September 12, 2002. I had flown to Dallas on 9/10/02 to shoot a new TV commercial for Magic 106.7 in Boston. Normally we did our TV shoots in Nashville, but our new spokesperson, Janine Turner, insisted that we shoot in Dallas because she lives there and hates to fly. Actually no one was crazy about flying on the first anniversary of 9/11, so we flew to Dallas on 9/10 and did the shoot on 9/11/02. Then I had to go to Nashville for the edit, but you can’t fly directly out of DFW unless you’re on American. At least that was the rule in 2002. So the next day I got a flight to Kansas City and had a several-hour layover before proceeding to Nashville.
This gave me a perfect opportunity to catch a game at Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals. And I didn’t even have to pay for the trip.
Kauffman Stadium is about 10 miles out in the burbs, in Independence, MO. It’s right off Harry S. Truman highway. Independence was Harry’s hometown, thus the name. But in his own hometown the highway sign misspells his name! The S did not stand for anything – it was just an S (or as the Army would say, IO for initial only) so it should be Harry S Truman Highway. No period after the S.
Kauffman is a sunny, clean, pleasant park. It didn’t look 30 years old at all. In the book that inspired my World Ballpark Tour, “Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks,” Dodger Stadium came in first and Fenway came in last – based on the food. Kauffman Stadium came in second – only because at the time they had a fake field. But now it’s real grass. The Royals were hosting the White Sox. I sat in row 7 just before the 1st base dugout. The seats are very close to the field. There was no Wild Card back then so both the Royals and the ChiSox were already eliminated from the postseason. Thus the row 7 great seat behind the plate. They didn’t have any special local cuisine – but the dogs were decent. Despite the rumor spread by the song “Kansas City” by Wilbert Harrison, they didn’t have any crazy little women there, at least not that I noticed. There weren’t that many fans in general. Last place in September and a weekday afternoon will do that. But the ones who were there were Midwest-friendly. The friendliest of any ballpark I’d been to. St. Louis clearly owns the friendly hill, but I didn’t get there until 2014.
The waterfalls in center field go off when a Royal homers. This happened in the 2nd inning when Raul Ibanez took Jon Garland deep. Raul’s walkup song was “Werewovles of London” because the “Aah-ooh” sounds like Raul. That was the Royals only run, and Chicago went on to win, 5-1. Keith Foulke, who the following year was the losing pitcher for the A’s in Game 5 of the ALCS (Boston wound up winning the series), and who two years later was the pitcher on the mound for Boston when the Red Sox finally broke the 86-year Curse of the Bambino, pitched the 8th and 9th for KC.
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