Reprinted with permission from my friend Bill:

Opening day, and my oldest son, who is going to the game, gives me a call.  “Dad, I managed to get two extra tickets to the game.  They’re not by us, and they’re pretty high up, but they’re only five bucks each if you’re interested.”  Hey, why not.  Opening day is opening day, and five bucks is five bucks.  So I get my youngest out of school early and the two of us head out to opening day.

My youngest is psyched.  He’s never been to opening day.  It’s been a few years since I managed to make it to opening day as well.   Life begins on opening day, so this should be a good time. 

We head out, and we get stuck in our car forever waiting to get in the gate.  For Ev Er.   After sitting for about 45 minutes we finally discover what the cause of the wait is - a Deffenbaugh truck that, opening day be damned, had made it’s pickup and was now trying to exit the stadium, creating a major clusterfluck.  This truck was trying to do it’s best Moses impersonation by parting the line of incoming vehicles, but it was failing miserably.  This was a a sign of things to come.

We finally get in the gate and are directed to a place to park.  On the muddy grass, by the Chefs construction trailers.  We make it into the game about 15 minutes before first pitch, and I go to purchase a program.  No gameday programs due to a problem with the printer.  I nornally don’t purchase a gameday program, but it would have been nice to have one this time.


We find our seats, which are in section 407 (far upper corner, three rows from the top down the third base line).  I don’t mind sitting that high, and they’re really not bad seats.  For five bucks a pop on opening day they’re damn fine seats.  I have, however, found that the higher up you get the stranger the people beside you.  More on that later.

Time to get something to eat and drink.  I guess I’m a commie, cuz I really don’t like to drink beer at a Royals game.  Lukewarm beer at ten bucks a pop (or whatever they’re going for now) just isn’t my thing.  So we get a couple of overpriced sodas and a couple of footlong hotdogs.  The gal running the register doesn’t charge me for the footlong hotdogs.  Me, being the dumbass boyscout that I am, tell her that she failed to charge me for the footlongs.  “My register isn’t set up to charge for footlong hotdogs, so I was told to give them away.”  Free footlongs.  Gotta love Volume Services.  Things are looking up.

With two footlong hotdogs in our hands we sit down at our seats.  Section 407 on the isle.  The section beside us is quite rowdy, and already into a healthy drunk before the first pitch, with empty plastic beer bottles and cups everywhere.  This is a teaching opportunity, as I tell my son to be sure and keep an eye on that section, as something stupid is bound to happen.  Large quantities of beer, Royals games and high altitude are not a good combination.

It only took till the second inning for my prediction to come true, as the large drunk guy on the end of the isle stands up, tries to walk down the stairs (no doubt to purchase more beer), and stumbles.  But he doesn’t just fall down, he tumbles down the stairs, doing a nice summersault on the concrete steps, going halfway down the row.  His wife/girlfriend has things in hand though.  Once she gets him back to his seat (with help), she hands him a Coors Light.  “Here, drink this.”  Girl must have been a nurse, as we all know that the best thing for a drunk that just about broke his neck tumbling down stairs at the K is MORE BEER!

Five minutes after the guy tumbles down the stairs an important looking dude comes up and asks the man to go down to first aide.  Despite the slightly nasty bump on his head and the even nastier scrapes on his leg and arms, the drunk guy says that he’s fine.  Important looking Royals dude tells drunk guy that if he won’t go down to first aide,  firste aide will come up to him.  Drunk guy, with help from friends, decides to head down to first aide.

Sixth inning, and a patched up drunk guy makes it back to his seat to a round of applause.  What a memorable opening day this was for him.  He paid what was probably good money for his ticket, paid out the ass for ballpark beer, missed most of the game, almost broke his neck and has bandages over his arms and legs.  Oh yeah, let’s all get drunk at the ballgame.

Speaking of drunks at the ballgame, we now go to the seventh inning, and I can’t tell if these two guys arguing are playing around or are serious.  Same section as the drunk guy, two rows down, right beside us.  Oops, it looks like they are serious, as guy one (we’ll call him “Guy that gets his ass kicked”, or ”dumbass” for short),  turns to guy two (we’ll call him “guy that gets arrested”, or “dumberass” for short) and says “You want a piece of me?  Come on!  Bring it on!”.  Really bad thing to say, as dumberass proceeds to headbutt dumbass, knocking him to the ground.  As dumbass tries to get up, dumberass nails him with a right hook, then picks him up off  the ground and slams a cup full of beer full in his face.  Beer flies everywhere.  The drunks beside these two nimrods start screaming “Security!  Security!  Security!”, to which dumberass responds by running down the stairs, out to the mezzanine.  Dumbass, now bleeding over everything, is now REALLY pissed, and chases after him, yelling “that’s the m*****f^^^^^!  That’s the guy that did it!” 

A guy in the row beside me decided to run down and see what the result of this little skirmish was.  Turns out that dumberass decided that the best thing to do was to hide in the bathroom until this whole thing blew over.  Bad move, as when he finally did come out of the bathroom he had about six cops waiting on him.  The guy in the row beside me had a nice photo of dumbass being led away in handcuffs, which reallly made no sense to me, as to me his only crime was being a split second faster than dumbass. 

Our section, and the section beside us, is now a collection of blood and spilt beer.  I look down a couple of rows and I see a rather large elderly gentleman that is covered in beer, and I then realize that this is the same gentleman that broke the fall of the tumbling drunk guy back in the second inning.  This guys is just sitting there, not moving, staring straight ahead, and I know what’s going through his mind is “F the cost, next time I’m buying better seats.”

Eighth inning, Royals have screwed the pooch, and a hear a gal a couple rows down from us ask her husband “Are you ready to go?”, to which the husband replies “Naw, let’s see what that section beside us has got planned next.”

Fun times at the old ballpark.  Fun times indeed.