Drunk At The Royals Game

Never, ever, ever, underestimate the power of a giveaway fake cowboy hat at a Kansas City, MO ballgame. Traffic lined the streets, the ticket booth was clogged with hayseeds, farm girls, baseball fans, locals, yokels, and us. Every single person on line at the ticket booth kept glancing at the gate to the right, and commenting: “this better go quick, I want one of the those hats!”, “those hats are awesome”, “we better get them”, and so on.

We opt for the $12 tix over the $8, avoiding the all-you-can-eat $40 seats after the Flying Pigs at Rosedale. We get the swe-e-e-ee—e-e-t hats and start drinking. Every drink booth has a different beer – Bud Light, Miller Light, and Boulevard in jumbo cups that you can buy with credit cards.

Up in the seats, the hayseed family in front of us is slightly horrified. The jumboman to our right keeps thrusting Goldfish into his gapping foodhole with his massive paws, nonstop, for two whole innings, and our first beesr empty. So we get up and start to wander.

Get to the left field pavilion and drama occurs. The Red Baron incurs the wrath of the gruff and mildly retarded bathroom mopper for walking Out through the In side. By Beer Three or Four and Inning Five the Beach Ball Hater of Kauffman Stadium arises amid a frenzy of anger and rage. The happy denizens of the bleachers were bouncing a beach ball around the stands, as all crappy ballgames require. For some reason, the Hater lunged at the ball, grabbed it, threw it to the ground, and with the strength of a Hell’s Angel kick starting his Hog, he stamped the ball to smithereens. No one knew how to react. We started boo-ing, it caught on, and enraged the Hater further – this audacious reaction to his act. We get more beer, and get into a better photographic angle by the time the next beach ball pops into the air. Now, the crowd has worked itself into a frenzy, of nigh lynching proportions, and all are aiming the ball square at the hulking blue back of the Hater.

An inning of scores of bleacher creatures aiming their colorful ball of joy and delight at the Hater, trying to goad him into a fit of writhing and convulsions, and three grinning, smirking, security guards (two in their 20s, one in his 50s) comes by to diffuse the situation.

The Hater never gets hit again after the security team leaves. He is left seething, the stands are full of people thinking of hitting him with a giant inflatable ball, and no one watches the game. Except for the KCMO police officer eating hotdogs out by the waterfalls.