Are you ready? The Royals will win next year

Don't look now. The Kansas City Royals are just about ready to contend.

...Next year.

Shhhh. Don't jinx it!

Royals can't (or won't) stop the bleeding in 2011 and beyond

It's likely you've had more important things to do with your time than keeping up with a losing baseball team in October, so you probably didn't hear. Baseball's regular season came to a close Sunday, with our Royals falling to the postseason-bound Tampa Bay Rays 3-2 in extra innings.

The team, a shell of its former, fresh out-of-spring training, just-as-talentless self, finished the season with a 67-95 record. Our boys in blue haven't fielded an above-.500 team since 2003, and that fluky season was the lone time in the last 16 years that anything close to winning baseball has been played out at Kauffman Stadium.

It's terrible.