has pinch-run and gloved his way within two games of a World Series in his rookie year, and collectively gone "D'awww, isn't that cute?"

Dyson is clearly having fun. Dyson has also figured out that he, and his team, are playing with house money, and there's not a damn thing wrong with him enjoying it. Even Buck Showalter, one of baseball's legendarily intense crankypants types, understands and is cool with this.

Look. I know the instinctive reaction is to read something like that, froth at the mouth about "bulletin board material" and "respect the game" and all that arglebargle. But the hell with that. It's a guy having fun and, not to put too fine a point on it, saying what everyone thinks. Most ballplayers are lousy at false humility when they think they've got the other guy by the throat. It's refreshing, and enjoyable, to hear someone speak their mind like this.

Now, despite my wife and her family being from Missouri, I am not rooting for the Royals. This is partially due to the fact that I maintain hope for the orange uniform singularity that would come from an Orioles-Giants Series, partially due to my selfishly wishing to avoid all the geshrying that we'd get about ratings if there were another I-70 series (and by "geshrying" I mean, among other things, Don Denkinger references), and partially due to the fact that I think Royals owner David Glass is a jerkface and I have no desire to see good things happen to him.

But I wouldn't mind seeing what Jarrod Dyson's going to say next.