Royals fans show their love with these nine crazy creations

What is it about the Kansas City Royals that would get a Lee’s Summit man to turn his vintage Land Cruiser into a blue Moose Mobile, complete with antlers?

Or a Brookside family to transform their backyard into a mini Kauffman Stadium?

Or a Platte City woman to spend an entire season crocheting a blue-and-gold afghan?

As the Men in Blue prepare for their season opener at Kauffman Stadium next weekend, we asked fans to show us the most creative ways they honor the World Series champs. We were inundated with emails, Facebook messages and tweets.

Readers snapped images of Pinterest-worthy blue wreaths, painted pumpkins, Christmas trees and rally towel pillows. We also received messages from a firefighter with a Royals-themed helmet and a musician who constructed a Royals-themed banjo.

Here are some of our favorites.

Moose Mobile

If you want to encounter the Moose Man in his natural habitat, just attend a Royals game at The K.

The superfan, otherwise known as Craig Rookstool of Lee’s Summit, is easy to spot. He spends most games holding huge moose antlers to his head while cheering for his favorite player, third baseman Mike Moustakas.

The antlers are fake, but Rookstool’s dedication to the team is very real. Just check out his tailgating buggy: a 1972 Royals blue Toyota Land Cruiser towering atop 49-inch tires. The 4,800-pound beast was designed for rock crawling, but Rookstool made it his Moose Mobile by adding Royals decals, a World Series flag and, of course, antlers.

Rookstool says making his Moose Mobile was fun, but sharing it with other fans is even better. He’ll never forget the feeling of cruising in the World Series victory parade as thousands of his fellow fans bellowed “Mooose!”

“To watch people in this city smile,” Rookstool says, “it just fills my tank.”

 

Backyard baseball oasis

In September, Lisa Remmert-Dubbert and her family decided to transform their Brookside backyard into a whiffle ball field with a Royals-themed party porch.

“We wanted a cool way to show our love of the Royals,” Lisa says.

After enlisting husband Tom to construct a stone patio with wooden benches, Lisa and her dad built a 7-foot scoreboard using plywood and spray paint from Home Depot. The scoreboard, modeled after the one at The K, helps the Dubberts’ sons Evan, 14, and Alec, 10, keep track of runners and scores during games.

Lisa softened the sturdy wood benches with Royals blue-and-white pillows and added gold chevron pillows that echo the scoreboard’s crown.

The party porch is quickly becoming a neighborhood gathering spot.

“The weekend after we finished the patio, neighbors whom we had never met stopped by and asked if their kids could come over and play,” Lisa says.

“So in fact, if you build it, they will come.”

 

#SalvySplash cake

Custom cake-maker Whitney Mathis of Parkville has constructed her fair share of Royals-themed cakes, most in the shape of baseballs or “KC” caps.

But recently Mathis went in a much cooler direction when a client asked for a Royals-themed cake for her son’s 15th birthday party.

Inspired by the #SalvySplash billboard in Westport, Mathis crafted an orange Gatorade cooler out of cake and buttercream frosting. She made the cooler’s ridges by scraping the orange frosting with a notched trowel that she purchased from a hardware store for $1.

Mathis replicated the World Series logo with modeling chocolate and more buttercream, then finished the cake with “splashes” of frosting that dripped from the cooler like Gatorade. Something tells us Salvy would approve.

 

A helmet for a (little) boy in blue

Shelby McAlister’s 10-month-old son, Finn, wears a cranial helmet to correct a flat spot on his head, a common condition known as plagiocephaly.

To make Finn’s headgear more kid-friendly, McAlister used the website blingyourband.com to design stickers that made the white helmet look like a baseball, complete with seams and a Royals logo.

The helmet, which also says “Finn” on the front, gets a lot of love from other fans.

“Everyone’s like, ‘I love his helmet, it’s so cool!’ ” says McAlister, who lives in Weston. Finn can’t talk yet, but she thinks he likes it, considering he’s a regular at The K.

“He’s already been to three games,” McAlister says.

 

Art that leaps from the pages

Tiffany Shaw of Bates City, Mo., is a baseball fanatic with a talent for art and crafts. So when the Royals won the World Series, she decided to commemorate the win with a fun project.

