Sad Songs and Waltzes

Hello Sports Fans, and Happy Super Bowl Week! RWC is back to share a timely piece of Kansas City Royals history.

As you all know, 1985 was a historic season which brought Kansas City its only World Series Championship. Later that year, the Chicago Bears completed a dominating season, on their way to winning Super Bowl XX. Of the many annoying vestiges of that nearly perfect campaign: the 46 Defense, Mike Ditka, Buddy Ryan, Jim McMahon, the Fridge, the worst was undoubtedly a ridiculous rap song and music video called The Super Bowl Shuffle. It sold half a million copies. It was nominated for a Grammy. It was terrible. Several Amazon sellers currently offer it on DVD for up to $100. The song is under 7 minutes long. That comes out to over $14 per minute to watch dogshit.

More recently, Jimmy Fallon and the FX Series, The League have parodied the song and dance.

What few people know is that months before The Shufflin’ Crew hit the charts, members of the World Champion Royals released a similar concept song called the World Series Waltz. According to legend, fewer than 100 copies were produced, all of which were available exclusively at local Casey’s General Stores.

Until now, RWC had never seen the video. But, thanks to a loyal reader and garage sale enthusiast, we now have a copy. Kind of.

At a recent Lee’s Summit, MO garage sale, our friend, let’s call him Cody, found the holy grail of lost Royals memorabilia. Unfortunately, this jamoke was so excited that he grabbed the tape and rushed home, only to find that the video inside the sleeve was not The World Series Waltz. Instead, he found a copy of Ron Howard’s critically acclaimed film Cocoon. And it wasn’t even rewound! Now of course, our friend returned to the point of sale, hoping to correct the mix up, because if the owner's VHS collection was anything like mine growing up, the outside jacket rarely matched what was inside. Ghostbusters was in the Gremlins jacket, Gremlins was in the Football Follies jacket, Football Follies was in the Jane Fonda Workout jacket, and Jane Fonda had no Ghostbusters sleeve to go in because the dog ate it on Christmas morning.

But regrettably, Cody was not able to recover the desired videocassette, and the legend lives on. All we have remaining is this wonderful 80s jacket design featuring members of the 1985 World Champion Kansas City Royals with their wives/concubines. Enjoy!

Even without video evidence of this performance, I think we can all safely assume that Willie Wilson would kick the shit out of Willie Gault in a dance-off.

Go Royals! You're The Best!