The championship was short-lived, however, as most of the starting squad, including Wilson, Charlie Beamon, and Darrell Parker, and the manager John Sullivan left town the very next day to begin training at the Royals' instructional league in Florida.²⁴  This mass exodus from the city was only a prelude to the foregone conclusion that the Royals were going to be leaving Waterloo forever. On September 10, 1976, the front office management of the Kansas City Royals decided not to “renew its working agreement with Waterloo,” wrote Don Kruse in the Courier.²⁵  The move was prompted by the need to move the team closer to the spring training facilities in Sarasota, Florida, according to John Schueroltz, who was at the time Director of Scouting and Player Development.  Presently, the Royals' Single-A club resides in Wilmington, Delaware, and although it is slightly closer in proximity to Sarasota, Waterloo would have remained a more convenient location than the East coast city due to its proximity with Kansas City.  The argument was made that Wilmington would provide a much better market for baseball, to which opponents of the move disagreed.  Opponents of the move claimed that with a population greater than that of Wilmington, the Cedar Valley provided a more concrete market share.  Nonetheless, in the autumn of 1976, Waterlooans bid their champions farewell.