It's Chevalier's Thread and He Can Do What He Wants To

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 12




Civ-wise, there's not too much going on. The scout gets a whack from the slinger in the south. Mining finishes, but what to start next?

It depends - do I want a galley first, or a holy site first? I think galley first makes the most sense - get out, scout the map. I need to find city-states, and I need to find better terrain and get a jump on contested islands. Being second to a religion is no big deal. So sailing before Astrology (this also gives me an outside chance to land the astrology eureka, although I'm not counting on it). Settler is due in - well, you can see the screenshot.

So yeah, not a lot to talk about there. Let's continue the story of Chev's Naming Theme. I'll mark it off from now on so people who are just here for the Civ can tune out safely at this point and not be bored by dull sports and family stuff.

=====

To recap: The Royals spent 29 years being the worst team in baseball, the butt of every joke in the league. They had gone longer without a playoff appearance than any other professional franchise in all of North America, and Kansas City as a whole had not won a single playoff game in any sport in 20 years. My grandpa was nevertheless a diehard fan, and went into a surgery the same night the Royals played their first playoff game in 29 years. 

What follows is the story of that single game. 

Now, our biggest fear, going into the wild card, was that the Royals would fall behind quickly and their playoff hopes would expire 15 minutes after the first pitch was thrown. This was not an idle fear - remember, the Chiefs, the other franchise in town, had repeatedly appeared in the playoffs since 1985, and they had lost every single game. One-and-done was the order of the day, and it was quite possible that Royals fans would not even receive the illusion of being in a competitive playoff game. 

Their opponents could not have been more perfect, narrative-wise: The Oakland Athletics (A's). The Athletics had once been the Kansas City A's, but had moved on to the west coast after failing to win anything here. Out in California, they had revolutionized the game of baseball. With one of the smallest payrolls in the sport, the A's had consistently put together winning team after winning team. In the fiercely competitive AL West division, they had won 100 games time and again - in seasons with  division opponents like the Mariners, who had set the single-season record for wins (2001) or the World Series-winning Angels (2002). The A's had ignored traditional scouting reports on players and instead found undervalued statistics like on-base percentage (OBP, the amount of times a player reaches base safely per at bat) and home run power, picking up secret stars on the cheap. Their process was made famous in the book and later movie Moneyball. At the climax of the book, and the film, the A's are on the brink of a 22-game win streak, a record in modern times. However, the team blows an 11-run lead, only to win the game in the ninth. The A's hapless opponent in the film (and book, and reality)? The 2002 Kansas City Royals, mired in the first of what would be 4 100-loss seasons. 

12 years later, in 2014, the A's still built their team around walks and home runs. Their players would work pitchers, taking lots of borderline pitches and drawing walks, while punishing pitches inside the strikezone for home runs (which would also drive in all those guys who walked earlier). They discouraged risky moves on base, running conservatively, avoiding making outs, and waiting for a homer to drive them in. Their defense was modest but not spectacular, their starting pitching was very good, and they had a decent but not great bullpen. By contrast, the 2014 Royals were built, as I said, on a brilliant defense and unhittable bullpen. But they were not a great offensive team. They had to scratch and claw for every run. Their offense was free-swinging, aggressively attacking any pitch the Royals thought they could hit. Once on base, they would aggressively take extra bases, stretching singles into doubles, going first-to-third any chance they got, and leading the league in stolen bases. They struck out the least of any team in baseball - but also had no power and no walks, dead last in both walks and home runs.

To sum up: Put the ball in play. Get on base. Run like hell.

In other words, the Royals and the A's had polar opposite baseball philosophies. For decades, the A's had won while the Royals had struggled. The A's showed the way of the future, the Royals were mired in the past. The A's got the dramatic Hollywood movies made about their fortunes - and the Royals were reduced to the roles of the foolish losers. The A’s became the team most identified with sabermetrics, spawned the most influential sports book of the generation, and entering the 2014 had advanced to the playoffs seven times in the last 14 years. The Royals became the team most identified with old-school thinking and lost 100 games four times in a five-year span.

