It’s getting exciting! The Royals are making a strong run for a Wild Card slot. The team is 24-14 since July 6, the best record in the American League. The mid-season trades have had a positive impact, and the remaining schedule is somewhat favorable. Go Royals!
Another KC baseball team is headed to the 2025 postseason. The Kansas City Monarchs play in the independent American Association of Professional Baseball, a Major League Baseball partner league. The Monarchs were league champions in 2008, 2018, 2021 and 2023, and their current record assures them of being in the postseason this year. There are 10 games remaining in the regular season, the last seven at home, including Labor Day weekend.
This is the 22nd season that the team has played at Legends Field in Kansas City, Kansas. In 2020, in partnership with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the team changed its name from the T-Bones to the Monarchs. Fans are treated to affordable family entertainment and parking is free (schedule and ticket info here).
A familiar face can be seen coaching third base for the Monarchs – Christian Colon who is also the hitting coordinator for the team.
Colon is fondly remembered by Royals fans for his clutch performances in postseason play…
Christian Colon – 2014 and 2015: The Royals path to the 2014 World Series started with a single-elimination Wild Card game in Kansas City against the Oakland A’s. The Royals were down 7-3 after seven innings but scored three in the 8th and another in the 9th to push the game into extra innings.
Colon entered the game in the 10th as a pinch hitter and executed a successful sacrifice bunt. But neither team scored in the 10th and 11th.
The A’s scored a run in the top of the 12th, setting the stage for Colon’s heroics.
With one out, Eric Hosmer tripled. Colon singled to score Hosmer and tie the score 8-8 (video here).
Gordon popped up for the second out. Colon stole second base. Perez singled to score Colon (below) with the winning run (video here). The first Royals playoff win in 29 years.
Below, the take on the game by Kansas City Star political cartoonist Lee Judge.
In the 2015 World Series, as Game 5 approached, the Royals were up three games to one. Colon had not yet played in the Series.
With the game tied 2-2 in the top of the 12th, Jarrod Dyson was on third with one out.
Colon came in as a pinch hitter and singled to score Dyson with the go-ahead run (video here).
The Royals went on to score four more runs to take a 7-2 victory and win the World Series. Below, Colon at the parade.
The three at-bats described above, two singles and a sacrifice, were the only postseason at-bats by Colon in his MLB career. This gives him some interesting statistics. His career postseason batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage are all 1.000. His OPS is 2.000. Great numbers. Small sample size. Excellent timing on those hits.
Buck O’Neil Mural: After dinner in the Crossroads one evening, Joe and Cheryl Downs drove Rita and me to the south base of the Buck O’Neil Bridge to view the cool mural honoring Buck. The mural was dedicated in May, and this video of the ceremony includes comments from artist Phil “Sike Style” Shafer and time lapse photos of his work. The location is 3rd and Broadway.
Below is the detail of the left side of the mural, showing Buck’s signature song lyrics, “The Greatest Thing in all my life is Loving You!”. When he spoke in Cooperstown for the Hall of Fame induction of 17 Negro Leaguers in 2006, he memorably had the crowd join hands and sing the song with him (at the seven minute mark of this video).
And at the end on the right side…
NLBM Exhibition – Leaders & Innovators: In 1975, Frank Robinson became the first fulltime African American MLB manager.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of this milestone, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum has launched a campaign to raise greater awareness of the managers of the Negro Leagues. The 37 Negro Leaguers that have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame are players, owners and “contributors.” But none have been inducted based on managerial skills.
The campaign is supported by an exhibition titled “Leaders & Innovators,” which will run at the museum through the 2025 World Series. Per NLBM president, Bob Kendrick: “For years, the primary focus, as it relates to the Negro Leagues, has been on the courageous athletes who overcame tremendous social adversity to play the game they loved. It is important that we elevate the awareness of the brilliant baseball minds that would have assuredly been great managers had those doors opened.”
The exhibition also has a section featuring the Black and Hispanic MLB managers who followed Frank Robinson, including Kansas City’s Hal McRae.
The “innovations” part of the exhibition highlights several contributions to baseball pioneered by the Negro Leagues: shin guards, batting helmets, women players, and globalization of the game (barnstorming in Canada, Latin America and Japan).
One of the most important innovations was night baseball. J. L. Wilkinson, owner of the Kansas City Monarchs, mortgaged everything he owned and paid $50,000 (over $900,000 today) for a set of portable generated light towers that could be trucked anywhere the Monarchs were playing. The first professional night game was played under Wilkinson’s lights in Enid, Oklahoma, on April 28, 1930. Wilkinson also rented out the lights to other teams, and he recouped his investment in the first year. Below, one of the 50-foot towers. For a fun story on this from Bob Kendrick, click here (2:49).
On May 24, 1935, the first MLB night game was played at Crosley Field in Cincinnatti, five years after the Monarchs debut under the lights.
“Leaders & Innovators” is installed in the front gallery at the museum and is free.
