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This is a picture of my baseball buddy Gary from exactly 20 years ago at the 2004 Royals home opener. My other best baseball buddy was Derrek, who is no longer here to watch the Royals with Gary and me. We were the three amigos at Royals games. Let me tell an opening day story about Derrek and me. Most years -for many years going back to the late 1970s- Derrek, Gary and I would camp out on the concrete overnight outside Right Field GA to be in line for opening day tickets. There were only about 1500 available in right field and 1500 in left field. We liked right field, because we sat down around Joe Hess (Royals Santa Claus) and Darcy our favorite beer man worked right field. So we'd stay up all night long the night before in line; drinking beer and playing poker on the concrete, in all kinds of weather over the years. Rain, cold, wind, whatever. Games usually didn't start until around 3pm, so by game time we were pretty crispy. GA would let you buy two tickets per person. They were cheap; around $2 or $3 each. So we'd send Gary ahead to get down close to the field and save us seats. Derrek and I would buy two extra seats each. So we had two pair of extras. We would then go back to the very end of the GA line. I mean the VERY end. And we'd look for two deserving couples. We would offer them tickets at face value, because we knew by that time the line was so long the tickets would all be gone before they got to the windows. We did it for good baseball karma. People would often jump for joy or cry when we sold them the tickets. It was a cool thing we did every year, and was one of my favorite memories of Derrek. I'll be thinking of him tomorrow as another exciting season of Royals baseball kicks off. Here's also picture of Gary, Derrek, yours truly and one of KCPD's finest from around 1978. GO ROYALS.
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