By ERIC BARTON
I got a text message last night at 8:58 from a friend with some pretty big breaking news. The Royals, he reported, have dropped the Kiss Cam for a more Disney-style version called the Hug Cam. "Dunno for sure but if so that is too creepy conservative," he wrote.
Admittedly, I haven't been to the 'K in a couple months, so I called someone who had been to a recent game. Yep, on Monday night, he saw the Hug Cam but no Kiss Cam.
These sources did enjoy the beverage selections at the 'K. That, of course, leads to the need to visit the concourse facilities. So both of them could've missed the Kiss Cam while headed to the can. So I called the Royals to find out if they had, in fact, turned the Kiss Cam conservative.
The Chicago Bulls' Hug Cam.
Royals public relations guy David Holtzman was fairly sure they hadn't dropped the Kiss Cam. In fact, he said he saw both the Kiss Cam and Hug Cam at Tuesday night's game. To be sure, he referred me to Chris DeRuyscher. He heads the Royals game-day operations, which includes all things scoreboard.
DeRuyscher says he added the Hug Cam simply to change things up a bit. The Kiss Cam isn't going anywhere, he said, especially considering that it's sponsored by Hy-Vee. "We've got 81 games out here, so you have to try some things that are different," DeRuyscher said. "You get to the end of the year and you just want to try some new things."
So far, the Hug Cam has been only mildly successful. "You get people who aren't sure what to do," DeRuyscher says. "The camera goes on them and they look around like, should we hug or should we kiss?"
DeRuyscher says the Hug Cam won't be the last addition. In the next few weeks, he's thinking that we'll see a comeback of the Limbo Cam.
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