Episode Details

We’ve arrived at the latest opening day in baseball history. And now, the sprint is on.

A 60-game regular season and the quest to land in an expanded Major League Baseball playoff bracket begins Friday night for the Kansas City Royals. On this episode of The Star’s daily SportsBeat KC podcast you’ll hear from seven-time Gold Glove-winning outfielder Alex Gordon on what he believes is a more dangerous KC lineup this season.

After a break, Royals play-by-play man Ryan Lefebvre explains how it’s all going to work in the booth this season. The Royals’ TV and radio crews will not travel to road games. But they won’t miss a moment of the action. They’ll be calling all the games from Kauffman Stadium. Lefebvre breaks down the unique challenges of such an arrangement.

We’ll finish with sound from the first major sporting event in Kansas City since the shutdown in mid-March. You’ll hear how the Super Start Batteries 400 sounded, from the ‘Start your engines!” command bellowed by Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones to the final laps of the hotly contested NASCAR Cup race in KCK.

The first busy sports weekend in Kansas City in more than four months has arrived, with the Royals’ season starting, Sporting KC facing Vancouver Sunday at 10 p.m. in the knockout round of the MLS is Back Tournament, continued racing at Kansas Speedway (ARCA, Xfinity and two trucks series races remain this weekend), and the Chiefs’ rookies reporting to camp.

Follow coverage of all these events and more via kansascity.com and the SportsBeat KC podcast, as well as in the printed edition of The Kansas City Star newspaper!

Story links:

Royals release hype video ahead of 2020 opener

Royals roster is set, and Bubba Starling leads list of first timers on list of 30

Hamlin is lights out in his third Cup win at Kansas Speedway

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