Starting with a camp in Kansas City in June 1970, the Royals conducted 126 tryouts in a year across the United States and Canada, screening 7,682 candidates, from whom they selected 42 athletes from twenty-six states to make up the academy’s inaugural class. To house the top tryout talents, Kauffman had commissioned a campus on a 121-acre plot of land on the outskirts of Sarasota, Florida. The campus featured five baseball diamonds—all boasting the same dimensions as the field in Kansas City’s under-construction Kauffman Stadium—plus a fifty-room dormitory for players and various
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