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The Royals Are Using A Smart Baseball To Make Donating To Charity As Simple As Playing Catch

In 2012, the Kansas City Royals were 72-90, fresh off of a ninth consecutive season in which they finished at least twelve games under .500. But then, in 2014, the Royals returned to the World Series for the first time since 1985, and last year they took home the Commissioner’s Trophy for the first time in 30 years. And today, the Royals are kicking off their championship-defending campaign with one of the most unique charity events the sports world has ever seen.

Dubbed Relay the Way, the charity will be a 9.49-mile chain of baseball tosses in which 2,500 Kansas City residents will relay a baseball all the way from Union Station to Kauffman Stadium, where the Royals will kick off their 2016 season at 7:37 PM CST against the New York Mets.

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But there has to be more to Relay the Way than just a long game of catch, right?

Absolutely right.

VML, the ad agency funding the charity event, has created a “smart baseball” that will be thrown from Union Station to Kauffman Stadium, and then used for the Opening Day game’s first pitch. This “smart baseball” will store 100,000 – 200,000 pieces of text that have been sent in from not just the 2,500 people throwing the ball, but also from anyone that wishes to have their words immortalized inside of a high-tech baseball. The only fee for having a message stored in the ball is a donation of at least $1, and all donations given for messages will be in support of the Kansas City MLB Urban Youth Academy.

Relay the Way truly couldn’t come at a better time, as baseball fans throughout Kansas City are still reliving the first day of last November, when their beloved franchise finally transitioned from laughingstock to world champion. VML’s smart baseball will give those Royals’ diehards the opportunity to say just how much Kansas City baseball means to them… and donate to charity in the process.

But unlike many other time capsules, this smart baseball will not be locked away for the next fifty years — it will be put on display at the Royals’ Hall of Fame, where anyone with a smartphone will be able to access the text stored inside of the ball. The smart baseball will serve as a reminder of how Kansas City’s storybook 2015 season impacted Royals’ fans everywhere, and about how Kansas City responded to its baseball success in a gloriously philanthropic way.

Sports championships tend to do magical things to a city. And as Relay the Way has already shown, a little bit of a push in the right direction can direct that magic in a very positive way.

 

 

 

 

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