What does it mean to quit? The Royals make a useful case study

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Alex Gordon and the Royals rank near the bottom of the American League in most offensive categories. Jeff Moffett/Icon SMI

Reporter: "Well, at least you have to be proud that your team didn't quit."

Kansas State coach Bill Snyder: "They don't let you quit."

I've long wondered what it really means for a team to "quit." You hear people say it all the time. This team quit. That coach needs to go because his team quit. The other team lost but they never quit. And all that. The problem is the word, "quit." It connotes a certain unfathomable image ... of Roberto Duran turning his back and walking away during the Sugar Ray Leonard fight, of a tennis player tanking points when the set looks lost, of a golfer picking up his ball and disqualifying himself.

Well, Bill Snyder is right. They don't let you quit a team game, not like that. And because they don't let you quit, we probably should try to understand the word. Seems to me that teams don't quit. They fade. Teams don't give up. They give in. Teams don't stop trying. They stop trying hard. These are tougher things to pinpoint.

Yes, we have to use the Kansas City Royals as our example ... but only because the Royals for the last three months have been (by far) the worst team in baseball. The Royals are 25-57 since May 8. Only once in team history have the Royals been worse over 82 games ... and that was in 2005 and included a 19-game losing streak. There have not been too many teams in baseball history that have been worse than 25-57 over 82 games.

Or to put it another way:

Since May 8 (through Monday)
Royals 25-57 --
Nats* 31-54 4 1/2
Pirates 33-50 7 1/2
Reds 33-50 7 1/2
Padres 34-50 8
Orioles 34-49 8 1/2
Mets 38-47 11 1/2
Oakland 40-46 13

The Royals are 4 1/2 games WORSE than the Nationals over the last three-plus months. Bryce Harper is in their sights.

*This is totally unrelated, but have you noticed how the National Geographic Channel now refers to itself as "NatGeo." Maybe this is something that has been going on for a while but ... really? National Geographic is going hip hop now? NatGeo? I am NOT calling it NatGeo. I'm just not.

Now, of course, May 8 is not just an arbitrary date. On that day the Royals were 18-11 and it looked like they might contend in the wide open American League Central. It obviously did not work that way, and the reasons are multiple. But let's not go down that road again. No, we're left to ask the original question: Have the Royals quit? And, beyond the terrible results, how can you even tell?

Well, first thing, I don't believe the Royals quit in the way most people mean it. I don't think they have ever stopped trying. For me, that's just the wrong use of the word "quit." Professional baseball players don't stop trying. There's no point in it. Hitters go up to the plate and they TRY to get hits. Fielders have balls hit their way and they TRY to catch them. Pitchers step on the rubber, and they TRY to get batters out. These things don't change no matter how badly a team does. There's professional pride involved. There are future paychecks involved. There is ambition -- all these guys have worked all their lives to play in the big leagues. And there is team success involved too ... and I will never believe that athletes do not care about their own team's success. They all want to win. Who doesn't want to win?

No. Quitting in sports isn't about QUITTING. No, I think it's about something else. While I don't think that players ever stop TRYING to do well, I do think that in a bad environment players will stop believing that any of it matters very much. And I think that comes closest to what we're talking about here. This might not be the best comparison -- and you might not even relate to this -- but for me there was always a very different feeling when we played baseball games around the neighborhood than we we played official Little League games. Sure, we TRIED in the neighborhood games. I would suggest we tried just as hard as we ever did in the real games. But we weren't wearing uniforms, and we didn't have coaches, and we didn't have dirt infields, and there were no repercussions for messing up other than your friends busting your chops. There was this sense that the Little League games MATTERED in a way that the neighborhood games did not. You played with a certain attention and inspiration that was missing in the neighborhood games.

And I think that's what can happen to a lousy team. In baseball, I'm thinking, there are really two levels of belief. There's the belief the player has in himself. And there's the belief a baseball player has in his team. And those two beliefs intertwine and intersect. A player's self confidence can be withered by a bad team, and it can be boosted by the success of a winning team, and it can be affected in odd and unexpected ways, too. And a player's confidence in his team can be affected by how he's playing, too. You always hear guys on great teams say something like, "It's hard to explain, but we just knew, night in and night out, that we were going to win." And you always hear guys on lousy teams say, "We are just not executing." Sure, it comes down to talent. But it also comes down to the confidence that infuses people who are good at whatever they do.