Unlike Busch Stadium, the outside of the stadium is not impressive. It's surrounded by a big parking lot. It's right near Arrowhead Stadium. The outside of the building is not particularly attractive. I walked around the stadium and there wasn't much to see. The one benefit of being surrounded by parking lots is that there seemed to be a decent tailgating atmosphere there, which is something that you don't get at a lot of baseball stadiums.
When I walked into the stadium, one of the first things I saw was the Royals Hall of Fame so I checked that out. They have a display for George Brett's 3,154 hits. There's a bat in the middle of it. It's unclear what the significance of the bat was. It might have been the one the he got his 3,000th hit with or maybe his last hit. I don't know. But I do know that it wasn't the bat from the pine tar game. I asked if they had that there and I was told that they've had it before, but they didn't have it now. I was also told that the bat in the display had more pine tar on it than the bat from the pine tar game. They also had the Royals' 1985 World Series trophy.
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| 3,154 baseballs for 3,154 hits |
After the Hall of Fame, I took a lap around the lower concourse. The stadium was renovated before the 2009 season. I always liked the way it looked on TV (and playing there in video games) with the waterfalls in the outfield, but they did a great job with the renovation. The outfield concourse is outstanding. They have statues of the Kauffmans, Dick Howser, Frank White Jr., and George Brett. You can stand above the waterfalls and look out on the field. Before the game and between innings, they have fountains that shoot up water. It's cool to look through that toward the field.
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| George Brett with the fountains in the background |
From there, I headed up to my seat. My plan was to watch an inning and a half and then go find some food. I wanted to get the burnt end cheesesteak. Apparently burnt ends are a Kansas City barbecue thing and I wanted to try them. I think they only had them at a concession stand on the lower level out in the outfield, so I headed down there. When I got there, they were out of burnt ends. So I got a Kansas City hot dog instead. It had Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and mustard on it. It was fine, but I would have greatly preferred to try the burnt ends. I also got a beer from the Boulevard Brewery, which is a Kansas City brewery. I think I had the Unfiltered Wheat Beer. It was very good. I watched an inning standing above the right field waterfall and then headed back to my seat.
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| My view for most of the game |
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| Good weather, great beer, and a beautiful ballpark. I love baseball. |
As for the game, it was Madison Bumgarner against Jason Vargas. Billy Butler gave the Royals a 2-0 lead with a home run in the first inning. The Giants tied it in the third, but Butler and Alex Gordon drove in runs in the sixth to give the Royals a 4-2 lead. The Royals' bullpen pitched four scoreless innings and they won 4-2. Bumgarner got the rare complete game loss (only eight innings since there was no bottom of the ninth). They had fireworks after the game. I was tired so I wanted to get back to my hotel. I pretty much saw the whole show as I walked back to my car.
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| I left the stadium to beat traffic, but I still got to see the fireworks. |
I was really impressed with Kauffman Stadium (other than running out of burnt ends). The outside is nothing special, but the inside is excellent. It reminded me a little bit of two stadiums that I have on opposite ends of my stadium rankings, Dodger Stadium and SkyDome. Those two and Kauffman Stadium are three of the four remaining symmetrical ballparks (whatever the stadium in Oakland is called is the other). Dodger Stadium is surrounded by parking lots also. Dodger Stadium is 11 years older, but both have been renovated recently. Like Dodger Stadium, it's beautiful inside. Besides the symmetry, the seating set up reminded me of SkyDome. The upper deck is big and very steep. If they renovated SkyDome, there's a chance they could turn it into a good stadium like Kauffman Stadium. Another nice feature of Kauffman Stadium was the scoreboard. It was excellent. They fit a lot of information on one scoreboard in center field (it is huge). Much better than the scoreboards at Busch Stadium. One thing that I wouldn't have changed in the renovation is the batter's eye. Below the scoreboard they used to have a nice patch of grass, but now it's just some green walls. It's a minor complaint.
I was headed home the following day. I purposely scheduled a late flight for two reasons. First of all, I had to drive across the state to St. Louis. But more importantly, I was staying in Independence and I wanted to see Harry Truman's house and Presidential Library. My hotel was actually just diagonally across the street from his house. The library was about a mile away. I got a tour of the house, which had been in his wife's family since the 1800s. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside and we only saw the first floor, but it was still cool. Our tour guide said the house was very out of date by the time the Trumans died (Harry in 1972 and his wife in 1982). He said the most modern room was the kitchen, which looked like it was from the 1950s. There was wallpaper on the ceiling. I had never seen that before. Everything else looked older. They had a TV, but apparently Harry Truman didn't like it. The furniture was not pointed at the TV.
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| Harry S Truman's house |
After his house, I headed to the library. Last summer I went to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. I'm hoping to get the Reagan and Bush libraries at some point to balance things out. Like the Carter Library, there was a replica of the Oval Office. There was a lot of stuff on Truman's foreign policy, but not so much on domestic policy. Truman was president at a time that I'm very interested in (end of World War II, beginning of the Cold War) so I enjoyed it. Besides the museum, you can through a courtyard where Truman, his wife, and his daughter are buried. On the other side of the courtyard is the office where he worked after his presidency. They have glass on the outside so that you can look in.
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| Harry Truman's Oval Office |
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| Nope. |
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| The 33rd President of the United States |
That was it for my trip to Missouri. On my drive back to St. Louis, I was getting off the highway to get some food and I saw a sign for the National Churchill Museum. It's at the college where he gave his Iron Curtain speech. I knew that was in Missouri, but I didn't realize there was a museum there. Churchill is one of my favorite people in the history of the world, so I got pretty excited. I checked out how far away it was on my phone and it was just far enough out of the way that I decided not to go. I might have been able to get there and check it out, but I would have been pretty rushed. I saw the Churchill War Rooms in London last summer. I imagine that beats the National Churchill Museum. If I had known, I would have tried to get on the road earlier so that I would have had time. Oh well.
So that was my last big baseball trip of the summer. I don't have much planned for the fall. Probably three Notre Dame football games. One at Notre Dame, one at MetLife Stadium, and one at FedEx Field. Next year, hopefully I will be able to get to baseball games in Cincinnati, Minnesota, Texas, and Anaheim. And hopefully I'll cross a few more states off the list. I did get to one more baseball game and cross one more state off the list since my Missouri trip. More on that later.
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