‘Bob came with the building’: Royals usher has worked at the ballpark for 50 years

Bob Stamps isn’t one for sitting.

As a Kansas City Royals usher supervisor, the 74-year-old walks three or four miles per game, mostly along the field-level walkway between home plate and center field on the third base side at Kauffman Stadium — the zone he oversees.

The only home games he ever misses are a couple of Friday nights in the fall, when he can be found standing on a football field officiating high school games. The man has spent the last 50 years directing Royals fans to their sections and seats, but when he attends away games and is confined to the section and seat on his own ticket, something in Stamps rebels against the very structure he enforces back at The K.

“I get antsy,” Stamps said. “It’s hard for me to just sit and watch a game. I need to be moving.”

When he’s roaming around the stadium, as he was during a recent Saturday afternoon game against the Detroit Tigers, it is rare for Stamps to take much more than 10 steps without encountering a friendly greeting: an enthusiastic “Hi, Bob!” from a few young women passing by in white jerseys, members of the Royals cheerleading KCrew; a fist bump from a security guard; a “Hello, Mr. Stamps,” from a longtime season-ticket holder.

“Everybody knows Bob,” said Al “Butch” Caudle, who started out working under Stamps and now supervises the ushers on the first-base side, “and Bob knows everybody.”

“If he wasn’t here, it wouldn’t feel the same,” said Stephanie Roach, an usher in the section Stamps supervises. “I always say Bob came with the building. He’s been here since the place opened.”

Actually, it’s longer than that. Stamps’ time with the Royals organization dates back to the days of Municipal Stadium at 22nd and Brooklyn, where he worked as an usher for a month during the team’s final season there in 1972. Before that, Stamps, who’s 6 foot 5, had been a college basketball player at Tyler College, a historically Black school in Texas, where he arrived after a childhood in segregated Edwards, Mississippi.

“The town was split,” Stamps said. “The whole state was split. I graduated high school in 1967 and never went to school with a white person the whole time I was there. It got better after I left. No sense in making it sound better than it was, though.”

His college girlfriend was recruited by the Kansas City, Kansas, school system to become a teacher, and he followed her up the next year, taking a job teaching physical education at Northwest Middle School. He worked for the district for the next 32 years, ushering night games on the side. He worked for the Chiefs for about a decade, too. “But it got too cold for me.”

He was promoted to his current position in 1977, after several years working on the Loge Level (known in those days as the Club Level).

“I filled in one night for the supervisor, and we had some fans arguing, looking to fight,” Stamps said. “I called for assistance, but by the time they got there I already had it under control. I assume my bosses liked that, because the next year that supervisor left and they offered me his job.”

Stamps retired from the KCK school district in 2005 and has rarely missed a home game since. The job is simple, he said. He arrives at the stadium about an hour before gates open and meets with his ushers — 30 on a fully staffed day, though usually less. They gather down in the underground concessions area near Section 118, Stamps in a navy Royals polo, his team in bright yellow shirts, and go over anything new or noteworthy: post-game fireworks, special giveaways, guide dogs.

“We observe fans. Check tickets. Make sure there’s no seat jumpers. Watch for vaping, smoking,” Stamps said. “We don’t see a lot of trouble. It’s mostly just: smile, check their tickets, guide the people.”

After the last out is made, the ushers take positions at the base of their sections, closest to the field, and give the fans about 15 minutes to clear out. Then Stamps yells, “Bring it up,” and the ushers walk methodically up the steps, scanning each row for valuables.

“Bob likes looking down and seeing us all in unison, with the yellow shirts on each row all lined up,” said Roach.

Four years ago, in recognition of his decades of service, the Royals introduced the Bob Stamps Gameday Associate of the Year Award, which goes to the stadium employee “who best emulates the four character traits Bob has shown throughout his tenure with the Royals: pride, teamwork, guest service, and character,” according to the team. (This year’s award will be presented Sunday, Sept. 25, the last home game of the season.) A plaque with the names of the winners hangs on the wall in the Hall of Fame suite, alongside retired jerseys, Star headlines, the World Series trophy and other memorabilia.

“I didn’t know they were doing it, it surprised me,” Stamps said of the award. “I grew up in Mississippi. I never thought I’d have my name on a plaque in the Royals Hall of Fame.”

Out on the diamond that Saturday, the game wasn’t quite up to Hall of Fame standards. The storm that was forecast for later in the day had arrived early, dumping globs of rain onto fans in Stamps’ uncovered sections, who’d scrambled to the concourse as though a fire alarm had been pulled. The rain never really let up, and nor did the Tigers, who were thumping the Royals 8-4 in the 8th inning when the game was mercifully called after an hourlong delay.

“Boy, we just been losin’ and losin’ — they beat us like this last night,” Stamps said, frowning at the scoreboard behind center field. He attempted a sunnier spin on the situation: “You know, the way I look at it, we got a bunch of young players. We just got to hold it together and give them a few years.”

As the Royals head into their final homestand of the season, Stamps says he intends to be around to see how that plays out.

“I really believe that I’ve been doing this so long, if I stop and sit down, I think I might just melt away,” Stamps said. “I’m not ready to go yet. Why stop doing this thing I love? Plus, I want to see one more World Series.”