KC Confidential

Consider the sad state of our unloveable losers, the Kansas City Royals…

With pundits as far afield as Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly taking off-the-cuff potshots – telling Alan Colmes recently that further deficit spending would be "like telling the Kansas City Royals to lose more games" – its time to take a look at how the Royal’s ownship ranks in the scheme of things.

It’s not pretty…

Zen College Life,  a "leading source for college and degree information online," offers an interesting array of Top 10 lists ranging from  the "10 Most Effective & Essential Self Defense Techniques" to the "10 Celebrities Whose Deaths Were Tragically Predictable."

As might be suspected, Royals owner David Glass rates quite highly on Zen’s "10 Worst MLB Owners of All Time."

"For the first time in a long, long time, baseball may be the healthiest sport in America," Zen begins. "It’s been 17 years since the 1994 season — and more significantly, the 1994 World Series — was canceled, and not a single game has been stricken from the schedule due to labor strife since the 1995 season. Meanwhile, the NFL has just resolved its lockout, and the NBA is currently embroiled in one that could kill its 2011-12 season."

That’s the boilerplate…

"However, not everything in baseball is perfect, as a few bad owners have drawn negative attention to their franchises" Zen continues." Rangers owner Tom Hicks, who previously gave A-Rod a record $250 million contract and signed Chan Ho Park to an absurd $65 million contract, had to borrow money from MLB to meet the team’s payroll and eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, who tainted the good name shared by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who authored Angela’s Ashes, has run the team into the ground amid his much-publicized divorce to former team CEO Jamie McCourt. Baseball has seen some bad owners through the years, the worst of which are listed below. Each one did his, her or its best to become a villain to their team’s fans and players, blemishing a piece of America’s pastime."

Glass hits the skids at a disrespectable No. 2 on Zen’s Worst Owner Shit List.

That’s right, the second worst Major League Baseball owner in history. Read it and weep.

"Notoriously cheap, Glass’s first accomplishment as CEO in 1993 was slashing the team’s payroll from $41 million to $19 million. During the strike in 1994-95, he was a staunch advocate of implementing a salary cap and endorsed the use of replacement players. He became the club’s sole owner in 2000, and it has since lost 100 or more games on four occasions, only once finishing above .500. Glass has shamelessly benefited from baseball’s revenue sharing system, focusing primarily on profit like he did as the CEO of WalMart. Currently, the Royals have baseball’s lowest payroll, dishing out just more than $36 million for the 2011 season."

In fairness, the Star‘s Sam Mellinger laid some pretty serious pipe to Glass this past April. But as Craig might say, Sam needs to keep spanking him. Once every year or two, with several dozen ‘comme ce, comme ces’ in between doesn’t get it.

The second worst owner of all time in MLB deserves better…

It’s not easy dying a thousand deaths, sleeping off the killer summer cold Jack Poessiger just gave me…

Over a lunch date with zero spit swapped, no less. But, as I inch back to life, and read today’s Kansas City Star like thousands of you, I learn that columnist Mike Hendricks is o-u-t and a new wave of "local’ section columnists are on their way. Oh joy.

But wait, are they really? Let’s take a look.

The moves signal the end of a very long, unstoried era. Shortly before I came to the Star, the newspaper fielded a lineup of Art Brisbane, Jim Fisher and Charles Gusewelle. Brisbane transversed the town laying down pithy columns about the people, places and things that were Kansas City at the time. Describing publisher Tom Leathers as "a Johnson County pundit who weekly squires his readers into a snake pit of stunning personalities and typographical errors"

And blowing the lid off of a controversial decision by Overland Park "that citadel of good taste and expert city planning" to not just welcome the area’s first Hooters at 106th and Metcalf, but to change the center’s name from the Overland Station Shops to the Hooters Plaza.

"It’s true, and Mike Burdick, one of Hooters’ owners, is pretty proud of it," Brisbane wrote. "Troy LaPorte, who owns the Chartroose Caboose restaurant inside Hooters Plaza, was less thrilled.

" ‘We heard at first it was going to be called Hooterville,’ he said. ‘We were really worried then.’

"The same taste-conscious city that wouldn’t let White Castle open a restaurant without toning down its shiny white exterior?" Brisbane continued. "The city that won’t allow Dick Clark to put a big guitar on top of his American Bandstand Grill because it wouldn’t be, sniff, suitable? The city that is having qualms about Price Chopper putting up a large, bright red sign?

"The very same burg. In Overland Park, it seems, a big guitar is tasteless but a shopping center named after female body parts is no problem."

Quality stuff, right?

Meanwhile, Fisher and Gusewelle were essentially the Geezer Squad. Gueswelle wrote stories about hunting dogs, cats, caring for his lawn and his wife, and the odd, dated outlook on life and current events. Fisher combed outlying areas in faded jeans celebrating the nuances of small town life, midwestern history and farmabilia. That’s how I recall his writing, anyway.

