The World Series of weirdness
Reflect on a few quirks from this year’s wildcard action
Logan Krupa
Staff Writer
“Laurence Leavy Marlins Fan,” spotted in his usual Marlins attire is a MLB celebrity, with fans lining up to take photos when they spot him.
Photo courtesy: Twitter
The year’s Major League Baseball World Series action between the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants has featured its fair share of oddities. Here are some of the instances that have made the annual event a bit quirky.
The state of things
Where are the Kansas City Royals based in? If you answer, “Kansas, duh!” that would be incorrect. The Royals baseball team is actually located in Missouri. The Kansas City Royals get their name from the city in Missouri, called Kansas City, not from the American state. This fact even confuses MLB players. In a Royals’ August 2014 game, Giants’ outfielder, Hunter Pence, thought the Royals were from Kansas, until after he read a fan’s sign in Missouri during Game 1. He said after to a Yahoo Sports reporter, “I guess I’m really bad at geography. This is Missouri, correct? It’s tricky.”
Pitching peanuts precisely
The series has helped one video game go viral. It features a Kansas City vendor in the lower stadium seats confidently tossing a bag of peanuts, with incredible accuracy, to a fan sitting in the towering top half of the stadium. Even Tom Brady, National Football League all-star quarterback of the New England Patriots, couldn’t accomplish this. Video clips of the scene from game can be viewed by searching ‘Ace Peanut Man at 2014 World Series’ on YouTube. The Royals should maybe consider offering him a contract as a pitcher.
If you think Calgary parking is expensive…
Private parking lots near San Francisco’s AT&T Park were spotted charging flat rates of $100 USD a spot to park during the World Series.
Orange you going to change your jersey?
The Giants’ colours are orange and white, yet if you were looking carefully, one series fan wasn’t cheering for the Giants. During World Series games in Kansas City, the fan sitting right behind home plate, in prime TV camera territory, was wearing a bright orange Miami Marlins’ MLB jersey. The fan is Laurence Leavy. Leavy has been spotted at Royals’ games for years in that same jersey.
He alleges that the Royals have desperately bribed him to change his jersey and/or seat location, because of his regular TV coverage, but he refuses to move or change his odd choice of attire.
Oh say, can you see, a bad singer
Staind, metal band, singer Aaron Lewis was an odd choice to sing the U.S. anthem before Game 5 of the World Series. He also botched the lyrics, replacing “at the twilight’s last gleaming” with “were so gallantly streaming.” Let’s just call that one of the worst strike outs of the series.
