My first year of true Royals fandom was 1983. That was a pretty miserable year by the standards then established by the Kansas City franchise. The team had a losing record, finished 20 games out of first place, and an ugly drug scandal overshadowed all of it. They weren’t very likable, really, and I probably needed a little time to figure out what was going on anyway.

So the 1984 season began with young Darin still trying to pick his favorite player. By now I had played enough baseball  to figure out I wasn’t actually good at it. To me, that ruled out George Brett. I was the complete opposite of fast, so Willie Wilson was out. I wasn’t smooth or graceful, so no Frank White for me. Hal McRae, at age 37 on Opening Day of that season, seemed impossibly old. Not being a pitcher ruled out exciting young players like Bret Saberhagen and Danny Jackson, as well as veteran stars like Dan Quisenberry and Paul Splittorff. Not that I didn’t like these players, just that they didn’t seem like a good fit for my situation.

Ah, but the Royals had made an offseason deal for a first baseman. He was a large fellow, perfect for a kid wearing the euphemistically named “husky” jeans. He was no threat to steal a base, perfect for the slowest kid on the team. And he struck out a lot, perfect for a bad hitter. Sure, it wasn’t a perfect fit. Coaches wisely kept me as far from the ball as possible–they probably wouldn’t have put me at first base except as a last resort. When Balboni did make contact, the ball went far, while I was no threat to hit the fence. But home runs were exciting, and Balboni hit 28 of them, easily leading the Royals. And in a vast improvement over 1983, the Royals won the division. I was smitten. Steve Balboni was my first favorite player.

As you all know, the next season Balboni would slam 36 home runs, setting the Royals’ single-season record. I loved every minute of it. Especially when that team captured the World Series title.

Silly me thought things would always be so easy. Sure, even then I knew Royals Stadium wasn’t a home run haven, but John Mayberry had hit 34 homers just 10 years earlier, the year I was born. I never would have dreamed it would take the Royals almost 30 years just to return to the playoffs, and even longer for someone to break Balboni’s record.

At last, here we are on the cusp of that record going down. Mike Moustakas has 35 home runs with 39 games left this season. Barring injury, the record is going bye-bye.

You might think I’m sad to see it go. And you’d be partially correct. Thirty-six has been burned into my consciousness for three decades now, through Bo Jackson, Gary Gaetti, Bob Hamelin, Mike Sweeney, and Carlos Beltran.

Meanwhile, the record itself has gone from oddity to embarrassment to a somewhat perverse point of pride. Balboni didn’t even stick with the Royals through the 1988 season and was basically done as a major league player by 1990. As the steroid era took over baseball and home runs skyrocketed, the Royals had a couple of challengers to the mark, but mainly it was one more fact that showed the Royals’ ineptitude– they couldn’t come up with a single player who could hit 37 home runs, when seemingly every other team had multiple players like that. Then, when the Royals finally got good again, it showed they were bucking the trend, winning without hitting homers.

But time marches along. The record is soon to fall, and it is long past time for it to go. It is entirely possible that Moustakas goes far enough past 36 that this is the last time I see it broken. Or maybe there’s a minor leaguer in the system right now who will break it. Either way, I know there are lots of little kids out there who view Moustakas the way I viewed Balboni. I think it’s pretty cool they get to see their favorite player succeed like this.

So you know the Royals have never hit many home runs and you know that Mike Moustakas is on track to break the individual team record and you also probably realize that the Royals are a mere 21 home runs away from breaking the team record of 168 set in 1987.

What you may not know is that they’re on track to do all that with some home run balance we haven’t ever seen in Kansas City before.

The Royals currently have five players on track to hit 20 or more home runs using a formula of home runs divided by team games played times 162. The reason I note the methodology is that Whit Merrifield is on pace for 19 that way, but he wasn’t in the big leagues for the team’s first 12 games. If you take those 12 games out, he’s actually on pace for exactly 20 home runs. We’re being generous here, so let’s say there are six players pacing to hit 20 bombs this year for the Royals.

That would be a team record.

There are some holdups to that. Brandon Moss and Jorge Bonifacio have seen their playing time cut a bit since the acquisition of Melky Cabrera. With both at 15, they could both get to 20 even with sporadic playing time, but it doesn’t seem as likely as it once did.

Twice in team history, the Royals have had four players exceed 20 home runs in a season. Those seasons were 1977 (Mayberry, Al Cowens, George Brett and Hal McRae) and 1987 (Tartabull, Steve Balboni, Brett and Bo Jackson). The moral of this story is that if the season ends in a seven, there will be home runs hit.

Eight times in team history, the Royals have had three players exceed 20 home runs. I’m not going to list every player to do it, but the years were 1985, 1988, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002 and then each of the last two seasons before this one.

The 2017 Royals currently have two players already at 20 or more home runs. One of them, Salvador Perez, has done it for three straight seasons. Moose has also hit 20 or more home runs three times in his career, making them two of just nine in franchise history to eclipse that mark at least three times. The leader in that is, of course, George Brett having done it eight times. Mike Sweeney has done it six times, Mayberry five times and Jackson, Carlos Beltran and Balboni four times each.

Only 34 players in franchise history have ever hit 20 or more home runs in a season. Some make perfect sense, like those listed above. Others, like Miguel Olivo, Jay Bell and Jeff Francoeur might hearken back to a time of Royals baseball we might strive to forget. Some may have actually forgotten that Alex Gordon has twice struck 20 or more home runs in a season. That’s understandable as we currently wonder if he’ll even hit 20 over the final three years of his monster contract.

Currently seven players already have 10 or more home runs for the Royals. That ties the 1982, 1993 and 2008 teams for the second most in franchise history. They’re only behind the 2003 team. We all remember that group well. The unfortunate thing is that they’ll likely finish with seven unless Alex Gordon goes on a tear in the final six weeks, which seems unlikely or Melky Cabrera hits seven more home runs, which seems vaguely possible, I guess, but not probable. Maybe Cam Gallagher can get 19 more grand slams before it’s all said and done.

What does this all mean? Unfortunately not a lot if the Royals don’t turn all these home runs into a playoff appearance. But it does mean that in a few weeks, we won’t have to sit back and talk about dismal franchise records. The Royals are on pace to hit 203 home runs this season. Mike Moustakas is on pace to crack 47. They’re on track to have six guys hit 20 or more. A couple of them are not a part of the six we thought could get there before the season, but that’s probably okay.

A lot of this is a product of baseball and probably the baseballs. The Royals pace of 203 home runs has them tied for 15^th most in all of baseball this season. Houston is on track for 258 and three other teams are on track for 240 or more. The craziest thing about this home run barrage, though? The Kansas City Royals have currently hit 12 more home runs than the Colorado Rockies who play half their games in Colorado.

Now there’s a stat I never thought I’d see.