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"Sometime after he quit playing...someone asked (Dan Quisenberry) why he settled in Kansas City. After all, he was a California kid. He had played all over the country. He had enough money to live wherever he wanted to live. 

'This is home,' he said quietly. 

'But why?' he was asked. 'Why is this home?'

He smiled and shrugged. 'It's like baseball,' he said. 'You don't ask why home plate is there. You just pitch the ball over it.'" 

— Joe Posnanski

Hall of Famers Vs The Royals In Kansas City

This one came about in a roundabout way. There was some back and forth on the Twitters today about forgotten Royals players, which lead me to look up how many players have played exactly one game with the team. Turns out there are nine such players, only three of whom got a plate appearance, and of those only Matt Tupman got a hit. (Tupman's 1-for-1 with a single in 2008 means he will forever have a career line of 1.000/1.000/1.000. I actually remember watching that single.) I clicked over to the one game Gary Martz played with KC on July 8, 1975, and saw that in Martz's lone career MLB game, he got to play with Hall of Famers George Brett and Harmon Killebrew and against Robin Yount and Hank Aaron. Not too shabby. I was especially intrigued by Hank Aaron playing in KC. I think of Aaron as just an NL guy, forgetting he played '75 and '76 with the Brewers. Turns out the Hammer played at Royals Stadium 9 times, hitting career homer number 737 against Al Fitzmorris there on May 9, 1975. It was his only homer off the Royals. That got me wondering what other Hall of Famers have played the Royals that might surprise me, so I went digging through the modern marvel that is Baseball-Reference.com to come up with this master list of regular season games played by Hall of Famers vs. the Royals in Kansas City. Here is that list (broken down into games played at Municipal and Royals/Kauffman Stadiums):

Would you have ever guessed that Billy Williams, Tony Perez, Fergie Jenkins, Ron Santo, Joe Morgan, Hoyt Wilhelm and Juan Marichal all played against the Royals in Kansas City?

Goose Gossage made his career debut at Municipal Stadium with a scoreless inning pitched on April 16, 1972.

Juan Marichal pitched in 11 American League games in his career, all with the '74 Red Sox, and one of them came at Royals Stadium. The Royals knocked him around for 7 runs in 7.1 innings, with Amos Otis and Cookie Rojas tripling and Fran Healy homering off the past his prime star.

HOFers Mike Schmidt and Ozzie Smith also played in KC in World Series games.

HOFers Willie Mays, Johnny Bench and Willie Stargell played in the July 24, 1973 Royals Stadium All-Star Game.


Games played by Hall of Famers for the Royals in Kansas City:
1366 George Brett
51 Harmon Killebrew
16 Orlando Cepeda
7 Gaylord Perry

Pic Dump III

Wathan & Bo argue with replacement umps at a spring training game

1888-89 KC Cowboys manager Bill Watkins

1922 Blues