After a delay, Royals rule a third person won ‘Hit For Your Seats’ contest

The ball has found a place on the mantel at Bryce Dye’s home.

During the Royals’ “Hit For Your Seats” event earlier this month, Dye crushed a home run down the right-field line at Kauffman Stadium and made a winner of Mike Albano, a season-ticket holder from Independence.

Dye, who graduated from Fort Osage High School and will play at Park University this spring, initially was disqualified, because the Royals’ rules stated that a participant couldn’t be playing college baseball.

But because Park’s season doesn’t start until the spring, the Royals later recanted and Dye’s home run counted.

“It was really cool. It’s not something everybody gets to experience, especially at The K,” said Dye, who is 19. “It was a cool experience.

“I knew it had the distance, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to stay fair. I was pretty early on it. But it stayed inside that pole.”

That home run, which you can see in the video above, made Dye the third person to win the contest, although two others hit home runs during the contest but were disqualified.

All three of the winners were proxies hitting for the season-ticket holder.

“About a month and a half before the competition, my uncle’s buddy who has season tickets asked, ‘Hey, would you like to hit for them.’ I said, ‘Of course, it’s not everyday you get to go up there and do that.’ I gladly accepted his offer and there we were,” Dye said.

“Really, I didn’t know a whole bunch going into it ... so I just went in there with an mind-set of putting a good swing on it. That’s what I did and it went over.”

This story was originally published November 26, 2018 at 12:35 PM.