KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Jackie Robinson played his first game as a Kansas City Monarch in the spring of 1945. Robinson was a shooting star who would play one season with the Monarchs before signing his minor-league contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers’ top farm team, the Montreal Royals. But in that one dynamic season, characterized by grueling bus rides and two — sometimes three — games in one day, Robinson honed an aggressive base-running style that, for decades, had defined baseball in the Negro leagues.
After Robinson integrated baseball in 1947, he would often amaze fans — and the opposition — with his daring on the basepaths, particularly his steals of home. For many baseball fans, this was something new. Fans of the Monarchs recognized it immediately as their league’s signature.
Almost seven decades later, the upstart Kansas City Royals have burst into the World Series, in part by using the same formula that made Robinson, the Monarchs and their Negro leagues rivals so compelling: speed and daring. Lots of daring.
The Royals have become a captivating story in so many ways — a franchise that had missed the postseason for 29 years, that rallied several times in the late innings of its wild-card game to beat Oakland, that had not lost a game through the American League playoffs.
In Game 1 of the World Series, however, they met their match in the San Francisco Giants, losing, 7-1.
There is a link between these Royals and the Monarchs, their baseball ancestors in Kansas City. The Monarchs ran with abandon, and so, often enough, do the Royals.
“This is a young Kansas City Royals team that probably doesn’t know they’re playing a Negro league style, they’re just playing,” said Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, a low brick building anchoring its block on East 18th Street here. “That’s O.K. The national spotlight being on Kansas City serves as a reminder that we should not forget the heroes of the Negro leagues and the contributions they made.”
The museum is not far from where the Monarchs, who won many more championships than the Royals have, played their home games. It was founded in 1990 by Buck O’Neil, a longtime Negro leagues player and manager. As a major league scout, O’Neil was responsible for sending several young Negro leagues players to the majors.
Some might argue that any proclaimed connection between the Monarchs and the Royals is a little forced. The Monarchs, after all, were an all-black team (although their owner, J. L. Wilkinson, was white). The Royals have only three African-American players, although that is a lot by current major league standards. And all three — Lorenzo Cain, Jarrod Dyson and Terrance Gore — are among the most dangerous base runners on the team.
In fact, Dyson, who had a team-leading 36 stolen bases this season, and Cain, his fellow outfielder, who had 28, are two of the reasons Kansas City led the majors in that category in 2014. And the Royals did not stop running when the postseason began. When they beat Oakland, 9-8, in that memorable 12-inning wild-card game, they tied a postseason single-game record with seven steals. One of those seven was Dyson’s do-or-die theft of third base in the bottom of the ninth that allowed the Royals to tie the score on a sacrifice fly.
“You have to have great athletes to pull off this style of play, and the Negro league teams in that era had access to some great athletes,” said Kendrick, who noted that Dyson and Cain had visited the museum. “But you also have to have a manager who has confidence enough in his players to let them play their game.”
That would be Ned Yost, who has managed the Royals since May 2010. On Monday, Yost acknowledged that he lets his players pick their spots to run, that he lets them be as bold as Robinson once was.
“This might shock some people, but I don’t think I’ve put a steal sign on all year,” he said. “All of our running is green-light stuff.”
He added: “I get a bunch of criticism on bunting too much, but probably over half of the bunts we put on, they’ve done themselves. It’s the ability to let players have the freedom to play the game, especially when they’re good. We play to win, not to play safe, not to cover our tails. We play to win. The players having the freedom to do that has been very successful for us.”
Neither speed nor swagger were on display Tuesday as the Giants proved a timeless formula: The best antidote against a running team is to keep speed off the bases. Madison Bumgarner, with a 3-0 lead before he took the mound, pitched scoreless ball into the seventh inning, and Kansas City’s legs never got a chance to run.
“Them jumping off to a huge lead, it definitely slows it down,” Royals centerfielder Lorenzo Cain said after the loss. Cain reached base twice but never tried to steal.
“We didn't want to get caught stealing or doing anything crazy like that. He was tough to steal off of anyway,” Cain added, referring to Bumgarner. “He has a really good move to home, coming over to first. So I doubt if we would have stolen any bases anyway.”
Tuesday night’s game notwithstanding, for Kendrick, the greatest upside of the Royals’ success stealing bases is that their style of play can’t help summoning the memory of the Monarchs and Negro leagues baseball.
The Monarchs sent more players to the major leagues than any other Negro leagues team. The Monarchs were also the longest-running franchise in the Negro leagues and didn’t officially disband until 1965. Their legacy is preserved at the Negro leagues museum in photos, illustrations and memorabilia. And it is being renewed by a young, fast-moving Kansas City Royals team trying to win a World Series in a style that would do the Monarchs proud.