The Royals’ failures became as much a testament to the value of sabermetrics as did the A’s success. To paraphrase Voltaire: If the Royals hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent them. But we didn’t have to invent them. They existed, and I knew this because they were my team. For two decades, my grandpa's heart was attached to a franchise that my grandpa's brain would have sat on the porch, shotgun in hand, to keep away. Tonight would be the first time the two franchises had ever had a face-to-face showdown in the playoffs.

A generation of fans, my friends, many of them, who had never experienced playoff baseball flocked to the park. Seth Atkins, a 26-year-old from Olathe, took the day off work from the high school where he taught, outside St. Louis. He arrived at Kauffman Stadium when the gates opened. 

Taylor Fritz, a 21-year old from Lee's Summit, arrived at the ballpark early with his dad. They had seats just behind the right field wall, and settled in, hoping to catch a home run.

Kent Swanson, a 26-year-old from Overland Park, bought a ticket at face value that morning. When he and a friend settled into their seats in the upper deck, he felt the tension. “There was just 29 years of aggression and angst and excitement in that building."

Abby Elmer, a 21-year-old from Brookside, finished her classes that morning at the University of Missouri and drove from Columbia to attend the game with her parents. Growing up, the trio shared season tickets. She had never seen Kauffman Stadium like this. “I just could not believe how loud it was. How insane it was. You could not hear the person next to you, it was so loud.”

Starting for the Royals was James "Big Game" Shields, the centerpiece of a trade 2 years earlier that had seen the Royals give away their biggest young talent, Wil Myers, in return for the steady starting pitcher. Shields was in the last year of his contract - so this game was everything for him. If the Royals lost, Shields would leave and they would have given away a generational talent in return for - nothing. 

But as the game started, it looked like Royals' fans worst nightmares were coming true. James Shields issued a walk to the A's leadoff hitter. He seemed to steady himself with a flyout and a strikeout - but then he fell behind Brandon Moss. A few pitches later, he left a ball hanging just above Moss's thighs - and the A's batter demolished it, blasting the ball far out of the park. 2 runs scored and the Royals were losing before they had even had a chance to bat. The raucous crowd quieted. So it would be another Chiefs game after all. One and done. 

But then, in the bottom of the first, Alcides Escobar singled. A's starter Jon Lester got 2 outs fairly easily, but then after a walk he gave up a single to the Royal's chubby DH Billy Butler. Suddenly Kauffman was buzzing again - it was 2 to 1, and there were runners at first and third! The Royals might lose this game, but at least they would put up a fight.

However, the rally ended on a muffed play.

See, it wasn’t common knowledge yet, but the A’s pitcher Jon Lester had the yips. Specifically, he was unable to throw the ball to first base. Any time he tried, the ball sailed off into the stands or the dugout. And so, quietly, not drawing attention to it, he had stopped throwing to first entirely in the last few seasons - meaning he could not hold even the slowest runner on the base, because he’d have to win a footrace with the baserunner in order to have a chance to get him out. Which, in turn, meant that baserunners could take a huge lead off Lester and steal second easily. No one had noticed yet - except the Royals’ scouts.

Butler was quietly told to steal second. The slowest player on the team, Butler thought that the coaches were out of their minds. But while Lester chased Butler, it would give Eric Hosmer, standing on third, the chance to scamper home and tie the game. Shaking his head, Butler stepped off first…

...and it was a fiasco. Lester awkwardly stepped off the mound and scooted towards Butler - and Hosmer froze. He just couldn’t believe that a major league pitcher could not make that throw. Belatedly, he shook off his amazement and darted for home - but it was too late. Lester had gotten close enough to another player to awkwardly shovel him the ball, and the A’s shortstop whipped the ball home just ahead of Hosmer. The Royals’ first baseman dived in a desperation move, colliding with A’s catcher Gary Soto, but no good - he was out and the inning was over.

