It’s been 44 years now since the riveting Royals-Yankees postseason duels came to their fascinating finale, George Brett knows, and 41 since the feud’s indelible encore in the Pine Tar Game.

That’s such a long time that Brett actually has developed relationships with such former mortal enemies as Goose Gossage and Reggie Jackson — men he absolutely hated and now calls among his “best friends.”

While he’s never spoken with Graig Nettles in the nearly 50 years since Nettles kicked him in the face and Brett slugged him to ignite a brawl in Game 5 of the 1977 American League Championship Series, Brett would shake his hand and maybe hug him if they met again now.

And he laughs as he remembers how Spot-Bilt, which sponsored both Brett and Nettles at the time, soon put out a poster of Brett punching Nettles ... emphasizing their shoes. The tagline: “At least they agree on one thing.”

“I have no ill feelings about Graig,” Brett said.

But Brett still rages about the Yankees institutionally as the Royals prepare to play New York in the best-of-five American League Division Series beginning Saturday in New York — preparation that Brett planned to fuel with some history.

Brett’s main plan for Friday afternoon and Saturday was to share that past and rekindle the fire among a group of players who weren’t born for years after that time.

“I will remind them at the workout today and tomorrow that … this is not just a playoff game,” he said in an interview with The Star on Friday morning from the team hotel in New York. “This is the frickin’ New York Yankees. And we have a history with these guys. And we’re going to kick their ass.”

Not in that berserk Pine Tar Game kind of way. But with the sort of seething that animated those spikes-high, literal-hard-knocks four postseasons — the ones that first marked perpetual frustration for the Royals before the nirvana of the 1980 breakthrough.

The vibe that almost feels like present tense to Brett, who recalled recently being interviewed with Gossage about the Pine Tar Game.

In that span, Gossage almost immediately reverted to talking about how much he hated Brett and wanted to hit him in the neck or even kill him. Brett might have gotten a little heated, too, before coming back to the present.

“That’s the way it was,” Brett said. “It was hatred; it really was. We despised them, and they despised the Royals.”

The fearless loathing was perhaps most visible in “the slides, or lack of slides,” as Brett put it, in those games.

Including the Royals’ Hal McRae knocking Willie Randolph into center field, Nettles barging through Frank White and former Royals teammate Lou Piniella going a few feet out of his way to try to spike Brett as the third baseman went up the line for a relay.

But it also was constantly bubbling in less apparent ways.

Like trash-talk between the teams, which at one point included Royals manager Whitey Herzog referring to the Yankees front office as “cockroaches.” Irascible Yankees manager Billy Martin screamed at Brett before some games.

Then there was the contrast in the dynamics between an upstart, small-market expansion team taking on the most storied team in Major League Baseball history in the media capital of the world.

Speed and defense vs. power. Doing more with less vs. an infinite payroll. And then some.

“A tale of two cities, I guess,” Brett said.

A tale that lives on through Brett.

That’s why he once told former Royals general manager Dayton Moore that he wouldn’t be heartbroken if a bad Royals team lost 156 games ... but won six against the Yankees.

And it’s why — if the Royals prevail — Brett said “I’m going to have the exact same feeling I had in 1980.”

That thrill wasn’t just about the moment itself. It was about all that had preceded it.

Not just the nastiness, but the fact the Yankees had ousted the Royals in 1976, 1977 and 1978.

Each of those felt different, Brett and Royals Hall of Famer Frank White said in interviews this week, but no doubt there was a cumulative effect.

When Chris Chambliss snuffed out the Royals in 1976 with a walkoff homer in Game 5, for instance, Brett in hindsight recalls the feeling being, “We’ll get ‘em next year.”

Similarly, White thought about how impressive it was for an expansion team to have made it to the playoffs ahead of schedule, and that the club’s nucleus promised more ahead soon.

White was right … which only made the next year harder. The Royals won 102 games in 1977 but were knocked out by the Yankees 5-3 in Game 5.

