This sounds crazy but... I think the Royals might know what they're doing!

Until a man reaches, say, 35, we all hide this sneaking suspicion that we have some undiscovered talent for baseball.

For those of us who never picked up a glove or bat after our Little League days were over, we wonder: What would have happened if we had stuck with it? Maybe we could hit triple digits on a radar gun, or pick up the "red dot" of a slider. It's not like those are abilities that you find a use for in every day life. How would we know if we had them?

Or, even if we had played a little high school or even college ball, you can still convince yourself it'd all be different with just one little change somewhere. A coach makes a slight adjustment to your swing and suddenly you're Rod Carew. Or they draft you as an emergency reliever during a blow-out and see the erratic arm you displayed in outfield is a naturally sinking fastball when you're on the mound. Someone pushes you a little bit harder or not quite as much or whatever, and just like that, you would've been in Yankee Stadium.

It's a nice fantasy, until you reach the age when you can't get out of bed without everything hurting, and then you have to face the fact that, even if you were blessed with some hidden ability, it will remain buried somewhere between your pot belly and your love handles.

At that point, you stop fantasizing that you could be a professional baseball player. And then you begin fantasizing that you could run a professional baseball team.

Naturally, we'd all love to marry Jennifer Steinbrenner and take over the Yankees, but even in a fantasy, you have to be a little realistic. But hey, how about the Devil Rays? The Pirates? The Royals? Do the guys running those teams really know more about baseball than you or I? Probably -- not that you'd know it from the results.

So let's fantasize. Let's pretend the owner of one of those hopeless, hapless teams reads your blog and says, "You think you're so smart, young man? You can run my team. Good luck."

What would you do? And you can't just say you'd "sign Alex Rodriguez" or "trade some prospects for Brandon Webb." We're trying to be realistic here. A-Rod? You're the general manager of a small-market team with a tight-fisted owner. Webb? Sorry, you can't use the Jedi Mind Trick on your fellow GMs.

OK, so... how do you turn around a terrible franchise -- without spending a lot of money -- before your owner loses confidence and fires you?

I can think of two ways to do it. The first method, the conventional strategy, is to promote everybody from your farm system and hope for the best. Yes, we'll lose a lot of games at first, and along the way probably burn out a few guys who weren't really ready for The Show. But if we get lucky, maybe by the end of the second or third year, we'll have the core of a decent team, and then -- maybe -- we can convince the owner to splurge on some free agents and make a run at a pennant or two before we have to start over.

The advantage here is that it's safe. If it doesn't work, it's not your fault -- it's because your owner is too cheap, your farm system is too weak, your division is too good. You get fired after three or four years because you never made it to .500, but even so, you'll be credited with "developing" the half-dozen or so players who pan out as genuine Major Leaguers, even an All-Star or two. And people will say, "If only he had some payroll to work with, he'd be a good general manager." And you get another job in another front office.

But if it works, you're a genius -- you rebuilt a franchise from the ground up!

The first year you lose 100 games, but the next year you shock everybody and win 80. Your owner opens his wallet and says go get some free agents. Year 3, you almost win the Wild Card! And then, finally, the fourth year, it all comes together, the home-grown talent and high-priced free agents, you win the World Series! You quit and get hired by a real team, and the next sucker inherits a team about to lose all its young players to arbitration and saddled with all the overpriced contracts you signed the year before.

The second method, the Moneyball strategy, is to identify and sign undervalued players. The advantage, provided you're good at the identifying part, is that you can be reasonably competitive right away.

But remember, despite what John Sterling thinks, Moneyball is not a 200-page lecture on the importance of on-base percentage at the expense of all other considerations. Moneyball is about spotting undervalued commodities. And now that everybody is down with O-B-P (yeah you know me!), you have to dig a little deeper to identify guys who are cheap but good: Washed-up All-Stars who can still contribute in platoon roles or off the bench; catchers and middle infielders who can no longer field, but can still hit; guys coming off scary injuries or struggling with weight problems. Sign former prospects who never made it and guys you never heard of who lit up the Mexican League or Frontier League. Offer low-ball one-year contracts to the headcases, the malcontents and the cancers in the clubhouse and tell them it's their big chance to shove it to the other guys. Use the Rule 5 draft wisely -- while everyone else is fighting over the pitchers with incredible stuff but can't throw strikes, claim low-cost solutions for your bullpen and bench. And promote from within, but carefully, making sure no one arrives as a savior or is thrown in as cannon fodder.