As a minor consequence  of the play, Gary Soto injured his thumb in the collision. The A’s catcher came out of the game and was replaced by Derek Norris. Norris was a much better hitter than Soto - but a far worse defender. The main job of a catcher is to throw out base runners attempting to steal. Norris was far, far worse at that than Soto.

The Royals didn’t know it, but they had just had their first big break of the night.

[Ituralde]

It's times like these where I truly appreciate that I will never understand Baseball, like really understand. Like why they make big Hollywood movies starring Kevin Costner or Brad Pitt about it understand. You probably can't understand it in that way, if you didn't grow up with it. It's just dudes running around in a circle!

Great story so far and thank you for bringing the game of Baseball closer to me, I look forward to the resolution.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 13




Still not much happening, so I pinned some tentative districts. Escobar will probably never grow much above size 7, so it only gets 3 districts: A holy site, campus, and harbor cover most of the important bases. Escobar seems straightforward enough - I picked two of the low-food plains hills to host the sites, since food is precious at this city and we have hills out the wazoo. 

Zobrist is harder. I don't like how distant from the capital it is - it's an awkward distance, in fact, for megalopolises like oledavy's in PBEM4. The two cities would share third rings, but nothing else, which means placing the Plaza is tough to boost districts. Looking at it now, what I COULD do is move the holy site to the wheat adjacent to the double-campus (don't need 2 wheats at one city, right? I can even harvest it for a quick pop boost), then place the Plaza south of it adjacent to both campus and holy site for +1 science/faith. Then the Harbor can go adjacent for its own boost (but it's not next to a seafood resource so that really doesn't matter). Yeah, I think I like that setup better. Then maybe the tea city, while it will have crap production, can at least get a decent district or two next to the plaza - maybe the Temple of Artemis and a theater square for culture/amenities? (how the hell will I build the Temple without production? Harvest that stone resource and the single forest? Hm. Might be doabe, with Magnus + Maritime Industries). 

Internationally, Japper gained 2 era points. It's turn 13, so with Indonesia's ability he should have 26 faith by now - so I'm almost certain he claimed the first pantheon in the game. Only other possibility is barbarian encampment, but his domination score isn't fluctuating in a way taht indicates combat. Everyone but Emperor has finished their first tech (so no one went astrology first - Emperor settled late) and Archduke has grown to size 3 already, he must have a great food tile at the capital. 

With nothing else to talk about Civ-wise, baseball time.

=====

After the first inning of the Wild Card Game, the score stood 2-1 in favor of the visiting A's, and the Royals had seemingly blundered away a chance to tie the game in the bottom of the first. If they wound up losing a one run game, that mistake would haunt them - but fortunately for their legacy the score didn't last. 

In the third inning, Mike "Moose" Moustakas, the Royals' third baseman, one of the promised saviors of the team from the long 8 year Process, batted at the bottom of the order. Typically, your players at the bottom of a batting order will see the fewest at-bats per game - so you stick your worst hitters down there. Mike Moustakas was not a good hitter that year, showing none of the ability that had caused the Royals to draft him. Some even wondered if he should play in the wild card game, despite the Royals' lack of real better options. He silenced the critics, though, blooping out a small hit off Jon Lester and scampering to first. Escobar sacrificed himself with a bunt, moving Moustakas to second, and then Nori Aoki grounded out to move him to third. This was not A's baseball - no walks, no homers, just scratching and clawing their way around the diamond to bring a run home. Now, with 2 outs, Lorenzo Cain came through - he laced a clean double into left field, speeding into second as Moustakas reached home easily. The next batter, Eric Hosmer - another product of the Process - followed up, sending Cain home and giving the Royals a 3-2 lead. 

The crowd was going wild. The Royals had a one-run lead in an elimination game - at home. They just needed James Shields to get through 3 more innings - 9 outs - and then he could give way to the elite bullpen trio of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland. As it stood, Hosmer would be the last baserunner from either team until the fatal 6th inning.

