Here's my abridged trip report.
I got to KC about 5:45 on Friday. Checked into the Crown Center. The hotel knew that we wanted a suite with 2 beds, if possible, and they more than took care of us. They gave us the "Plaza Suite", which had two bedrooms.
The suite was very large - each bedroom was more or less a normal guest room... the one with two doubles has an Eames chair in it. I always thought they looked cool, but had never sat in one before. The central room was enormous- maybe 60 feet long- clearly meant for entertaining. 3 bathrooms- all standard bathrooms, but had not yet been updated to have a heavenly shower.. A small wetbar. A full kitchen.
The suite was furnished in a sort of Asian style, but with a lot of light colors. It was kind of strange for KC. It had a big stereo, but the stereo only had a tape deck with it.... strange. The TV was a standard 19 incher- could have been bigger. But we were very happy with the upgrade- particularly that they were willing to pre-block it for us.
I got to KC in time to see the Friday game (Pedro). As my buddy was not there yet, I just picked up the best available single seat right before the start of the game. Not bad... for $21 I got in the 7th row on the 1B side right next to the batter's box. Pedro was disgusting... he doesn't have all the rust off yet, but had he not flubbed a toss to first in the 4th, he could have had a perfect game. Let me explain. He retired the first 11 guys. Then Carlos Beltran hit a sharp ground ball to Tony Clark at first, who flipped to Pedro who dropped the ball while covering first... E1. next batter is Mike Sweeney. Sweeney gets his bat snapped on a fastball, and hits a bloop to center. Damon charges, but not too hard, and the ball drops for a single. Pedro then retired the next 13 batters before leaving after 8.
Had Pedro not dropped the toss to first, Damon probably would have caught Sweeney's hit. It hung up for a while and he would have had a very good shot at it. but given that it was a scoreless game, Damon did the right thing by keeping it in front of him so the runner on first didn't have a chance to score.
Anyway, KC is alright. Weather was lousy. Rain washed out Saturday's game. We ate at Gates' which was pretty good.