Shaw used a software program to convert the team’s “KC” logo into precise measurements that she could transfer point-by-point to the pages of a hardcover book she bought from a thrift store. Then she used a ruler to draw lines between the points and folded each page by hand.

The process took about seven hours and produced a book that opens like an accordion, with the “KC” logo leaping off the folded pages in three dimensions.

Shaw, a student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, displays the book on a shelf near her workspace and is preparing two more Royals-themed book sculptures.

She says her 4-year-old son, Aiden, also a baseball fan, thinks they’re cool.

“But he knows not to touch Mommy’s book,” Shaw says.

 

#Yosted afghan

Early last year, Carmen Whited of Platte City started crocheting a Royals-themed afghan out of blue, gray and gold yarn.

It took almost an entire season to make all 24 squares for the blanket, but Whited says she didn’t mind because crocheting is a “total stress reliever” during tense games. Each elaborate square has a theme and a name.

“The one with the star in the middle, that’s All Star,” Whited says.

A square with a stove pattern reminds Whited of the offseason, also called the “hot stove,” when Royals fans weren’t sure if the team would be able to keep star player Alex Gordon. Another square, #Yosted, has a more complicated backstory.

“The technique for crochet is, you start from the middle and go out,” Whited explains. “But that one, you do row by row. It made me think of how sometimes (Royals manager Ned) Yost makes these decisions that don’t make sense.”

“But it works in the blanket.”

 

Baseball banjo

Banjo builder Mark Franzke of Prairie Village got the idea to make a World Series-themed instrument before the Royals beat the Mets. But no way would he start before the Royals took the crown.

“I didn’t cut any wood until after the final game,” Franzke says. “I didn’t want to jinx it or waste any good maple.”

It took Franzke two weeks to make his Royals banjo, with one end in the shape of a crown, the other end a baseball mitt, and a fretboard inlaid with synthetic marble reading “World Series Champs 2015.”

Painted red stitching turned the head into a baseball. The back is made of purpleheart wood. “That was the closest I could get to blue,” he says.

Franzke proudly displays the banjo at his store, Bradford & Franzke Fret Shop, 4448 Belleview Ave. He’s also been known to play it at bluegrass clubs and neighborhood parties. And yes, he knows “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

“Figured I had to learn that,” Franzke says.

 

A lawn fit for The K

After the Royals won the American League Division Series last fall, 16-year-old Noah Stephens of Independence asked his parents, Christy and Darin Stephens, if he could spray-paint the team logo on their front lawn. The baseball fans said yes.

“I’ve got some pretty cool parents,” Noah says.

He free-handed the classic “KC” logo in white with a blue outline and kept it up through the World Series. The day after the Royals took the crown, Noah added the words “World Champs.”

Surprisingly the grass didn’t die (“It was God’s doing,” Noah says.), and neighbors didn’t mind the yard art. Some cheered him on as he painted, others asked him to replicate the logo on their lawns.

Noah let the “KC” logo fade over the winter but brought it back a few weeks ago. Now there’s a spring training logo underneath. The teenager says he plans to keep the logo fresh all season.

“I feel like it’d be bad luck if I let it fade out,” he says.

 

Wheelchair costume

Trina Ledford Lovell of Blue Springs says her 15-year-old son, Dylan, has loved two things since he was little: “cartoons and baseball.”

Dylan, who has dysautonomia and a neurological disorder called Moebius syndrome, uses a wheelchair. Last Halloween the Lovells designed a Royals-themed version using cardboard, construction paper, plastic foam and yellow baseball bats purchased at a dollar store.

The result was a baseball “throne” with a “Take the Crown” banner. On Halloween, Dylan sat like a king in his blue Royals T-shirt and hat.

Trina says that the next day, she took Dylan (in costume) to Children’s Mercy Hospital so he could deliver snacks to the nurses during the game.

“The Royals were doing well, and we were so excited,” Trina says. “I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to celebrate that.”

This story was originally published March 26, 2016 at 3:01 AM with the headline "Royals fans show their love with these nine crazy creations."