The major league strike zone extends roughly from a batter's elbows down to his knees and stretches 17 inches across the plate, and is the most important piece of real estate in the ballpark. The heart of the game of baseball is the battle between the pitcher and the batter for control of that zone. The pitcher attempts to deceive the hitter, as his pitches dive over the plate, or tail away from it, or suddenly cut towards the bat, carefully working the edges of the zone and never giving the hitter a solid pitch to clobber out of the park. The batter fights off close pitches and avoids swinging at pitches out of the zone, waiting for a pitch that he can smack to his liking. From the moment the pitcher releases the ball to the moment it crosses the plate is often as short as .4 seconds - and the hitter needs at least .25 seconds to see the pitch and react, giving him a tenth of a second to judge if a pitch will be in the zone and hittable (and thus he should swing) or out of the zone (and thus he should take the pitch). A pitch out of the zone that the hitter refuses to swing at is a ball. A pitch in the zone that the hitter misses is a strike. Four balls and the batter is awarded first base for free - a walk. Three strikes, though, and he's out. It's a tough job, but major league hitters are the best in the world at it, and they punish any error on the pitcher's part mercilessly.

Thus, major league pitchers have the hardest job on the diamond. They have more responsibility than any other player for the outcome of the game, and so they put their all into their pitches - hurling fastballs at over 100 miles per hour (that's 160 kilometers an hour) over the plate, sometimes more than 100 in a night. The strain on the arm is severe. In more innocent days, pitchers would play the entire game, and would play multiple games in a row. As hitters got wiser, the competitive demands on pitchers grew, and their role gradually shrank. In modern times, the best pitchers - your starters-  can make it through 6 or 7 innings of the 9 inning game, starting only one game every five days - and still pitching careers are often cut short by injury, as the human arm simply isn't engineered to take the strain major league pitching puts on it. So, the managers of the game innovated. The days of pitching a complete game are, barring exceptional performances, in the past - now is the era of the relief pitcher. 

The relief pitchers usually outnumber starters and gather in what is called a bullpen for reasons lost to history (or at least to me). They are specialists, without as many pitches in their arsenal as starters, and not nearly as much stamina. Typically they will work for only one or two innings. On most teams, the bullpen was an afterthought - a collection of guys who couldn't hack it as starters, who were there simply to fill innings and try to bridge teh gap between the starter and the end of the game. The Royals, though, had built their team bass-ackwards. The Royals' bullpen was filled with their best pitchers, their starters were only so-so. Herrera, Davis, and Holland had been unhittable in 2014, saving countless games for the Royals as they slammed the door shut on scoring. Herrera would pitch the 7th, Davis the 8th, and Greg Holland would close out the 9th.

But the 6th inning was a trouble spot.

The later into a game a starter goes, the less effective he becomes. The batters get more looks at him and are no longer fooled by his pitches. His arm, shaking from the strain of effort, starts to give out as exhaustion saps his strength. The speed of the ball falls, giving hitters more time to react, and the pitcher's control fades, he misses his target more. James Shields ran into this as he worked into the 6th inning of the wild card. He was facing the Oakland order for the 3rd time, and he wasn’t fooling anyone. Sam Fuld opened with a single to right field. Then Shields walked Josh Donaldson. The tying run was at second, the go-ahead run was at first, and Brandon Moss - the man responsible for Oakland’s only 2 runs of the night - was stepping to the plate.

Ned Yost, the Royals’ manager, went to the bullpen.

But not to Herrera, his 7th inning guy. He wanted his elite relievers to work their assigned innings. Nor did Yost go to any of his other bullpen arms - veteran Luke Hochever, workmen Jason Frasor or Danny Duffy, or even rookie Brandon Finnegan.

No, he went with the Royals’ hottest new pitcher, Yordano Ventura.

