Kauffman Stadium update (!!!)

August 31, 2009 [LINK / comment]

Kauffman Stadium update (!!!)

At last! By popular demand, I have finally taken care of revisions to the diagrams of Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals. Needless to say, the revisions were more extensive than I had envisioned. In addition, I found several minor errors in the old diagrams that needed to be corrected. Most notably, the upper deck was about 12 feet (five rows) shorter than it should have been. Is it "perfect" now? (Some people actually ask me that.) No, I'm afraid not. I'll probably make some minor adjustments before long, but for the time being it is much more accurate than before.

While passing through Kansas City two weeks ago, I stopped for a while to inspect Kauffman Stadium, where renovations were completed earlier this year. Even though I didn't have time to take a tour like I did in 2002, I got enough visual information to be very useful in refining the diagram(s). Once again, I was dumbstruck by how darned good the photos I took with my new (well, one year old) Nikon digital camera look. Full disclosure: the panoramic profile view camera that combines photos taken from two separate locations was heavily edited, but the end result looks very natural. Can you detect the inconsistencies?

Kauffman Stadium from the north side, on a sunny morning: August 15, 2009.

Also, I bought a copy of the Kansas City Star while in town, and learned that Arrowhead Stadium next door underwent thorough renovations as well. From what I could tell, they won't be finished in time for football season, but we'll see.

For detailed information on all the renovations that were done prior to this year, see MLB.com

COMMENT by: Chris Knight, of Kansas City, KS on Sep 01, 2009 06:20 AM
The Arrowhead Renovations are due to be complete in time for the 2010 football season. Arrowhead is at reduced capacity for 2009. The biggest noticeable difference in Arrowhead from the inside will be the new Horizon Level beginning built on the side of the stadium and connecting to the nose bleed level giving people sitting up there access to that. Other changes are already in place which are similar to what the K got is bigger concourses and new videos board and ribbon boards. About the K I still see some noticeable errors. But it's a pretty good start. I wish you had got a chance to go take another tour of the K and saw the new HOF. One of the deals in the new Royals HOF featured a video about the planing and construction of the stadium and even shown a brief of what our Multipurpose Domed Stadium would had looked like from the outside and inside seating configuration which was a "PSCSLD" just like the Astrodome. We were fortaionante enough to have some bold people at the time make em build 2 stadiums instead in a period when donut clones where the craze. Some of the minor details is the Outfield Fountain Configurations which are way off from 1973-1990 Before 1991 The left Field area was pretty much all berm with no fountains and no concrete wall as in the diagrams, with a little bit of a fountain just to the left of the scoreboard. This was changed in 1991 when the Fountain was expanded and the Jumbotron was built. From 1986-2007 There were flags in that section showing all of our division title wins (Quite of few post season berths many of them against the Yankees in the ALCS), pennant (one for 1980 as we didn't win the WS), and World Series Win. (1985) Before that the Berm in Left Field would display Team Logos of the Royals and the Opponents, but they stop painting the berm sometime after 1985. The other some what detail problem was the cross section in

COMMENT by: Andrew Clem, of Staunton, VA on Sep 01, 2009 17:24 PM
Thank you for all that information, Chris. I always have to strike a balance between accuracy and timeliness, and I was determined to get Kauffman Stadium done by the end of the month, even though I knew further details would need fixing. I wish I didn't have to rush the last part of my trip, but I'll make sure and visit the Royals HOF next time I'm there. That's fascinating about the original plans for a "cookie-cutter" stadium in K.C. They should build a monument to whoever pushed to have two separate stadiums built; Kauffman is the best in its class -- or maybe second best, after (original) Yankee Stadium.

Posted (or last updated or commented upon): 01 Sep 2009, 5: 38 PM

(unformatted URL) .

Blog post

Monthly archives
(all categories)

Kauffman Stadium update (!!!)

Category archives:
(all years)

This (or that) year's
blog highlights

Explanation

Monthly archives (all categories)

Kauffman Stadium update (!!!)

Category archives: (all years)

This (or that) year's blog highlights

Explanation

Monthly archives
(all categories)

Category archives:
(all years)

This (or that) year's
blog highlights