Today, like in 1985, an epic crowd gathers to celebrate a Royals World Series championship

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“Ho-lee shit,” says a woman at the crest of the Main Street bridge.

She’s looking to the south, where a crush of people clad in blue on opposite sides of Pershing Road await the Tuesday-afternoon rally for the World Series champion Kansas City Royals at Union Station.

“It’s just nuts,” says another man with his young child.

Indeed, it’s a surreal day in Kansas City. With temperatures not far off the record high for November 3 in Kansas City, an unprecedented crowd — easily more than half a million — packed downtown Kansas City to welcome home their Royals.

Schools got canceled. Employers gave up and turned their employees loose. There’s little point in getting much done on this Tuesday. When the Royals win, Kansas City knows how to celebrate.

Travelers from the suburbs and areas beyond waited in traffic for up to three hours to get downtown; some ditched their cars on highway off-ramps so they could hoof it to the parade. People waited, some in vain, at bus stops, hoping to catch a ride and dispense with the idea of finding parking spots. The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority acknowledged that this crowd, at least twice as large as estimates from the day before, overwhelmed its bus system.

Throngs of fans lined Grand Boulevard, often 10-15 people deep, to watch the parade. 

It has to be the biggest crowd to assemble in downtown Kansas City, or perhaps anywhere else in town, for one event. It’s enough to make those Power & Light District gatherings for postseason baseball and World Cup soccer seem quaint.

On any other day, it would be too easy to overstate the effects that professional sports have on a community. But on Tuesday, it was a royal gathering of Kansas Citians, one not seen in 30 years.

For a trip down memory lane, check out some footage from the 1985 Royals parade. The crowd may not have been as large, but the confetti and ticker tape are something to behold.