On Tuesday night, the Kansas City Royals beat the Oakland Athletics, 9-8, in a 12-inning contest that featured five lead changes and ended on a walk-off single to left field that barely eluded the glove of a diving infielder. It wasn’t just the best game in the three-year history of the Wild Card play-in, it was one of the most exhilarating postseason games of all time.
The hero, Royals catcher Salvador Perez, delivered the game-winning hit after starting the game 0-for-5. A’s DH Brandon Moss heads home for the offseason after smashing home runs in two of his first three at-bats — matching his total in a miserable August and September. Moss’ second homer came off burgeoning ace Yordano Ventura, a young starter that manager Ned Yost called in to make his second career relief appearance in the sixth inning.
After most fans and media expected a pitcher’s duel with aces Jon Lester and James Shields on the mound, a couple of anemic offenses combined for 28 hits and 17 runs. The Royals tied a postseason record with seven steals, six of them after A’s catcher Geovany Soto left the game with a thumb injury suffered on a play at the plate. A Royals pitcher named Brandon Finnegan threw 2 1/3 strong innings in relief despite having only appeared in seven prior games above Class AA ball.
Baseball!
(USA TODAY Sports Images)
I thought the Wild Card game was a terrible idea. I have always held that the 162-game schedule is one of the best things about Major League Baseball because it distinguishes the best teams from the pack in a way that no playoff series — and certainly no single game — ever could. And I believed adding a second Wild Card and a one-game play-in, as the league did in 2012, cheapened the results of the regular season.
Nevermind. I was wrong. Incorrect. No. I’m sorry. I change my mind.
Tuesday night’s was the type of game that would be incredible in any context — a month’s worth of action packed into one hard-fought, 12-inning affair. But the specific circumstances of the teams involved made the Royals’ victory that much more awesome.
The A’s, you may recall, dominated the league for the first four months of the season. Before the trade deadline, they added Lester and former Cubs ace Jeff Samardzija in trades, moves that appeared to book Oakland’s ticket to the World Series. The A’s have been a near-perennial contender in recent years, but have not won the American League since 1990.
(USA TODAY Sports)
The Royals, meanwhile, were two games below .500 in late July and an afterthought in both their division and the AL Wild Card race. The club has not even reached the playoffs since its last World Series win in 1985, and a recent crop of highly touted prospects mostly evolved into a substandard offense that could not score enough for the Royals’ sturdy starting pitchers.
But the mighty A’s fell apart just as the Royals caught fire, and the upstart Kansas City club finished the season one game in front of Oakland in the Wild Card standings. And from all that, on Tuesday night, we got one of the craziest, most exciting, most heartbreaking, most generally awesome postseason games of the hundreds I have seen in my lifetime.
And there’s just no way I’m going to be able to convince myself now that the sport would be better off simply sending the Royals to the ALDS for having the better regular-season record.
Baseball remains the best.
