She’s a Royals Fan? Now I’m Officially In Love With Hayley Atwell

Last year, shortly after Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals won their first American League Pennant since 1985 local-boy-turned-celebrity Paul Rudd was interviewed on the  field, jumping up and down with joy because the Royals were going back to the World Series!!!  He jokingly invited everyone in the stadium to his mom’s house for an after party, a self-deprecating joke about how although he’s from the area (Overland Park, KS to be specific) he doesn’t actually live there and crashes with his mom when he’s in town.  Plus, it was a knowing reference to the way the Royals players had invited everyone in the city to party with them at a local bar after they won the first round of the playoffs.  Not everyone got the joke, and some people did indeed show up at his mom’s house.

The whole thing doubly delighted me as a huge Royals fan as well as a fan of comic book movies.  That was Ant-Man hobnobbing it with the Royals!  Prior to that, the only time the Royals had popped up in connection, however vague, to the comic book movie universe was when Henry Cavill wore a Royals shirt in Man of Steel. 

Well, Rudd is not the only Royals fan in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not that I had any idea about this until this morning.  Peggy Carter herself, British born Hayley Atwell, also cheers on Mike Moustaskas, Eric Hosmer and the gang.  As Peggy in the two Captain America films and the Agent Carter limited series on ABC, she is arguably Marvel Studios’ shining achievement in depictions of female characters, so fierce and intriguing as Cap’s love interest that she got her own short movie and then her own TV show.  However, I actually know very little about Atwell, greatly admiring her work without ever having seen her interviewed or reading her Wikipedia page.  Her father is apparently from Kansas City, and as a result she spent a fair amount of time in Kansas City growing up.  When the Royals recently played cross-state rivals St. Louis Cardinals, Atwell took to Twitter to pledge her allegiance to the Royals, describing herself as “Missouri girl at heart” who likes both teams, just one a little more than the other obviously.

That caught the attention of the Royals, and she was invited to throw out the first pitch at yesterday’s game against the Cleveland Indians (who beat us 2-1, dangit!).  Thankfully, she has mastered Twitter, and used it to chronicle her whole experience with the team:

Here she is throwing out the pitch:

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— Hayley Atwell (@HayleyAtwell) June 3, 2015

Taking pics with the team’s mascot, Slugger, and his low-grade Captain America shield:

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— Hayley Atwell (@HayleyAtwell) June 3, 2015

And posing for a picture with catcher Salvador Perez and third baseman Mike Moustaskas:

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— Hayley Atwell (@HayleyAtwell) June 3, 2015

And balancing a baseball on her head because, well, why not:

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— Hayley Atwell (@HayleyAtwell) June 3, 2015

By the way, other famous Royals fans include Eric Stonestreet (Modern Family), Jason Sudeikis, his fiance Olivia Wilde, and David Koechner (Champ from Anchorman).

I don’t normally share such celebrity worship on this site, but the sight of Peggy Carter in a Royals uniform so thoroughly overloaded my brain I had to share it, even if it might mean very little to non-Royals fans.

This is just the latest Twitter moment for Atwell.  She also posted hilarious live-updates of a recent experience being in an airport and waiting for a flight while the nearby TV just happened to be showing Captain America: The First Avenger, no one around her appearing to care that they were mere feet away from a woman who was in the movie they were watching.

Source: EW