I’m from Overland Park, Kansas. It’s a suburb of Kansas City, and that means a lot of people I know enjoy watching the Kansas City Royals play baseball, including my dad. And when the team plays at home, Kauffman Stadium is where it happens.
Surprisingly, I had never actually been to a Royals game until this summer. My appetite for baseball was basically shut down in elementary school when I played on a team whose best game was an 8 to 4 loss. But when my workplace set up a trip to a Royals home game late into the summer of 2016, I figured it would be nice to go with and get to know some of my coworkers better.
The stadium itself is pretty cool. It was renovated in 2009, and it’s kept in pretty good condition. There are even fountains and fireworks stations located near the scoreboard. But while the aerial view looks like this:
I spent a lot of time looking at this:
The line (or rather, the blob) to get in was super long, and it was a hot afternoon during peak sunshine hours. I had not come prepared – I should have brought a water bottle.
My experience inside the building was poor, too. It was nice talking to my coworkers for a little while, but they’re all a lot older than I am and eventually I ran out of engaging topics. The baseball game went poorly for the hometown heroes. On this particular day, the Royals scored zero runs while I was there, and the away team scored something like 7. I ended up standing under one of the overhangs instead of where our seats were because I wanted shade. Water bottles were expensive, so I trekked all the way to a drinking fountain, which was in high demand. It wasn’t a good day.
None of this is really the fault of the building, but I still associate it with those bad experiences, which kind of kills any excitement I would otherwise get out of looking at it. Structurally I understand it’s a very impressive construction that serves its function well, but I’ll probably continue to think of it poorly until there’s a reason to think otherwise. And who knows if I’ll even ever go to another Royals game.
