Royal Mailbag

An odd thing happened to me last week.  I communicated with the Kansas City Royals.  No this isn't an alien sort of thing, it really happened.  I got an email and was informed I was selected as part of a contest.  About a month ago I filled out a form online for something called Royals Memories.  Every game, the radio crew announces a Royals Memories presented by Tippin's Gourmet Pies. If you are selected, you get a coupon for a free Tippin's Gourmet Pie and possibly more.  In the email it asked for my address so they could mail it to me and informed me that they would read my memory on a broadcast in July (I think the 23rd).  It is the makeup game between the Royals and Cardinals (a rare game in which I'll be able to see on TV oddly enough).  Anyways, I plan on finding a way to record it (best guess is hooking up a stereo and finding a cassette, which I still have some lying around).

I was quite surprised really to win.  I never had a Tippin's pie, but look forward to trying it out soon (I might have to go to the Metro KC area to pick it up).  I was kind of hoping to be selected for the Sonic Slam Inning where I could have won some case (up to $25,000), I hope this doesn't disqualify me from that.

The next day I got my mail and saw this:

I knew it wasn't the coupon because the mail isn't that fast, plus the email I sent to them was around 10 PM.  So I was curious and opened it up.  Maybe I won some free tickets or something.

OHHH.  I forgot about these.  Back in April I requested 5 Royals pocket schedules.  Glad they finally came, but I got one when I went to the game.  It was nice to see I finally got them, unlike those White Sox trading cards I signed up for on the same day (to their credit, the White Sox was quick on the discounted tickets), I'm still waiting on those cards.

Five schedules is a bit excessive, but I was going to keep a couple and give the rest away.  As it turns out, my friend also has a schedule, so I have extras.  I might randomly give them away when I ship out packages if nobody claims them.

Here is a look at it:

Quite a few giveaways, I must say.  I like the idea of Stadium giveaways but before this year they only gave like 5,000 or so away, so it wasn't really worth the hassle being first in.  I haven't been to a giveaway game, but always look to see which ones would be fun to attend.

Sure all this info is online, but so is stats and pictures of players, so why is having this any different than having baseball cards.  Just think of them as commons that hold little to no value, though there is a market for schedules.  Blogs too!

So I wasn't really let down, it is always nice to get an envelope from a sports team.

Later in the week I got another envelope from the Royals, this one was different.

AL CHAMPIONS envelope!  That could be a collector's item!  This one was thinner and I knew what was inside.

Sorry if you thought about printing the coupon, I couldn't risk it.

Something that did catch me off guard was I can only redeem it from a Hen House Market.  The closest one is about 100 miles away and not really close to anything I would go to in the KC area.  In fact only one is in Missouri, close to the airport, which isn't real convenient to get to.  The others in Kansas, which despite what Selena Gomez and others might think isn't where the Royals play (she got booed at the Stadium last weekend for saying "Hello Kansas!", oops!).  One is close to a church I thought about visiting one weekend, so maybe I'll do it then.

Look at that pie!  That looks good, and fattening, but still good.  I was hoping the coupon could be redeemed anywhere and then I'd only have to got 20 miles to get it.  Oh well.

Inside was also a letter:

Sweet, official letterhead too, that is nice.  But wait did you see that?

If I win the grand prize at the end of the year, I could throw out the first pitch and VIP batting practice!  NOT A GAME, WE TALKING 'BOUT PRACTICE MAN! I'm not sure how the deal with rainout entries and such, but factoring all those in, I still have better than a 1/200 chance of winning.  Better than most things.  I'm not holding my breath on it, but that would be totally awesome to win.

So overall, it was a pretty exciting week as besides other items I got in the mail (some cards, magazines, and... information on how to control my MS (I don't have MS, but whatever)), I can't complain about my string of luck lately.

So I'm sure you might want to know what I submitted as my Royals Memory.  I forgot how I wrote it exactly, and if I do record it, I'll find a way to link it on here.  Here is the memory though.

A couple years ago I was watching the Royals on the 4th of July.  They were losing but mounting a comeback.  In the sixth inning (the Sonic Slam inning by the way), the Royals loaded the bases.  I forgot who was at bat (I think it was Alcides Escobar, I looked it up before I submitted the entry), and he belted a GRAND SLAM (the Sonic Slam winner got 25K plus whatever the daily pot was at I think like 1100 bucks).  I jumped out of my seat and screamed and cheered so loud I woke my elderly neighbor who was sleeping on her front porch.  I felt bad for startling her, but I was excited.  I stifled my cheering a bit until the end of the game, the Royals won, and I looked to see if she was still there.  She was gone so I cheered loudly again.  I felt bad that I might have scared her because she was 90 years old, we would get worried if we didn't see the other getting the mail for a couple days, so I never tried to make her mad at me.  What is kinda funny though is that (and my friend will attest to this), she was kind of hard of hearing and when her phone would ring, you could hear it a block away (literally).  So it was really surprising that I was able to scare her because I didn't think she could hear me.

I condensed that a lot, and left the last part out, but thought I'd give more of the story.

So that is my story, thanks for reading and have a great night.