The season’s best Royals employee

The seats that will not be sat in by us

Obviously it’s a cheat to make Dal Hindley the Royals Employee of the Year, as the Lancers are long gone (and weren’t technically employees even when they still existed). But that’s exactly why I’m giving him the honor.

The open house on Nov. 3 is pure case in point. For future reference, we showed up at the event, found some seats in the loge that looked good, but were then informed that the seats were only for full-season package purchasers. The decision made not a lick of sense. Here was $3000 walking out the door. If they had a full-season taker for those seats, odds are he or she would already have come forward. Clearly they’re capable of doing a quarter-season deal, because they had other seats in the level available for 21 games.

In the days of the Lancers, we would never have had that problem. If there was a good reason why they had to insist on a full-season deal, at least we would have been given an explanation. If Dal was looking out for us, he would have known that we were interested in a partial season in those seats, and if the franchise didn’t find a full season taker then he would have set us up.

As things stand, however, the team sucks too bad and charges too much to treat its fans this way.
Honorable mention in this category goes to our usher, Johnnie. She isn’t quite like having Estelle back, but at least she’s pleasant to us and mean to the seat hoppers. She should be Royals Employee of the Year solely for being the only person in the whole ballpark (including half the guys on the field) who seems to have any interest in doing her job.