Baseball

Kansas Citians have a lot to say – and feel – about the Kansas City Royals’ interest in relocating Kauffman Stadium. Particularly touchy is the idea that its new home could be downtown.

Some say the economic benefits a downtown baseball stadium would generate is a no-brainer. Others think the team should stay put and suggest that complications like increased downtown traffic would make the move a disaster.

A recent article covering the potential move mentioned that both the Royals and the Kansas City Chiefs once played in a facility near downtown. A reader asked What’s Your KCQ?, a collaboration between the Kansas City Public Library and The Kansas City Star, to investigate the history of Kansas City’s first major sports venue, and whether its location worked for fans.

With the Major League Baseball season underway and the Royals faithful cheering on their boys in blue, it is fitting for What’s Your KCQ? to get a curveball about a possible KC connection regarding the origin of baseball “fans.” While flipping through a 1990 publication, On This Day in America, a reader came across an entry for March 26, 1889, that credits The Kansas Times and Star with referring to followers of baseball as “fans” for the first time. The reader asked KCQ to investigate whether it was true and if the newspaper referenced actually was The Kansas City Star or Times.

It’s a story that has become a part of Kansas City baseball lore: a local team enlisting famed frontier lawman Wild Bill Hickok to umpire a game against a heated rival. How much, if any of it, is true? After listening to a Library audiobook version of Tom Clavin’s Wild Bill: The True Story of America's First Gunfighter, reader and Wild West enthusiast Robert Sholar put the question to What’s Your KCQ?