Day 10 - Late for the Royal Barbecue

It was definitely a day to get up early. Not only did I have to get to the garage when it opened at 7 to avoid getting my car towed, but I had to make to Kansas City by the end of the day to see the Jays play the Royals.

There's not too much to say about the drive. I was entering the midwest which is pretty much just flat and boring. Maybe not as flat as I was expecting based on Saskatchewan, but pretty dull nonetheless. I noticed a couple of interesting signs along the way. First, it was obvious I was in evangelican country since the interstate was littered with pro-life propaganda billboards. "Thank You Mom for Choosing Life" and so on. Also, entering Kansas, there was a sign saying "Welcome to Kansas, the Wheat State". However, I didn't see one wheat field the whole drive, lots of corn though. Another sign of how the idiotic ethanol energy policy is only succeeding in using up our food.

When I finally got to KC, I went to the hotel and checked in. I was planning on trying to get some barbecue but I forgot to consider that I had just switched time zones and so I lost an hour. As it turned out, I just had enough time to get to the ballpark for the first pitch so I had to wait for dinner. I was told there was a good BBQ place at a casino and I figured they'd be open late catering to all the adicts so I could go there after the game.

I was pleasantly surprised with Kauffman Stadium. It had a lot of concrete reminiscent of parks pre-Camden Yards, but it didn't look like a monstrosity, it actually had some character to it. There were the waterfalls in right-center field, some fun spiraling ramps to get into the park, and the funny looking scoreboard framed by the Royals' logo. Also, it was pretty much symmetric except for a couple of small details including the fact that the vistor's bullpen was significantly smaller than the home team's. Home field advantage :-)

The game itself was pretty disappointing. Well it started off well, but way too quickly the Jays just fell asleep and started making errors, that would eventually cost them the game. A couple of bobbled balls and a dropped popup just set the tone for the evening.

There was also hardly anybody at the park. This made it feel somewhat impersonal, but I was at least able to sit right behind the Jays dugout. Ernie Whitt was in the dugout so I tried to get his attention, but he ignored me, which wasn't too surprising. There's got to be a lot of crazy fans they need to ignore during the game.

After the game, I tried going to the casino to get some food. By now it was 11pm, but it turns out the restaurants do actually close so I wasn't able to get any Kansas City BBQ and ended up having to settle for the only thing open: Burger King. Bleck.