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Thursday, October 23, 2014

Those Kooky Kansas City Cats


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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