Royals’ quest to repeat is no easy feat

KANSAS CITY — For a day, the Royals get a chance to escape the daily grind, kick back and relive the magical moments of the World Series championship in 2015 during a White House visit with President Barack Obama on Thursday morning.

Then it’s back to reality.

Then it’s back to try to get on track in a bid to become the first team in this century to repeat a World Series title. It is a challenge.

That doesn’t make it any easier to accept for management or players.

This is a franchise that went through a three-decade blight, the World Series championship it claimed a year ago coming on the 30th anniversary of the only other World Series championship in franchise history.

That wasn’t lost on general manager Dayton Moore, who as a college student had parked his car along I-70 above the left-field fence at Kauffman Stadium and watched as best he could his boyhood favorites, the Royals, knock off St. Louis in Game 7 of the 1985 World Series.

He celebrated that night.

And he celebrated again last fall.

Moore, his front-office/scouting compatriots, manager Ned Yost and his coaching staff and players were not satisfied. They got that taste of success and were determined to experience the moment again, unlike that 1985 team.

It hasn’t been easy.

With a three-game series against the American League Central-leading Indians this week, there was a feeling the Royals had an opportunity to parlay their success at home — where they had been 29-13 — into a statement of their second-half intentions. But after rallying from a 2-0, eighth-inning deficit in the opener on Monday, they fell to the Indians, 7-3, on Tuesday night and then took an 11-4 loss on Wednesday afternoon in which they found themselves facing an 11-0 deficit by the …

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