Vahe Gregorian
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — However you might characterize the relationship or rivalry or whatever it’s all about between Kansas City and St. Louis, you can’t say sports have been a notable part of it — other than one momentous exception.
St. Louis, alas, was twice betrayed by NFL owners, so the Chiefs met the Cardinals and Rams when they were in St. Louis fewer than a dozen times (other than the ol’ Governor’s Cup preseason games). The NHL’s Kansas City Scouts only lasted two seasons in the 1970s, so that didn’t quite become a thing with the St. Louis Blues. Each had NBA teams come and go but with no overlap.
Which brings us to the glaring exception: the 1985 World Series, and particularly the indelible Game 6.
As I type this early Thursday morning, in fact, the calendar turned to the very date, Oct. 26, of umpire Don Denkinger’s errant call that helped enable the Royals’ game-winning rally when they were facing elimination.
A Royals fan might point out that the Cardinals were free to play Game 7, an 11-0 Royals victory, but the call naturally still simmers with St. Louis fans. To the point where it seems like the defining aspect of the cities’ sports connections.
Time for some new material, in other words.
And we’ll get it over the next couple weeks.
With Sporting KC’s dramatic victory in an MLS Western Conference wild-card match on Wednesday night over the San Jose Earthquakes at Children’s Mercy Park, Sporting advanced into a best-of-three series with top-seeded St. Louis City SC.
The 4-2 victory in penalty kicks sets up the most high-profile postseason series between the cities since 1985 — a history that echoed some on Wednesday with George Brett in attendance (as were stakeholders Patrick and Brittany Mahomes).
And a history that isn’t lost on Sporting KC goalkeeper Tim Melia.
“Just adds more fuel to the fire, right?” Melia, who had another jaw-dropping penalty-kick shootout performance, said with a smile.
Step back to consider the bigger picture, and this is more about some win-win synergy in the central corridor of the MLS.
At some point, it might even become a symbiotic relationship between St. Louis and a rich but distant soccer history it’s reawakening and Kansas City, with Sporting’s model growth and claim to the trademarked slogan “Soccer Capital of America” — a notion Kansas City will reinforce by being a host city for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
In the moment, though, this is about a scenario that can fast-forward a budding rivalry based not just on proximity — though that’s why Sporting lobbied to help St. Louis get an expansion team — but familiarity.
“These types of games will determine if it’s a rivalry or not,” Sporting KC’s Roger Espinoza said.
The baseline is sure there, though, after St. Louis won two of three with Sporting in the regular season and made an impression that Melia admires and relishes going up against now.
At St. Louis’ CityPark, where the series begins Sunday at 9 p.m., Melia said, “You can feel it … You can feel their environment. Those are the games that we want to play in as professional athletes. And now, in the playoffs, there’s even more on it. So it brings more pressure. And more fun.”
It’s a dynamic that was long conspicuous by its absence, to Sporting KC manager Peter Vermes. Ever since he came to Kansas City as a player in 2000, he said, “This team really never had a rival.”
What passed for rivalries, such as with the Chicago Fire, ebbed when “the league went on steroids with expansion,” as Vermes put it, and changed the makeup of conferences.
As he pondered the value of the geographic element, Vermes thought of Seattle having Portland and the two New York teams and Washington and Philadelphia.
“They’re just all over the place, (and) we just haven’t had it,” he said. “So I think it’s about time. And it’s going to be good for the future. And I think it’s only going to get stronger and tougher and all those things over the years.”
As for the short-term?
High time to add a fresh chapter to the sporting rivalry, such as it’s been, between the cities.
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