Boyfriend will keep his KC Royals playoff promise to get girlfriend a puppy

A whole lot of drama went down at Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday night, but only part of it played out on the field.

For everyone watching the Wild Card Game, Question 1 was: Can the Royals pull this out?

You know the answer to that one.

For all of us watching on TV, there was a Question 2: Did that woman get her puppy?

In the fifth inning, as TBS was heading into a commercial break, the camera lingered for a good 10 seconds on a female fan holding a sign. On that sign was a picture of a dog wearing a Royals crown. And these words: “If We Win, He’s Buying Me a Puppy!”

An arrow pointed to the guy at her right.

The woman, we now know, was Katie Castan, 24, of Prairie Village. The guy was her boyfriend of 21/2 years, Joe Onofrio, 30, of Kansas City.

Turned out that Joe had made a bet with Katie. Her thing is more Nebraska football than Royals baseball. (She’s from Omaha.) Back at the end of June, our boys in blue were struggling, and it was making Joe a tad cranky.

Watching a Royals game with him after work? Not always a ton of fun.

So he called in the hounds.

Actually just one. His multi-tiered bet/bribe/challenge went like this: If (a) Katie watched most of the rest of the season’s Royals games with him and (b) at the end of the season she could name 10 Royals players and (c) the Royals won the division or a Wild Card Game …

He’d get her a puppy.

“It worked,” he said Wednesday. “She really likes puppies.”

Danica Lyons, a co-worker of hers at West Bottoms ad agency DMH, made the poster. Tuesday afternoon, Katie texted a picture of it to Joe, who works at an investment firm.

“This isn’t too embarrassing, is it?” she asked him.

“Absolutely not,” he replied.

At the game, one of the DMH partners, in the section next to Joe and Katie, pointed out her sign to a roving TBS cameraman. After Royals pitcher James Shields secured a third out, the photographer gave Katie a nod.

The camera’s red light came on. They were live on national TV.

“Our phones blew up right away,” she says, with enough text messages to “make you think something was happening.” Someone later created a Twitter account called @GetHerThatPuppy — “Royals 9, A’s 8. Fair is fair.” The social media craziness would only intensify Wednesday.

After the game, in the parking lot gridlock, they discussed what they’d name the pup, which will stay at Joe’s place.

Their Top 4: Rally, Finnegan (Finn for short), Salvador (Salvy), Perez.

Brandon Finnegan is the rookie Royals pitcher who helped save the night. “He’s got serious swagger, but he was not on the radar for a puppy name” before Tuesday, Joe admits.

Salvador Perez is Joe’s favorite player, the guy who drove in the 12th-inning run that won Tuesday’s game.

By the way, the pooch on the poster was a corgi, which was the kind of dog Katie wanted. In a happy coincidence, corgis are already royals, at least in some households. Queen Elizabeth II has a bunch of them.

Some on social media took slight umbrage at the sign’s wording, that Joe would buy a pup rather than adopt one.

But they’re likely to adopt a dog from KC Pet Project, the Kansas City animal shelter. It doesn’t have to be a corgi — which is good, the shelter’s Tori Fugate says, because not a lot of corgis come through there. Fugate sent Katie pictures of several cute dogs Wednesday.

Although Joe and Katie had planned to wait until next spring, “he’s feeling the pressure to get out there and search for something,” she says. They might get a pup in the next week or two.

“He’s never had a dog before, so this will be an adventure for us,” Katie says.

One last thing: that kiss.

Before the TBS broadcast cut to commercial, Joe leaned in and planted one on Katie’s cheek, then pointed to the sign and gave a thumbs-up. Absolutely adorable.

“I got lucky,” he says. And before you know it, some Kansas City dog will, too.

This story was originally published October 1, 2014 at 5:45 PM with the headline "Boyfriend will keep his KC Royals playoff promise to get girlfriend a puppy."