They gave me Fisher’s desk when I started, so I had the pleasure of cleaning it out and boxing it up for him. Not sure how often he actually stopped by the newspaper, but this was in the pre email era, so who knows how he filed his columns as he roamed the region. Carrier pigeon, maybe.

Brisbane was named editor and a gent named George Gurley joined Gusewelle and Fisher in the Metro section.

From that time forward, the Local or Metro columnists have remained the Achillles Heels of the Star.

Somewhat surprisingly.

Stepping down today, columnist Mike Hendricks did some excellent reporting and writing leading up to his appointment. But he never took his column anywhere near the level of Brisbane’s writing and reporting. Remember, I told you a couple years into it, Hendricks called me one night to cry on my shoulder about being put on column probabtion.

Steve Penn‘s firing I recently covered. Nothing more need be said there.

Mary Sanchez is another matter. On any given day, I, like probably most Star readers, allot little more than a cursory glance to her columns. She’s shown some signs of writing about somewhat interesting topics of late. A local, hijab-wearing Muslim jogger, the demise of the Post Office. Unlike Penn, Mary can write, but her choice of topics tends to be too scholarly and boring. However, I know Mary totally likes to party. So why not get out a bit more and cover the pop culture beat like Brisbane did?

When Art became editor in the ’90s, columnist after unsuccessful columnist came and went in the Metro section. Gurley, Jennifer Howe, Betty Cuniberti, Barb Shelly, Chris Lester, Miriam Pepper. One by one they either fled, were dispatched or promoted to positions that didn’t require them attract and entertain large volumes of readers.

Which brings us to today…

And the headline, "New Voices On Local News," announcing that no less than seven new columnists will effectively replace Hendricks and Penn.

If that sounds dramatic, trust me, it isn’t.

Gueswelle, Sanchez and politico Steve Kraske remain in place on Sunday, Monday and Thursday and Saturday.

The Magnificent Seven will takes turns writing on Wednesdays and Fridays in some manner or another.

Which at first blush, seems more than a little weird. Actually, it looks like a cost cutting measure. Because all seven currently cover reporting beats and will apparently alternate column writing in their areas of expertise.

James Hart, the Star‘s Crime Scene KC blogger will alternate on Wednesdays with health reporter Alan Bavley, education writer Mara Williams and Joe Robertson. And reporters Christine Vendel, Mark Morris and Glenn Rice will take turns writing "public safety news" on Fridays.

How dull does that sound? Oh well, cross your fingers.

In short, what may have amounted to $150,000 in columnist paychecks appears to have been reduced to zero. Unfortunately, while making it painfully clear that they are not being replaced with other actual columnists.

Go figure…

The riding just keeps getting rougher for KCTV weather wonk Gary Amble’s sister…

Channel 5’s done its part to milk that Amble’s sister – nut job Michele Bachmann – has blundered into the squared circle of presidential politics. Including its recent, "exclusive" interview with Amble, in which he dodged anything resembling a meaningful question about his controversial sister.

Big surprise.

Bachmann’s suffered more embarrassing toe stubs than all the other presidential hopefuls combined. And at the end of KCTV’s puff piece, anchor Brad Stephens cautions that Amble would not be accepting any more media interview requests re his sister’s candidacy.

Which may sound a little funny until you consider the story in the August 8 National Enquirer.

"Some (Bachmann) family members actually fear for their safety due to Michele and Marcus‘ outrageous views," a family insider tells the Enquirer.

Marcus Bachmann being Bachmann’s equally controversial husband and Amble’s brother-in-law.

"Hollywood has declared war on presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and her husband for their controversial views on the gays," the Enquirer reports. ""Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, opposes same-sex marraige and has called being gay ‘part of Satan.’ Her husband Marcus – who runs Christian couseling clinics – believes gays and lesbians can be ‘cured’ of their sexual preference with prayer and has called gays ‘barbarians.’ "

Some of Amble’s sister’s gaffes make his worst weathercasts appear pinpoint accurate by comparison.

Like the time she told Fox News she was from the same hometown as American movie Legend John Wayne. Uh, make that serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

Or the time she said slave-owning Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly" to end slavery. Then compounded the mistake by wrongly characterizing John Quincy Adams –  a 9 year-old boy at the signing of the Declaration of Independence – as a Founding Father.

The couple’s gay remarks even sparked Cher into unleashing a Tweet labeling Amble’s bro-in-law "unchristian" and adding she’d like to choke him with her boa.

Other Hollywood celebs opposing Amble’s sister’s bid for the White House include Brad Pitt, Whoopie Goldberg, Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris, Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Sharon Osbourne and Kathy Griffin, the Enquirer reports.

The $64 million question: is Amble laying low because he’s worried about backlash from the gay community?

He ain’t talking.

But "with the Bachmann’s views drawing more fire, her husband’s Bachmann & Associates clinic in suburban Minneapolis was glitter-bombed on July 21 by a group of gay activists dressed as barbarians," the Enquirer reports. "Marcus Bachmann was not present when the activists scattered glitter in a waiting room and reception area, while some reportedly chanted, ‘You can’t pray away the gay – baby, I was born this way.’"