“It was kind of traumatic in a way,” said White, now the Jackson County executive. “I just really thought if we were really going to cross that threshold (into the World Series), that was our year. That was crushing … It was (a) ‘How much do you have to do?’ kind of thing.”

Then came 1978, when the Yankees eliminated the Royals in four games and won their second straight World Series.

By then, who knew if anything would ever change?

To White’s way of thinking, the Royals seemed to just not have the finances to keep up with the Yankees — who essentially were able to stack their team with All-Stars. There was virtually no margin for error.

“We always had to do everything right,” White said. “We couldn’t make a mistake.”

All of that informed the intense meaning of taking them on again in the 1980 ALCS. when White said he felt “probably the most pressure I ever felt as a player.”

Not at the stadium, but from the community in which he’d grown up.
“You just felt that weight of this whole city on your shoulders that you had to break though,” he said.

White was too antsy to sleep the night before. So he want to the stadium around 7 a.m. for the 2 p.m. start and eased into sleep on a training table.
“That’s where I needed to be,” White said.

The team, he recalled, was less playful than normal for that series, because it was so focused on the moment and the mindset of “we just can’t let them get away with this again.”

Behind Larry Gura’s complete game, two RBIs apiece from White, Willie Wilson and Willie Aikens and a home run from Brett, the Royals won the opener 7-2.

A day later, they won 3-2 with eight innings from Dennis Leonard, a save by Dan Quisenberry and a three-run third — two more RBIs from Wilson and another from U.L. Washington.

Then it was on to a potential knockout game in New York, where a White home run gave the Royals 1-0 lead in the fifth before Rick Cerone drove in two to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead in the sixth.

Bring on Brett for a sublime moment in Royals, Kansas City and even MLB history, because of the stature of the Yankees.

“You know it’s going to get world-wide attention with the Yankees,” said White, referring to both now and then.

With two on and two out in the seventh inning against Gossage, Brett lashed the first pitch into the third deck of the iconic stadium to give the Royals a 4-2 lead they’d hold through Quisenberry’s 3.2 innings of relief.

“Probably the most meaningful hit of my career,” said Brett, who recalled it as “the best swing I’ve had in my life.”

That’s saying something for the man who had 3,154 hits in his National Baseball Hall of Fame career.

As he stood in the on-deck circle that day, Brett was conscious of the booming noise, and even taunts, from what he almost precisely recalled as 56,000 people (56,888) at Yankee Stadium.

But when he entered the batter’s box, it all went mute to him. As usual.
At that pinnacle of concentration, he said, “you don’t feel the cold, you don’t feel the heat, you don’t hear the noise.”

Just the same, as he went around the bases, he thought about how amazing it was just how quiet that many people actually were.

Although the Royals went on to lose to the Phillies 4-2 in the 1980 World Series, that’s almost just a footnote to Brett now.

Finally beating the Yankees then and that way, he said, “was like winning the World Series. The feelings were just the same (when the Royals did win the 1985 World Series).”

He added, “I’ll never forget Game 3; I’ll just never forget it as long as I live.”
That’s why he wants those days, of not backing down to the behemoth, to be coursing through this Royals team, too.

Days that still feel vivid to anyone who experienced them or, heck, even watched from afar.

A sensation only further stoked by the 1983 Pine Tar episode, when a livid Brett went on a rampage he remains proud of. Because it was principled against Martin and the Yankees’ insinuation he was cheating the game through a rule that was only about trying to avert stained balls.

All of which explains why Brett figures he’d best “be as incognito as I can” among Yankees fans this weekend, even as he hopes to instill a fighting spirit in these Royals — who no doubt have a burn to win of their own.

And why you can bet he’ll want to be in on the clubhouse celebration once more, like after the clinchers in Atlanta and Baltimore, if they pull through against the Yankees.

“It probably will matter more to me,” he said, laughing, “than to them.”