Lonnie’s Jukebox – Tom Lehrer Edition: Singer-songwriter-pianist/satirist/mathematician Tom Lehrer died last month at the age of 97. Judging from the tributes in the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Washington Post and many, many others, Lehrer’s witty and satirical topical songs became popular with a cult following in the 1950s and 1960s. He lampooned marriage, racism, politics and the Cold War, and many of his lyrics ring true today.
I don’t remember Lehrer from those times. Must have been too busy with Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Buddy Holly in the ‘50s and Motown, the Beatles, etc. in the ‘60s.
But I did hear about Lehrer three years ago. In 2022, Dan Margolies retired, and I posted his retirement message as part of Hot Stove #212. I also asked Dan for a set of song selections for the Lonnie’s Jukebox in that post, and one of his picks was “The Elements” by Tom Lehrer. So, I became acquainted with a new (to me) artist, then 94 years old.
[Jukebox Break: What has Dan Margolies been doing in retirement? One of Dan’s plans set forth in his retirement message was to spend “more time doing my part to help salvage our teetering democracy.” And more specifically, his concern with the “reality-denying crackpottery” of matters like “election denialism, Covid conspiracy theories, QAnon madness and blithe disregard for hard-won discoveries of science.”
With Trump’s return to the White House this year, Dan took his retirement message to heart and began daily posting on Substack, covering the “crackpottery” and “batshittery” of our current political world. For those who lean to Dan’s (and my) view, you can subscribe to his “Notes from KC” at this link (the “free” version gets you his daily posts).]
Now back to Tom Lehrer. In a Washington Post column (7/28/25), David Von Drehle wrote, “Lehrer was to social criticism what Cole Porter was to sex – proof there is no better way to say the unsayable than with witty rhymes and toe-tapping rhythms. Sex being far more popular than social criticism, Porter is more famous than Lehrer.”
For today’s Lonnie’s Jukebox setlist, I’ll start with the Lehrer songs discussed in Von Drehle’s column.
“We Will All Go Together When We Go” is about the potential of a nuclear holocaust. “We will all fry together…bake together…char together…When the air becomes uranious/We will all go simultaneous.” I’m thinking the words eerily work today for global warming.
“So Long Mom” is a musical equivalent of the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove. “So long mom, I’m off to drop the bomb.”
“Wernher von Braun” skewers the cynical relationship between the U.S. military and the German rocket engineer. “Nazi, Schmatzi…Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?”
“The Vatican Rag” was Lehrer’s opinion, delivered via ragtime piano, on the modernizing of the Catholic Church by Vatican II (1962-1965). “Do whatever steps you want if/You have cleared them with the pontiff.” And I can’t type pontiff without a shoutout to the White Sox fan.
“National Brotherhood Week” is a song that sounds like it was written today. The week was to foster unity among groups often at odds: white/Black, Protestants/Catholics, poor/rich, Hindus/Muslims…”And everybody hates the Jews…Be nice to the people who/Are inferior to you/It’s only for a week so have no fear/Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year.”
I’ll return to Dan Margolies for the last two selections.
“(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica” is a favorite of Dan’s for the clever rhyming of Hanukkah. The song continues with other Jewish holidays and locations that sort of rhyme.
“The Elements” matches nicely with Tom Lehrer’s academic background. A child prodigy in math, Lehrer started taking classes at Harvard when he was 15. His primary career was as a mathematician teaching at MIT, Harvard and other top schools. His side gig in the 1950s and 1960s was his music. He quipped that he quit his music work because “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” Wonder what he would say about a certain someone campaigning for that prize today.
The lyrics in “The Elements” recite the names of all 102 chemical elements known at the time (1959), and the tune is the “Major-General’s Song” from The Pirates of Penzance. In a 2010 episode of The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon sang the song (video here). Lehrer also had a shorter version from the time of Aristotle when there were only the four classical elements – earth, air, fire and water (video here).
Lehrer never married, saying he had too short of an attention span. In 2022, he relinquished all copyrights to his lyrics and music, announcing they were thereafter in the public domain. He put all his lyrics and sheet music on his website to make it universally available, saying “So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.”
Walk-Off Column: On July 30, two days after his column on Tom Lehrer, David Von Drehle wrote his final column for the Washington Post. The paper, as being reimagined by owner Jeff Bezos, is downsizing its newsroom and offering generous buyouts to veteran journalists. David, at age 64, decided it was an opportune time to move on.
Thankfully, David will be staying in Kansas City where he has been based while working for the Post. He is recognized as a valuable member of the community, including being the interviewer-in-chief for many speakers at events for the Truman Library and Rainy Day Books. In 2023, he brought considerable attention to Kansas City with his best seller, The Book of Charlie. It’s a good bet that David will soon be writing another book.
In David’s last column, he told a wonderful story about how a string of improbabilities led to his career in journalism, including ending up on a campaign bus in 1992 where he met a beautiful reporter who became his wife. His column concludes with…
“What I do know is that learning things and making sentences as a daily journalist and doing it in the company of people who share the same passion, has been a good occupation for me, and the fact that such a thing is possible feels miraculous. Forty-seven years of it also feels like enough. My cup runneth over. Time to turn off the tap. Thanks for reading.”
David, thanks for writing.