Is this the Golden Age of professional sports in Kansas City?

As a general rule, when the Kansas City Chiefs are good, the Kansas City Royals are bad. And vice versa. Sometimes both teams struggle at the same time. But rarely do both franchises simultaneously field successful teams.

One exception occurred in the mid-1980s, a long-ago time when the Royals were the smoking hot professional sports team in town while the Chiefs largely languished in mediocrity. It’s such a distant memory today, but it once seemed that it wasn’t a question of if the Royals would win another World Series championship like they did in 1985, but how many in the years that followed. Even the cantankerous owner of the New York Yankees, George Steinbrenner, marveled at how effectively the Royals were managed under the watch of Ewing Kauffman. 

Meanwhile, the the Decade of Excess and Indulgence was a meager time for the Chiefs, a span of years in which the football team largely hogged space toward the bottom of the AFC West standings. Todd Blackledge, who was a standout at Penn State, was the Chiefs’ first-round draft pick in 1983, behind John Elway but ahead of Dan Marino and Jim Kelly. Elway, Marino and Kelly would make their respective teams (Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills) into consistent winners well into the 90s while Blackledge turned out to be a bust who flamed out of the league before Pearl Jam made it big.

The 1986 season, a year after the Royals won the World Series, was the outlier that decade for the Chiefs. A three-game winning streak to close out the season snagged a wild card playoff spot for the John Mackovic-led Chiefs. The Chiefs got blown out by the New York Jets, 35-15.

The Chiefs returned to their regularly scheduled mediocrity the following year, while the Royals played out most of the rest of the 80s with largely competitive teams that would still miss the playoffs (MLB back then didn’t have wild card playoffs, letting only four divisional winners into the postseason).

By the 90s, the Chiefs were one of the most successful NFL teams, although they had little in the way of postseason success to show for it. Conversely for the Royals, the 90s were the start of a long, terrible slide for the baseball franchise. Baseball’s economic realities, coupled with either confused or stingy ownership tenures, relegated the Royals to a nearly unprecedented stretch of futility.

But the Royals revival presents another example of a rare time when Kansas City pro sports enjoy coordinated success.

The Royals return to the postseason for the first time in 29 years tonight for a one-game playoff against the Oakland Athletics at Kauffman Stadium, named for the last owner who competently ran the franchise on a consistent basis. The game takes place the evening after the Kansas City Chiefs took to the grass at Arrowhead Stadium dressed like bottles of ketchup and thumped the usually solid New England Patriots on Monday Night Football.

Take the Royals turnaround (this is their second winning season in a row) the relative resurgence of the Chiefs, who lived a short playoff life last year, and Sporting Kansas City’s Major League Soccer championship last December, this surely has to be the best stretch of time for the city’s professional sports. Local ESPN watchers were treated to a deluge of coverage about Kansas City’s two highest profile teams last night. It was the type of extended coverage typically lavished upon New York, Boston or Los Angeles sports teams but almost unseen for smaller markets in flyover country.

But can the pro sports Golden Age last in Kansas City?

The Royals almost assuredly will lose ace pitcher James Shields to free agency next year, and there’s some speculation that general manager Dayton Moore looks ripe for the same job at the Atlanta Braves. The Chiefs are also a difficult read. The same team that crushed the Patriots Monday night got humiliated at home for the season opener against the Tennessee Titans. Sporting KC, meanwhile, has had a difficult season by their recent standards but could still mount a deep playoff run. The club cemented the backbone of their roster by reaching long-term deals with Graham Zusi and Matt Besler, a move that should help keep Sporting  competitive for years. 

Let’s hope the success can continue. Kansas City is more fun when the teams do well.