Kansas City, Mo. ? While waiting nervously to see who would select him in the baseball draft, Eric Hosmer learned something interesting about television.

One set doesn’t necessarily keep up with another, even when they’re on the same channel and in the same house.

When a bunch of friends and family crowded into one room of the Hosmer home Thursday afternoon began erupting with shouts of joy, the group in the next room, where Hosmer was, wondered why.

They were watching another set. And it still had not flashed the news that the 6-foot-4 power-hitting high school first baseman he’d been taken third overall by the Kansas City Royals.

“Everyone was packed into the living you. You could hardly get around,” Hosmer said Friday in a conference call. “The TV I was watching was actually a little slower than the one in the other living room. Everybody out there was just going crazy. We didn’t know. We thought maybe they showed a clip of me or something. Then they told us I got picked. Then we saw the selection, and everyone got excited.”

The Hosmer home was so wall-to-wall with friends, family, teammates and neighbors the Royals themselves couldn’t get through on the phone to set up the customary interview with the Kansas City media.

Once the excitement dies down, the Royals will get down to the serious and tedious business of hammering out a contract with Hosmer and superagent Scott Boras. The demand will be for a signing bonus in excess of $6 million, possibly $7 million.