Kansas City Royals

The Kansas City Royals have always been a team that I have been interested in and their history with me is a particularly interesting one. With the video game Home Run King on the Nintendo GameCube, I would often put on two random teams to play each other while I was preoccupied with something else, and one afternoon I remember picking the Detroit Tigers to play at Kauffman Stadium against the Kansas City Royals. This game was particularly interesting due to the fact that the two computer teams refused to score what-so-ever, and hours later I found myself amazed that the game was into the 27th inning with still no runs scored. I can't recall the way the game ended, but the Kansas City Royals were the team that was victorious, and ever since then I have been interested in following the team to some extent.

The modern day On-Field Fitted for the Kansas City Royals is one of the more simple caps worn by teams in the MLB, and with the retirement of the team's powder blue Alternate, this will be the Royals cap from game 1 to game 162. The cap is a simple base blue with a white button located on the top, along with that the rear batterman logo utilises a bright blue stitching complemented by metallic gold stitching on the right. This cap is one of the more storied ones in regards to expansion teams, this cap has been left relatively unchanged since the team's original formation in 1969 other than the implementation of the batterman logo that all teams eventually were introduced to.

Much like with the more modern New Era 59Fifty caps, the embroidery is raised much higher than it has been in previous years, another alteration in the raised embroidery that I notice when compared to my late 90's Diamond Collection Royals cap is that the attached “K” and “C” have a slight depression between them rather than being a straight connection as noted in the Diamond Collection. This cap was particularly difficult for me to find but it wasn't because of lack of stock, but was due to the tightness of the stitching of the front edges; stitching often would not be tight enough and would droop, so finding the perfect cap was difficult. An interesting fact that I noticed with the quality of stitching on the front of this cap, is that for the first time ever I discovered a cap in which the Chinese embroidery is superior to the American. The cap pictured here is an American cap, but the stitching on a Chinese one that I saw recently had much tighter stitching and there was no sagging of individual threads.

The colour choices of the rear embroidered batterman logo flow very well, using the historical reference of the team's name “royals,” which has nothing to do with royalty but has everything to do with seasonal south Missouri Rodeo, the use of gold is used to represent the ill-faded monarchy that the team has attempted to exploit for the past several decades.

The Kansas City Royals have one of the classiest caps in baseball and this is due to their simplicity and familiarity with the previous generation of players and fans in the Kansas and Missouri area. The cap was definitely worth my money and will definitely be put into my cap rotation, I regret not getting my replacement due to the retirement of my old 6-3/4 Diamond Collection from the late 90's. In general I tend to prefer the 100% wool version of caps, but I tend to prefer the look, style, and feel of this Royals cap in the 100% polyester along with the black underbrim.