I've had the great pleasure of listening to the Royals broadcasts in the last two nights. First of all, it's fun to listen to a team's commentators talk about their boys not winning against the Birds since 2006.

But my favorite thing about the Royals broadcasts are the commentators themselves, play-by-play man Ryan Lefebvre (right, son of Jim Lefebvre) and color commentator Frank White (left), Royals Hall of Famer.

The two of them are gold. Not only are they terribly unfamiliar with the Orioles and bat-dung crazy, but they're also seriously easy to listen to and seem like a couple of nice damned guys.

A quality start to Frank White is a complete game. Denny Leonard threw twenty complete games. Now that's quality. White also claimed to have been following Brian Roberts since his first day in the Major Leagues, thinking of him like he does Marcus Giles (?), a small stature guy with pop in his bat. White would be the world's only person who saw pop in the bat of Brian Roberts prior to 2005.

Lefebvre spent an entire, long half-inning talking to some dude from American Idol who's from the area. I'm not even being elitist. He seemed like a nice kid, genuinely excited to be there (White said he used to work at the park when he was a child), and he threw out a nice first pitch. Lefebvre and this dude just went on and on and on while a game was happening. Tremendous, totally uninteresting stuff. Lefebvre then decided that this American Idol dude was a good human being. Just had a feeling. Freddie Bynum hits a double, Melvin Mora hits a two-run homer, they talk about this dude going to the mall.

But the best part of that segment was Lefebvre recalling another reality TV star at the park who threw out a terrible first pitch and was booed off the field. "It was, uh...I don't remember his name. Anyway..." Must've made that kid feel good about his future.

Lefebvre later wanted to invent a new statistic, the Quality At-Bat. After tinkering with it out loud, he settled on this: the hitter is down in the count at some point, he sees eight pitches or more, and he hits it hard somewhere. Doesn't matter if he gets a hit. Also, walks are out of the question for the Quality At-Bat. Fantastic.

Jose Guillen appeared to have hurt himself a little bit running to first base later in the game, and Frank White said he had a "nice grimace" on in the dugout. Lefebvre took issue with the idea of a "nice grimace." This followed (I don't have exact quotes here, but this is very close):

Lefebvre: "Nice grimace. That's like jumbo shrimp. Those two don't go together! Or, uh, slight groin injury."

White: "Or tweaked hamstring."

Moments later, White recalled a young Jay Payton, as he and Lefebvre talked about Payton coming out of Georgia Tech at the same time as Nomar Garciaparra and Jason Varitek, and some expected him to be the prize of the bunch.

"Jay Payton had great speed when he came out (of Georgia Tech). Playing center field for the Red Sox."

Payton, of course, did play for the Red Sox, at age 32, in his eighth Major League season. In total, Payton (who had really lost his speed to injuries well before that) played 16 games in center field for the Red Sox. He was a member of the 2000 Mets team that went to the World Series, and had played for three other teams (Mets, Rockies, Padres) by the time he got to Boston.

Just all-around tremendous stuff. I love you, Ryan and Frank. Never change. Continue to think that Melvin Mora is a great player and that Daniel Cabrera throws 98-99 with his fastball. It's OK to be stuck in 2004.

A few quick talking points about the game:

• Trachsel didn't kill us.
• The bullpen nearly did through every pitcher brought in.
• Freddie Bynum is quickly winning me over.
• Nick Markakis is finding his stroke again.
• Brian Roberts is not.
• Aubrey Huff! DONG.
• Melvin Mora! DONG.
• Even Kevbo had a couple hits.
• The Royals are still terrible.