Last night I went to a trivia night contest at a local bar and one of the questions was \u2013 what number are the three uniform numbers retired by the Royals all divisible by? (answer below*) Retired numbers are reserved for the greatest in club history. But we all have our favorites that weren\u2019t necessarily Hall of Famers, All-Stars, and sometimes they\u2019re not even starting players.<\/p>\n
One of my favorite Royals of all-time was Joe Randa. Nicknamed \u201cthe Joker\u201d for his wide smile while he batted, Randa was a sure-handed third baseman and a doubles machine who seemed to have a knack for clutch hitting. He was a bit quiet and unassuming, modest, and hard-working \u2013 and fans loved that. He returned the love, calling Kansas City his home, even after he was traded away early in his career. He returned and become a solid starter and key to one of the best offenses in club history. He never made an All-Star team, but he\u2019s one of my favorite players \u2013 I was fortunate enough to write his biography<\/a> for the Society of American Baseball Research.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n I have had some other favorites that never even reached the fame of Randa. Rey Palacios, Rusty Meacham, Esteban German, Justin Huber, Nori Aoki<\/a>, Tim Collins<\/a>, and of course, Kila Kaaihue were all guys I rooted for to make it.<\/p>\n Who was your favorite under-the-radar Royals player of all-time?<\/p>\n *-Five. (#5 George Brett, #10 Dick Howser, #20 Frank White)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last night I went to a trivia night contest at a local bar and one of the questions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[47,5,1628,72569,936,2123,55,2596,2595,3183,4,66868,252,68300,89873],"class_list":["post-718214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kansas-city-royals","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-baseball","tag-getty-images","tag-joe-randa","tag-kansas","tag-kansas-city","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-kansascity","tag-kansascityroyals","tag-kauffman-stadium","tag-mlb","tag-nori-aoki","tag-royals","tag-tim-collins","tag-trivia-night"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116699116583524458","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}