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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A thief, or likely a group of thieves, who appear to also be Royals fans, stole an enormous Royals player from a billboard sometime Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Now, men (and women) in very different blue uniforms are trying to find them and arrest them.

The billboard is located at Interstate 435 south of Truman Road. Below is the picture of what it looked like before the vandalism and theft. Now it is empty of the 3-D Royals player who was reaching out to make a catch (scroll down for empty board.)

The theft couldn't have been an easy one. The Royals player weighs 150 lbs and was 14 feet tall.

Bob Fessler, Vice President Missouri Territory Manager for Lamar, the billboard company, said Lamar crews were heading north when they called him to say the Royals player was missing off the board.

"I thought it was a joke. I really did. The thing's 14 feet tall, weighs about 150 pounds, and it's connected, it's all threaded to the board in four different spots," said Fessler. "I don't know how they would have hauled this off. I hope somebody sees it. However they got it out of here and we can figure that out."

Hy-Vee is the sponsor of the Kansas City Royals, and Fessler said they wanted to do something different this year with the billboard. They started working on the concept to put one of the players in a three-dimensional mode on a billboard, looking like he was catching a ball over the outfield fence. It was going to stay up for a month and then come down and be put up again deeper into the season.

Fessler said the criminals obviously planned the heist.

"They would have had to be on the board before, to see how it's connected how it's put together and then figure out, 'How do we drop this 14 foot, basically mannequin that weighs 150 pounds to the ground?' And then the transportation side of it, how do you haul something 14 feet long? It's not going to fit in a pickup truck, so… yeah, you're right. Somebody had to think this thing through," Fessler said.

The Royals player comes with a $7,500 price tag. When asked about a reward, Fessler said, 'not yet'.

"This is pretty unique and pretty different. We've had people tag billboards and spraypaint them and we've had people shoot at our digitals thinking that they're going to explode the billboard and it doesn't work that way but nothing like this. This is very unique."

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