So this is what tar heroin feels like.

It's an evil drug. Whispering your name almost daily, it begs for one more hit. Oblivious to the pain and anguish it's caused in the past, you induldge the demon with rolled-up sleeve and willing arm. The junk soon rushes in, burning through your veins on a one-way trip straight to your brain. A flood of euphoric emotions then follow. Through a cosmic mixture of everlasting hope and sustained encouragement, you're tricked into thinking life is better. That things aren't so bad. But eventually, the drug wears off and you quickly find yourself crashing. Shaking in a cold sweat with blurred vision, you muster just enough strength to look around the room. You find yourself surrounded by other worthless junkies; some lying on the couch, others asleep on the floor. And then, in a moment of clarity, it hits you.

They're all wearing KC ballcaps.

As it stands, our Royals are 8-25. They're playing .242 ball and are a full 16 games back of those damn White Sox (who, by the way, have more experience watching their fans beat up first-base coaches than they do at actually winning). KC has, without question, the worst owner/GM duo in the leage. Glass and Baird see the league's luxury tax not as a way for small-market teams to acquire better talent but as a way to personally acquire a thicker wallet. Tony Pena will be fired because he can't win with the 2-3-5-7 King hand he was dealt while everyone else in the league is playing with a stacked deck. Mike Sweeney, having a killer season with a .336 average and an amazing .384 OBP, will likely be traded 'cause that's what Kansas City does to good talent that actually puts fans in the seat (Beltran, Damon and Dye ring a bell?).

In short, we suck. And every fan who still wears his colors in public is bound to be chastised or pitied as a junkie who simply can't kick the habit. So what does a KC fan stuck in Texas do besides contemplate becoming a Rangers fan? He forks over money to hear his team suck in real-time. Thanks to Gameday Audio, we can hear legends like Denny Matthews and Fred White call play by agonizing play of every game this season with streaming audio. The price of being entertained by MLB's version of the Bad News Bears? $14.95 for the season. For $15 a month or $80 for the season, we could get live webcasts of the actual game streamed straight into our monitor. Knowing that money would be better spent on beer ('cause that's the only thing keeping most KC fans alive), we've opted to stick with the radio broadcasts for now to get our fix.

Yeah, we know. It's not good for us. This unhealthy addiction to losing leaves more than a few tracks in the arms. It leaves you actually contemplating a bandwagon jump to another team. The last time the Royals made the pos-season was '85, the same year they all walked away with rings. Since then, the damn Cream Team has had more success on the softball diamonds in Lawrence and those drunks only play for beer.

Want proof that junkies have a hard time functioning properly during the day? Look at how many didn't make it out to a recent afternoon game at The K.

A picture rarely says it all but, in this case, it does.

Ed. note: Late Tuesday night, coach Tony Pena stepped down. Although two weeks earlier he received a strong vote of confidence from management, he couldn't take it. Citing a frustration with the way the team had been playing, he dropped the bombshell on management after a 3-1 loss to Toronto. This after winning AL Coach of the Year in 2003. While the BDS hates seeing a proven winner like Tony walk out the door, we take hidden pleasure in knowing Glass and Baird now know what it feels like to unexpectedly lose someone. Now they know what we felt when Beltran was sent to Houston, Dye was sent to Oakland and we all watched Damon win a World Series wearing the wrong uniform. If owndership continues to destroy the Royals brand by caring more about the bottom line than the winning one, it's only a matter of time until they find an army of fans carrying pitch forks and torches at their front gate.