While none of us have had a lot of recent experience seeing the Royals atop the Twins in the standings, there was a time when the more wrinkled and bent among us did. Back when pant-legs were still short and stirrup socks were long, when free agency and the designated hitter rule were busy destroying the game as we knew it, back before expansion and realignment and wild cards made a mockery of what winning a pennant was all about, and when lawns were gloriously free of trespassers, the Kansas City Royals were an elite ball club in the seven-team American League West, perennial contenders who made it to the more exclusive playoffs seven times between 1976 and 1985 and won the World Series in the final year of that stretch. (Suck on that sentence, Mr. Faulkner.) The Royals rosters back in those days were a litany of greats -- George Brett, Steve Balboni, Frank White, Hal McRae, Bret Saberhagen, Dan Quisenberry and Charlie Liebrandt to name a few. But then the team fell on hard times.

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