Ventura was a product of the Royals’ renaissance, a 23-year old kid from the Dominican Republic. His fastball was ferocious, topping 100 mph, his talent was among the best anyone had ever seen, and his temper was fiery. But he was unpolished, and unused to pressure - and he was a starting pitcher, not a reliever. In theory that meant he could cut loose, give his all to a single inning, and not worry about saving the stamina for a long start. But it also threw off his routine - and it meant he was coming into a messy situation to face one of the most dangerous batters in the game.

Ventura was amped. His first fastball flashed past, high over the strike zone. Ball one. Sweat poured down the young man’s face. He steadied himself, drew a breath, and hurled again - high again. Ball two. Now he was in a fix. If he tried to skirt the zone again, his shaky control could cause him to throw ball 3, and then he was all but certain to walk Moss, loading the bases with no outs. He had almost no choice but to throw Moss a strike and hope it fooled him or blasted past him before he could react.

Ventura’s fastball did not fool Moss, nor did it surprise him. He was expecting it. His bat flashed out, and a heartbeat later the ball was flying over the outfield wall. 5-3, Oakland.

The crowd was stunned. Ned Yost hopped out of the dugout to come talk to Ventura - and the longest tenured manager in Royals’ history, the man who had led them back to the postseason in 29 years, was booed by the fans at his home stadium in his very first playoff game.

In the upper deck, Kent Swanson sat in silence, unable to speak for several innings. For solace, he scanned Twitter to read rage-filled posts about Yost. Seth Atkins assumed the game was over. As the night drifted away, Abby Elmer would begin to cry. But her initial reaction involved empathy. “Poor Ned Yost. That’s his career.” Taylor Fritz and his dad quietly walked out of the stadium and headed for a bar.

The Royals had scratched out three runs with five hits, a bunt, and a stolen base. The A’s had hit two balls into the seats with men on base, and had five runs to show for it. It was a microcosm of everything the teams do differently.

Ventura was still rattled, and the flurry of blows continued. He issued a walk, then promptly threw a wild pitch to move the runner to second. A flyout - the first out of the long, fatal inning - moved the runner to third. Yost finally waved the white flag and sent for Herrera to put out the fire - but too late. Herrera could not stop the run from scoring, nor could he prevent the A’s forcing a fifth across the plate. By the time the dust cleared, the score stood 7-3, A’s.

The Royals went quietly in the bottom of the 6th, and the bottom of the 7th. They had six outs left.

By the this point, the Royals’ first trip to the postseason in 29 years was effectively over, after only a few innings of play. Just another Kansas City disappointment, as the city had been experiencing for more than 20 years by that point. Jon Lester was cruising - only 94 pitches in 7 innings of work, a real chance at a complete game. The Royals' win expectancy stood at less than 2%. That is, in the history of baseball, less than 2% of teams in similar situations had gone on to win the game. In the 111 years since the foundation of the World Series, there had been thousands of playoff games. In all those games, how many teams had come back from a 4-run deficit in the last 2 innings of an elimination game?

Not one.

That was the funereal atmosphere in Kauffman stadium as the game entered the bottom of the 8th inning, the top of the Royals’ order due to hit. Alcides Escobar came to the plate for the 4th time that night. On Lester’s third pitch, Escobar grounded a single up the middle. A good defender perhaps makes the play; Jed Lowrie is not a good defensive shortstop, and did not make the play, as the bounce he anticipated never materialized and the ball went under his glove. It was ruled an infield single, and Escobar might have beaten it out even if Lowrie had fielded it cleanly, but it says something that MLB.com’s highlight of this play lists the caption as “Escobar reaches on error”.

Watching in the stands, we hoped Escobar’s hit was the start of something. It turns out it was the start of everything.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Forgot to take a screenshot. 

Anyway, the scout is trapped by my slinger, and the settler is just a few turns away. I rejiggered the district dots to reflect what I wrote about last time, but otherwise there's no changs in Arabia this turn. 

Abroad, Rowain also grew to size 3, and Japper finished Code of Laws on time. I'll finish next turn. Emperor finished a tech, as well. 

