Ned Yost walked away a winner, though his career managing record in Kansas City says otherwise.
The Royals manager guided the team for the final time on Sunday. His team rallied for a 5-4 win and capped off an otherwise down year on a high note.
The win was No. 746 as the Royals manager, wearing No. 3 — an ode to his old friend the late Dale Earnhardt — since taking over in 2010.
He leaves as the longest tenured manager in Royals history and leaves as the all-time leader in wins and losses.
He has more losses than the Dick Howser and Tony Muser combined. Even if you take away the last two years of 100-plus losses, Yost still had a losing record guiding the Royals.
He endured two rebuilds, though the first rebuild is one that many fans realize took 30 years.
Thorn
Many managers had the helm in the dugout since Howser guided the Royals to the 1985 crown. There were 11 guys in that time, not including interim coach Bob Schaefer who took over the team twice after a manager was fired mid-season.
That was the course for the Royals for most of those 30 years. Only three managers since Howser had the luxury to take over the team at the start of a new season: Billy Gardner, Bob Boone and Trey Hillman.
The trio had a combined 6 ½ years as the Royals manager before they were fired and Gardner didn’t even last the entire year.
Yost came into a bad situation and made it better. He was revered and hated. He was loveable and he drove you crazy with his bullpen usage at times. But for a few years, it was hard to mess up the Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland triumvirate at the back end of the bullpen during the glory years.
I think at some point Yost will be back in Kansas City when they unveil a statue of him. I may be wrong and that might not happen for a guy with a losing record, but he deserves it. He did the same thing that Howser did — win a World Series — and became the only manager in Royals history to go to back-to-back World Series.
What he did with that team was not only amazing, but created memories for many people that will last a lifetime. He guided a group of young players into legit major leaguers. He managed in All-Star games. He helped a team deal with the tragic passing of Yordano Ventura. He found roles for people that didn’t seem to have roles. Remember when Wade Davis, Luke Hochevar and Ian Kennedy were starters? They all became pretty serviceable guys in the bullpen.
The Royals posted two videos that tugged at the heartstrings of Royals. The first came in 1992 when George Brett got his 3,000th hit.
The one later in the day was highlights of the Wild Card game against Oakland, with a cameo of Brett again uttering a few words that many people said after watching that game.
I watched the short video two different times of the 2014 game. I was at the game and I still can’t believe it happened and how it happened.
Each time I saw the video — all 47 seconds of it — and heard the calls, I got goosebumps whether it was Jarrod Dyson sliding into third base safely or Eric Hosmer’s hit to the gap where the two outfielders collide.
Billy Butler’s shot to the gap that brought home another run. Christian Colon’s chopper that scored Hosmer and ultimately Salvador Perez’s swing on a pitch that was in the left-handed hitter’s batting box.
And full disclosure, I never saw the hit live. I was at the game but fearing a loss, I was walking around the outfield. When Hosmer got on, I was watching on the TV next to the Royals’ Little K in left field. I was fearful of watching the actual game thinking I would jinx the team. Or worse, they would lose and I didn’t want to witness the best season in my lifetime come to an end.
Probably 99 out of 100 times Perez strikes out on such an ugly swing. The one time he didn’t it changed the trajectory of a downtrodden baseball team.
Even a few hours prior to that night was the laughing stock of many St. Louis Cardinals fans that I know. The Royals, for those recall, had hooded sweatshirts that reference October baseball and at the time, down 7-3, a lot of my friends were joking about how the Royals weren’t going to play a game in October.
Crazy things happened and a roller coaster ride followed that ended with a World Series parade a little more than a year later.
Ned was there for it all. He was as big a part of the success as Hosmer or Moose or Gordon or Salvy or HDH. To me, he has cemented his place in the lore of the history of his franchise.