Carl Edwards, in a blue Royals jersey with his #99 on the back, stood atop the pitcher’s mound at Kauffman Stadium and let it rip. It may have been the ceremonial first pitch before Tuesday night’s Royals-Tampa Bay game, but Edwards was all business, just as he is in a race car. The right-hander’s fastball blistered Billy Butler’s mitt ‘¦ just a bit outside. ‘You’ve got a pretty good arm,’ Butler, an avowed NASCAR fan, shouted to Edwards. Edwards, from Columbia, was supposed to take some batting practice and shag fly balls during his appearance promoting the May 10 Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway. But his plane was delayed out of Charlotte, where he was taping a commercial, and the Royals’ batting practice had ended. That didn’t diminish the enjoyment of his first trip to Kauffman Stadium, a place Edwards has driven past countless times en route to Kansas Speedway the last 14 years but never visited. ‘That’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,’ a starry-eyed Edwards said as he came off the field and fist-bumped a cadre of Royals players, coaches and manager Ned Yost, another NASCAR buff. ‘I was a little nervous about the first pitch. I warmed up a little bit (Monday) night. I haven’t thrown a baseball for a long time. My strategy was to throw it as hard as I could.’(Kansas City Star)(4-10-2014)
