I decided to take Wednesday off so I could travel with my good buddies Itchy and Scratchy (Names have been changed to protect the innocent) to Kansas City to see the Twins play the Royals. Little did we know that we’d be among the thousands of Twins fans to see Scott Podsednik for the last time in a Royals uniform. But that’s where our story ends.
It begins with a simple 3 hour road trip to Kansas City to talk about life, our families, and more importantly, how effin hot it was going to be while we were at the game. I was delighted to hear that we were driving in Scratchy’s wife’s car. That thing has got to smell like beer, sweat, brats, and used gum this morning while she’s driving to work. Gross. I was also thrilled to find out that Scratchy had told his employer that he was picking his parents up from the Kansas City Airport to get out of work. Nice!
Upon arriving at the game, we quickly fired up the grill in the shade. We had a dynamite tailgating spot for football, 20 feet away from Arrowhead. We had an extra ticket to the game, from a guy I shall refer to as Poo-butt. We started talking to a scalper who was hiding from the cops, because apparently scalping is highly frowned upon at Kauffman Stadium (wait, does that mean we aided and abided? Sweet!) Suffice to say, no one wanted to buy a single ticket from us, so Poo-Butt will have to pay me back still.
Because of the 1.5 million degree temps reported in Kansas City yesterday, the beer was flowing (fast). The brats were sizzling, and a combination of Danger Zone, Margaritaville, and We Will Rock You was streaming from the 40 –somethings’ tailgate party from across the road from us (“Royals 2010 Mix woohoo!!!! This is the year baby!”). Oh, and Itchy had a quick note to the Kauffman Stadium parking lot crew…please have the Porta-Johns cleaned once a day.
After moving six times to find a spot not blocked by a wheelchair umbrella, and then to find a seat in the shade and to not burn our twig and berries on the seat, we settled in just in time for the first pitch. A couple thoughts now on the Royals.
I get that you suck, but you have to be annoyed by louder and just plain more Twins fans in the stands. You have to be annoyed that the scoreboard is so busy, you can’t find who’s pitching and who’s batting. You have to be annoyed that the Twins literally tossed them aside three days in a row. You have to be annoyed that the scoreboard puts stats and facts up about the Home team players going back to 2001, because they can’t find anything relevant from this year, and you have to be annoyed that the team just traded Podsednik, who has a 15 game hit streak.
You wanna ask me what I was annoyed by? I was annoyed by the fresh wintergreen gum right where I kept putting my foot. Now, I’ve mentioned it was hot. I’m talking hotter than being in Iraq people. When a grown man (Itchy) gets a souvenir baseball helmet ice-cream, with sprinkles and chases it with a beer, you know it’s hot. When a little child is so puffy and red from the heat that I’m taking pictures in case the cops get called later for child endangerment, you know it’s hot.
So, despite there being little doubt, the Twins won, although the Royals did make it a little interesting at the end. We decided to head to Denny’s for a fine meal. We forgot the type of people that eat at Denny’s. We also forgot it was only 4:30. Pretty sure ol’ Henry keeled over and died in his mashed potatoes. The staff seemed to handle it well though. To use a sports reference, they acted like they’d been there before. But today’s it’s back to reality. No more cold beer at 11:00 AM, no more gum on my sandal. Just the memory of Itchy taking his shirt off in the stands despite his promise to never be that guy.
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