The problem with this strategy is, at least at first, you will look like an idiot. Nobody else wanted those guys for a reason. Your first deal is to give up a no-name minor leaguer for Michael Barrett and cash, and on ESPN they make jokes about your pitchers needing to take boxing lessons in case he wants to fight them in the dugout. You sign Jon Lieber to a bargain-basement one-year contract, and some a-hole blogger like me opines maybe you didn't know he missed half the season with an injury. You buy Victor Rodriguez from the Newark Bears and sports talk radio callers say, "Real teams get A-Rod -- we get V-Rod!" You claim Tomokazu Ohka off the scrap heap and convert him to a reliever, and sportswriters ask why you think a guy who can't get people out at the beginning of a game will be able to get them out at the end.

If it doesn't work out -- let's say Barrett punches out Lieber, causing him to miss the rest of the season, while the only guy Ohka can get out is V-Rod -- and you've just proven that all those people are smarter than you. Instead of making it to your third or fourth season, you get fired midway through your second year. And executives in other front offices won't even look at your resume. You can't even apply for a job outside of baseball without some human resources guy saying, "Hey, you're that guy who wasted all that money on Joey Eischen, right?" Well, actually, it was a league-minimum contract and- "Joey Eischen! What the hell were you thinking?"

And even if at first it does work out? It may not look like a success to the outside world. Remember, you're trying to be rebuild a franchise -- the goal is to be competitive for the next decade, not just this year -- and that may mean taking one step back in order to take two forward. Not everyone will like that.

Let's say a couple of the veterans on short-term contracts make good: At the end of June, Barrett hasn't punched anybody and is hitting .300 with an .800 OPS; you trade him for a top catching prospect and now they're howling on sports talk radio. "Our only good hitter and he trades him for some minor leaguer!" Ohka is pitching lights out in the middle innings, and Peter Gammons wonders why you won't use him to replace a struggling rookie in the rotation. "What's the point of having a good reliever if you never have a lead?" All the sportswriters in your town want you to call up some kid who is crushing the ball in Double-A, but you won't do it after hearing he's afraid to leave his hotel room on road trips. "Why won't they promote this guy and let him get some experience?"

So obviously, while the second strategy is a lot riskier, I think it's the right way to go. And more and more, I'm convinced it's what the Royals are doing.

Despite having finished last in the A.L. Central for the fourth straight year, and despite posting just one winning record (83-79 in 2003) since the strike-shortened '94 season -- hell, they haven't been to the post-season since winning the World Series in '85 -- I think GM Dayton Moore is moving the Royals in the right direction. They didn't panic when Alex Gordon was hitting .185 after his first two months in the majors; he hit .275 the rest of the way. They didn't rush good-hit, no-field prospect Billy Butler to the majors and force him into the outfield; instead, they waited for Mike Sweeney's inevitable injury so he could ease in as a DH. They took cheap fliers on no-names like Joakim Soria and has-beens like Brandon Duckworth. They signed Octavio Dotel, let him pick up some saves and then shipped him off to the Braves. They turned Ambiorix Burgos into Brian Bannister and J.P. Howell into Joey Gathright. I thought signing Gil Meche was insanity and the guy posts a 3.67 ERA and 1.296 WHIP.

I really like that he hired former Yankee minor league manager Trey Hillman. I don't know much about Hillman, but I'm sure, after 12 years as a manager from the New York Penn League to Triple A, he knows how to handle young players. He also led the Nippon Ham Fighters to the playoffs in three out of his five seasons and won the Japan Series last year.

So, as I said, I don't know much about Hillman. Why, then, do I think he's a smart hire? Because he's not Larry Bowa or Lee Mazzilli or any of the other re-treads they could have hired. He's not the safe choice. They could have hired Jamie Quirk (or any other random Royal from the mid-70s to mid-80s) and made a lot of people in Kansas City happy, and if it didn't work out, no one would blame Moore. Instead, he went out and found a smart guy who is liked by smart people.

Ordinarily, as a Yankee fan, I wouldn't give a shit either way about what the Royals are doing. It's not that I hate them; it's just been about 20 years since I've had to worry about them. (To quote Scrubs, "I don't hate you. I nothing you.") So, speaking as an objective observer, I think they're making the right moves and heading in the right direction. Rebuilding the right way isn't easy -- it's a long, slow, painful process. But I think they're doing it right. Next year they might be flirting with .500; the year after that, maybe even a Central Division title. If they pull it off, remember you read it here first.

If they don't... blame Dayton Moore. What an idiot!