We were at the Royals game Friday night, behind the Royals dugout, 11 rows up. Holy Crap. I though I was going to have a heart attack. I did NOT want an exciting game, I wanted a 10-0 Royals win.
It was an amazing environment: the crowd never sat down. The noise level was at least as high or higher than when I’ve been at games at Arrowhead. In terms of the crowd being obnoxious, eh. They actually applauded the catch in left field that robbed Cain (or was it Perez?) of what we ALL just knew was going to be a home run (applauded as in, after the huge sigh of disappointmen, some applause for a great play.) And no throwing of things at the field. ;) When the rain started pouring down, a lot of people (including the group I was with) stayed in the stands and cheered and sang.
We all knew 2 runs was not going to be enough, and even though Bautista is an incredible ass (he did his pretend to toss a baseball to a kid and pull it back and throw it in the dugout during warmups) the guy can hit, and proved it again. But when the Royals went up 3-1 in the bottom of the 7th, doing what they do so well, going into the Royals bullpen, we all felt like OK, we got this. The crowd, at least everyone in my section, was in shock when they put Madsen in in the 8th, instead of Davis, and when he floated the pitch over for the 2 run HR, it was devastating. 5 outs away from going to the World Series, and that. Davis comes in, does his thing, and we all think, OK, I’d rather be tied up in the late innings facing their bullpen vs, facing Davis. And as devastated as the crowd was, you could see the Royals players were still looking upbeat. When the rain came (and we knew it would, everyone was looking at the weather radar on their phones, and we knew it was predicted to rain for about 40 minutes or so) and the players were heading in, Perez and Hosmer briefly stepped out and waved to the crowd and smiled and pumped their arms - “we got this!” Amazing after that crushing half innning.
When they didn’t come back out on the field after an hour, everyone was wondering who Yost would put on the mound; no one thought Davis would be able to come back after an hour delay. Royals are up - just one run, all we need is one run. Cain gets his hit, we’re expecting him to try to steal. Then Hosmer hits that single out to Bautista. We’re all thinking, OK, Cain will be on 3rd, we can get him home from there. Then Bautista throws to second, all the Blue Jays expect him to throw to home or the home cut-off, and Cain never stops. Afterwards, Yost said the Royals 3rd base coach had been watching films with Yost and they noticed on singles with a runner on first, Bautista often would throw to second to keep the runner at first rather than throw to keep the runner at 3rd. They talked about it before the game, so Hosmer made sure when he hit first, even though the right fielder had the ball, he made a move like he was going to try for second. Sure enough Bautista made the throw to second, Cain never slowed down, and the run scores. I don’t know if they showed it in the broadcast, but some of Bautista’s teammates were giving him crap about the throw when they got back in the dugout.
Top of the 9th. All the position players came out, were warming up, then Davis comes out and walks to the mound and the crowd went bonkers. Afterwards, in some KC TV interviews, Perez said that Davis kept loose, tossing to Butera, and Yost told him, look, It’s been almost an hour, and Davis said to Yost, I want a chance to take us to the WS, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t feel like I can do this, and Yost smiled and said go be Wade frikken Davis.
But when the first batter gets a weak hit, first pitch, everyone was, oh crap. Then pinch hitter, he steals second (and stealing on Perez is tough.) You could see the delay was having an effect, it was taking Davis some pitches to get back in the groove. Then he steals 3rd, and everyone in the crowd knows: at best, we’re going extra innings. Any fly ball, any sharp ground ball, with the speed at 3rd, and the run is in. The odds of a runner at 3rd with no outs not scoring is practically zero.
Then Davis turned it on. First strike out, place goes wild. Men on first and second, so no double play chances now. Still hard to believe they won’t get the tying run home, just hoping they don’t get two.
Then Davis is just smoking. Strike one. Place is bananas. Strike 2. ONE MORE STRIkE, PLEASE!!! Strikes him out, and I’m going deaf from the crowd noise, and hoarse from shouting. Now a fly ball isn’t a run, a ground ball isn’t a run. But still, the Blue Jays can hit. Donaldson can hit. Then he hits a ground ball to Moose, he fields it, you know its about to happen, the throw, the out, and I almost collapsed! LOL! Then it was incredible, watching the players celebrate, they all came over and applauded the crowd, the awards ceremony. What was funny, trying to get out of the parking lot and onto the main highways, it was a zoo of traffic, 40,000 +, and everyone was waving people in to merge, smiling, waving people over with their Royals towels out the windows.
One thing I’d heard on MLB network, and I saw a little bit of being at the game in person and able to see more than what the cameras were showing, was team chemistry. The Royals just get along, support each other good and bad (when Madsen came in after blowing the lead, everyone was patting him on the back, etc.) I’d heard Bautista basically throw his second baseman under the bus on the screwed up dropped blooper, saw his teammates chewing on him when he threw to the wrong place on the Hosmer single. When their catcher went after a pop up foul ball and he and Donaldson ran into each other during this game, Donaldson jumped all over Martin, you could hear him shouting at him all the way over where we were (the play was in front of the Jay’s dugout and we were sitting right behind the Royals dugout.) Maybe just their competitive nature, but just a different “feel” from the Royals.
That said - Ventura just needs to shut up. When he went in the dugout after he was done, he let the Jay’s first base coach get to him. He started shouting back at him from the dugout, and you could tell the Jay’s first base coach was enjoying getting to him. Afterwards Perez said he told him, dude, it’s the first base coach, why in the hell do you care what he says? But even though he’s a kid, Ventura has got to get more self control.
Oh - and one last thing, the dropped ball at first base, where Colobella was showing his glove to the ump on the play on Hosmer after Cain was robbed on the great play on the wall in left, was hilarious. The whole crowd saw the ball on the ground. And I think they would have had Hosmer if he hadn’t droppped the ball.
I’m still pretty exhausted from the game. Again - holy crap, what a game to be at!