This is why I feel comfortable taking my time and telling this story in depth - there's a few weeks yet before I need to talk a lot about Civ, and believe me, I will use those few weeks. I will never go as in depth as I'm going into the Wild Card Game (forever capitalized out of respect), but this game...this game is important. If there is a single baseball game I would show people to explain why I now love the sport, it would be this one. Let's resume our story. 

======

“You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all." - Earl Weaver

To recap, the Royals were playing their first playoff game in 29 years, the same night my grandpa, a huge fan, underwent a risky surgical procedure. In the 6th inning, the Royals’ pitching had collapsed and the A’s had surged to a 7-3 lead - a deficit no playoff team had ever come back from. To win, the Royals would need to score at least 8 runs - and they had scored 8 runs in a single game only a few times all year. Their playoff appearance was all but dead.

In the bottom of the 8th inning, with 6 outs to go, Alcides Escobar singled.

Now, there’s been a lot of math done by the stats nerds on when it’s appropriate to steal a base. Stealing a base does one thing for you: It raises your odds of scoring that single run, as it gets easier for you to reach home from third or second than it would from second or first. However, if you get caught stealing, you erase a base runner and give up your team’s most precious resource: outs (remember, each team only gets 27 total). So in the 8th inning of this wild card game, Royals fans were horrified to see Escobar do one thing: He took off from first to steal second. Down 4 runnings, they didn’t need higher odds of a single run - they needed a big inning to have a prayer, and if Escobar had been caught, it would have basically ended the Royals’ chances then and there.

But he was not caught. Jon Lester had thrown nearly 100 pitches, he was exhausted. And catcher Derek Norris is not a great defender. Escobar was safe and in scoring position.

In the stands, spectator Chris Kamler was ecstatic. “It’s time to run on Lester!” he howled to his companion, Rany Jayazerli (who would write up this incident), then pointed at his temple. “Get in their domes!” Of course, Kamler was certifiably insane (and possibly extremely drunk by this point), but there was something to be said for pressing the Royals’ speed advantage: Put the ball in play. Get on base. Run like hell.

Escobar’s steal loomed large, though, as Nori Aoki grounded sharply to second. If Esky had been on first, it would have been a double play, two outs. But he was not, and he was safe at third with only one out and Lorenzo Cain up to bat. And then...Cain came through, singling up the middle and scoring Escobar.

Throughout Kauffman stadium, there rippled an emotion that hadn’t been felt in Kansas City since the Reagan administration: hope.

Lester stayed on to face Hosmer, but his exhaustion and control betrayed him - he walked the first baseman. The Royals were at first and second, with only one out, and one run in. At last, Lester gave way to relief pitcher Luke Gregerson. His night was done. It was up to Gregorson to put out the fire and save the game for the A’s.

The hitter who Gregerson would face had been waiting for a moment like this, on a night like this, in this ballpark, for 10 years. The man who represented the tying run was Billy Ray Butler, the longest-tenured Royal. The stocky DH tended either to hit home runs or to ground into double plays, so either he would tie the game in a single blow, or end the rally and snuff out the Royals’ hopes. Eden or agony on one swing of the bat - this is what makes baseball a great sport.

Butler did not ground out, nor did he tie the game, but he did what – at his peak – he did as well as anyone: he stayed inside the pitch and took it the other way for an opposite field single. Lorenzo Cain scored, Eric Hosmer scrambled to third base, and the crowd…well, the crowd had never really been out of the game. Even down four runs with six outs to go, the stadium was still packed. But we hadn’t been particularly loud before the inning started. The volume started to build with the rally, and when Butler singled it hit a crescendo that was deafening. This was a ballgame again. This was definitely a ballgame.

He had barely touched the bag when Terrance Gore, who has a legitimate case to be called The Fastest Basestealer Ever, bounded out of the dugout to replace him. And suddenly, just like that, Terrance Gore was the tying run.

