Those Kooky Kansas
City Cats
Meet the Men Behind the Catsuits at Royals
Games; Hello, Sprinkles
By Jason Gay in the
Wall Street Journal
Kansas City, Mo.
As soon as I got to
Kansas City, I wanted to meet the two guys in the catsuits. I thought the two
guys in the catsuits were a symbol of something big, something important and
stirring about the World Series fever in this once-forgotten, now feverish
baseball town.
OK, not really. I just
wanted to meet the two guys in the catsuits because I thought they were
hilarious.
If you’ve been
following the baseball postseason and the improbable rise of the Royals—now in
the World Series for the first time since Members Only was the slickest
thing—you may have seen the Catsuit Guys on TV or on the Internet. There they
are, in October weather mild and brisk, cheering on their hometown nine,
stuffed into what appears to be a tightfitting version of a “Feel Better” card
your grammy sends after you’ve had the flu.
The Catsuit Guys were
not hard to find. I located them before Game 1 on the plaza behind the Kauffman
Stadium outfield, not far from the dancing fountains and a bar serving a $14
adventure called Loaded Hot Chocolate. John Mellencamp’s “R.O.C.K. in the
U.S.A.” thundered off the concrete.
Their names are Paul
Long and John Stoner. Long, 33, works as a motivational speaker. Stoner 34, is
an IT consultant. They’re both dads, both Royals die-hards and have known each
other most of their lives.
“Best friends since
the fifth grade,” Long said. They’d been coming to games for years. They’d
painted themselves, worn swimsuits; they had “Dumb and Dumber” tuxedos, too.
“We’ve been doing stupid stuff forever.”
Are they cat guys?
“I am,” Long said. He
nudged Stoner, who had dyed his beard blue. “He doesn’t like cats.”
“I have a cat,” Stoner
said. His kid had named it Fluffy Longtail. Fluffy Longtail, he said, “doesn’t
like me.”
Upon closer
inspection, the catsuit is a wrestling singlet, made by a Kansas City company
called Blue Chip Athletic. The front and back depict a remarkably lifelike
image of a cat. The cat is named Sprinkles, after one of Angela’s cats on the
sitcom “The Office.” I’m not making any of this up. They are the most
ridiculous wrestling singlets I have ever seen, and I enjoy the WWE.
There’s something
about that cat, too. Sprinkles’s eyes sit at mid-chest level, right about where
a school wrestling team would place its name, and—I don’t want to sound
supernatural here—but Sprinkles has this look that’s neither friendly nor
fiendish, but is mesmerizing.
It’s as if Sprinkles
is looking right into your soul.
Long and Stoner wore
the Sprinkles singlets for the first time in June when the Royals hosted the
New York Yankees for Kansas City’s stop on the multicity Derek Jeter farewell
present tour. They held up signs that said “Derek Jeter—One Classy Cat” and
photos of the pair started going viral.
Blue Chip Athletic
co-owner Jason Heslop heard about it immediately. “I had a friend send me a
screenshot and he was like, ‘Dude, your cat singlet is on MLB Instagram,’ ”
Heslop recalled. “I was just blown away.” He said that sales were up on the
Sprinkles suit—that every time the Catsuit Guys were shown on TV, he could
count on finding a few orders in the morning.
“Mainly in XL and XXL
sizes,” Heslop said.
As long as there have
been sports, there have been maniacal super fans—face painters, chest painters,
Rainbow Wig Dude, Jerry Jones, etc. The Royals have others, most notably SungWoo Lee, the South Korean Royals admirer who
was mobbed upon his arrival at the Kansas City airport, and was seen during
Game 1 sitting next to actor and K.C. native Paul Rudd. The same night, a
Florida super fan named Laurence Leavy created a stir sitting behind home plate
wearing a Miami Marlins jacket the color of a traffic cone.
The Catsuit Guys have
become minor celebrities, too. Over the course of our interview, they were
repeatedly interrupted by fans who asked to take photographs. Before the game,
Royals catcher Salvador Perez posted their picture on his Facebook page. “I
know these cats are ready,” Perez wrote. “Are you?” The Catsuit Guys had helped
raise money for a young Royals fan with cerebral palsy to get to the World
Series; thanks to a donated ticket, he was supposed to be in attendance for
Game 2.
Stoner, meanwhile, was
talking about wearing the catsuit to a Chiefs game in Oakland next month. “I’m
working on getting red cats,” he said.
“We just like to have
fun,” Long said. “We think people take life too seriously.”
Later during Game 1, I
spoke to Long’s wife, Melissa, on the phone. “I grew up with both of them,” she
said. “Nothing they do surprises me.”
The Catsuit Guys hit a
speed bump on Tuesday night. The 2014 club had ridden a remarkable eight-game
playoff win streak into Game 1. But the Giants jumped on the Royals early and
never relented, cruising to an easy 7-1 win. (The Royals rebounded in Game 2,
winning 7-2 to even the series.)
I ran into Long and
Stoner shortly after the last out of Game 1. They were disappointed, but far
from dejected. How could they be dejected? It had been 29 years since a night
like this. They remembered how it used to be in Kansas City not so long ago,
when the stadium was a quarter full and the Royals were a baseball
afterthought.
This was a
best-of-seven series. Cats had lives, and the Catsuits would be back.
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