Kansas City Fans Are Royally Lame

The St. Louis Airport Motel 6 looked a lot better in daylight than it did last night, so I felt slightly better about my hotel booking abilities. Still, I think I’ll try to avoid such errors in the future. My brother and I started out from St. Louis in the morning en route to Kansas City for an afternoon ballgame. Since my brother saved my butt by flying out to meet me, I told him we could pretty much do anything his little heart desired. As it turns out, he showed up with a list of activities and destinations. I’m not at all surprised. My brother is a planner, unlike myself, and would not be leaving things to chance as MB and I had been doing on this trip. We drove straight to Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, which took us about three hours. We parked in the lot and fell in among the hordes of Twins fans walking toward the ticket window. After a brief discussion with the ticket agent, I purchased two upper deck seats in the sun for the 1:05 game.

Kauffman Stadium is currently under construction, which is good for us, since it should be remodeled by the time we hit it next summer on Part Three of our road trip. Tom and I checked out the view from the nice seats and took some pictures before grabbing BBQ and making the climb to our seats. The seats themselves weren’t bad, but it was a bit toasty in the sun, and there were so many empty field-level seats in the shade. I guess the Royals fans don’t bother to show up for Sunday afternoon games. The best thing about the upper deck was that we were surrounded by little kids who got on the Jumbotron. That’s right, I finally made it onto the big screen at my 11th ballgame (2nd unofficial). Well, technically my boobs made it onto the big screen. The camera was on the kids in the row in front of us, so you could see my finger pointing, then my hands waving, then my light blue tank top. The cameraman stopped before he got to my face, maybe because I was wearing a Denver Broncos cap in KC Chiefs country. The lucky ring made it on, though!

By the end of the third inning, those field-level seats were really calling our names, so we moseyed on down to the lower level and took up our position behind the rail to scout out unclaimed seats. Tom had his eye on an empty row (seriously, where were the Royals fans?) and told me to follow him, looking confident. We sat down in the sixth or seventh row of the terrace level behind home plate. We sat tensely for half an inning, but when we realized no one was going to bother us or have us escorted out of the section, we relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the game in the shade. It was a fantastic game, with the lead changing hands several times. I felt bad for the Royals when it appeared that the Twins fans cheered louder than the Royals fans, but the Royals tied it up in the eighth inning, and the score was still tied at the end of the ninth. The Royals finally put an end to the game in the bottom of the twelfth, with a string of singles and a walk-off double.

From the stadium, we made a short birding stop, then drove past Kansas City and into Kansas to find a motel for the night. At this point, I’d like to insert a quote:

Susie: Slow down! That flashing light is for you. It means you’re driving too fast.
Tom: Not the kind of personal flasher I was hoping for.

For perhaps the first time on this entire road trip, we arrived at our motel while it was still daylight outside. We were pleased to see that this Motel 6 was in a much nicer area than the St. Louis one. We thought a swim would be nice, but Tom chickened out when he felt how cold the pool was. Oh well, maybe in Denver.