After officially announcing their partnership with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum on Jan. 21, the Kansas City T-Bones baseball team changed their name to the Kansas City Monarchs.
The team began the process of partnering with the museum and renaming last fall before settling on the Monarchs — a nod to the Negro Leagues baseball team that competed in Kansas City from 1920 to 1965.
“The Monarchs is such a well-known name within baseball and sports in general, and obviously we had kind of gone back and forth with deciding what we were thinking,” the Monarchs’ production and digital assets manager Morgan Kolenda said. “Coming off of COVID and into 2021 with a fresh name, and to have that connection with the Negro Leagues, we thought it would be a good idea.”
According to Kolenda, the new name will act as a fresh start for the T-Bones, after being forced to take a year off due to COVID. Although the T-Bones name has been with the team since it began in 2003, she believes that the new name will be an exciting change for the team.
“The T-Bones has been just such a staple in the Kansas City and Wyandotte County area, and that was a hard thing to part with,” Kolenda said. “But this will be a good decision for us going forward.”
Before partnering, the team spoke to the board of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and worked to bring the Kansas City Monarchs back to life. The negotiation took several months, given the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum owns the Kansas City Monarchs name and wanted to protect the historic impact of the team’s name. According to Bob Kendrick, the President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, both parties worked together throughout the negotiations knowing that they all wanted the partnership to happen.
The hope of both the Monarchs and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is that the joint effort brings awareness to the history of the city and the Negro Leagues, while offering a unique experience to baseball fans.
This newfound partnership includes more than just a name change — the Monarchs are hoping to include a pop-up museum inside of their stadium where fans can learn the history of the name. They’re also offering a special “Monarchs Membership,” where fans can purchase two tickets to the opening day game, along with two tickets to the Negro Leagues museum. A portion of the team’s ticket sales will also go to the museum.
“The whole purpose of this is to basically educate people on the history behind the Monarchs, and that all started with the Negro Leagues,” Kolenda said. “So what better way than to direct them to the museum, and to get them to drive traffic over there to learn about the history?”
Kendrick is excited about the prospects of the collaboration extending the reach of the museum into parts of greater Kansas City.
“Essentially, now the ballpark becomes an extension of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and that’s very exciting and very appealing to us,” Kendrick said. “We want to get ourselves to reach as many people as we possibly can with this incredible story of triumph over adversity.”
Kendrick sees this collaboration as an opportunity to teach younger generations about the Negro Leagues and the Monarchs, given that the league has been disbanded for decades. He hopes it will create relevancy for the museum and make the history of the Negro Leagues appeal to a wider audience.
“When those young athletes put on those uniforms, they will be channeling the spirit of Buck O’Neil, of Satchel Page, Bullet Rogan or Milton Smith,” Kendrick said. “The spirit of those players and the history of the Monarchs will come to life.”
Senior Kayla Andrews, a member of Race Project KC, thinks that this partnership will cause fans of the team to become more interested in the Black history of the city.
“With the Monarchs becoming a team again, I think that more people will be interested in learning what it really means,” Andrews said.
According to Kolenda, the partnership will add an educational opportunity for the fans of the team, while still allowing them the baseball game experience that the team is known for.
“We offer something that a lot of Major League teams don’t offer, and that’s the on-field experience and the interaction with the players,” Kolenda said. “We’re hoping to continue that for the years to come and with the help of the Negro Leagues, that definitely helps as well.”
Now there’s only one thing left to do in order to successfully bring back the Kansas City Monarchs — win.
“The pressure is, when you put the Monarch uniform on, you have got to win,” Kendrick said. “The Monarchs only had one losing season in their run, and that was during World War II. So if you’re going to put those uniforms on, you’ve got to really play.”