If you want to pinpoint the exact moment when 40,000-plus Royals fans at Kauffman Stadium all started to think, holy crap, we might actually pull this off, this is your moment. The Royals could tie the game without even the benefit of a hit. All Gore had to do was steal second base – and everyone in the ballpark knew that was what he was going to try to pull off. What we didn’t know was just how frickin’ easy he would make it look. I mean, we knew he was fast. We knew that he was almost impossible to throw out* even when the other team knew he was running.

But his stolen base still took our breath away. He took off on the very first pitch, and despite Derek Norris’ throw being right on the money, Gore was on the base before the ball hit Lowrie’s glove. It was breathtaking. It was like watching the unveiling of the B-2 Bomber: this mythical weapon that no one had ever seen before, that some doubted could even exist, and that only your side had. Put the ball in play. Get on base. Run. Like. Hell.

The panic was mounting in the A’s dugout as the impossible, improbable rally continued. Facing Alex Gordon, with the tying run on base behind him, the Fastest Man in Baseball, Gregerson floundered - and threw a pitch that dove into the dirt and skipped past Derek Norris. Norris scrambled after the ball, seized it, and whirled to throw to Gregerson, who had dashed for home as soon as he saw the wild pitch, all while Eric Hosmer came charging down the baseline. Hosmer slid home - safe. It was 7-6, Oakland, and the tying run was at third base.

The noise in Kauffman was deafening. At this point, the crowd had begun to believe: it was destiny. The Royals were not the Chiefs. This would not be a one-and-done playoff appearance. In the stands Seth Atkins allowed hope to reappear. “Maybe they do have a chance,” he told himself. Silent in the back rows of the upper deck since Moss’ homer in the sixth, Kent Swanson perked up when his friend received a text message at the top of the eighth inning. Two fans had vacated their seats closer to the third-base line. The duo navigated closer to the action as the comeback began. The shock lifted for Abby Elmer around the same time. Her optimism returned. She wondered if it was foolish to feel that way. But perhaps that was a good thing.

“I remember reading people saying that the Royals didn’t know that game was over, that they were supposed to lose it,” she said. “I feel like the fans were like that, too. They were like, ‘You know what? I’m over it. I’m going to be insanely loud. We’re going to win.’ Meanwhile, Taylor Fritz and his dad arrived at the bar and took a seat. They were still in their Royals gear, and set their tickets down on the bar. The bartender glanced at the tickets, then up at the two men. “Y’all were at the baseball game?” They nodded. “You left?” Nod. “Y’all are fuckin’ idiots.” He jerked his head at the TV behind him, showing the game.

But with Gore at third, the Royals faltered. Gregerson walked Gordon (who stole second, the Royals’ 4th stolen base of the inning- Escobar, Cain, and Gore had all stolen second), but steadied himself and struck out the young catcher Salvador Perez on 3 pitches and second baseman Omar Infante on four. The Royals had slayed Lester and trimmed the deficit to just one run. But they also squandered an opening. The tying run was 90 feet away with only one out, and they came up empty. Winter was not far away.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Stupid scout, let me kill you! 

Anyway, re-jiggered the district dots. Archduke, Rowain, and Japper all have Code of Laws, I'm one turn behind thanks to my move. They are all also size 3, while I am not. Looks like they have food heavier starts - hopefully it means poorer production? :D 

Anyway, right now the tentative plan is to finish my builder after the settler, then start a galley with Maritime Industries. I'll then chop that into a Holy Site. Can't do the same at Zobrist since that city will need a harbor. District order there...maybe Plaza/Harbor/Campus/Holy Site? Or do I want an earlier holy site? Hm. Hafta think about that one. 

That's really all Civ-wise. Again, it's a slow start - this is why I fill the space with baseball.

Anyway, if you're sick of the wild-card game, this is the second to last post about it, I promise. We're almost through. :D 

=======

“Once Roberts got to Boston, he mostly sat. And sat. The manager kept an eye on him but didn’t call his name very often. It was as if Roberts had changed from a ballplayer into some kind of glass-front box with the words break in case of need for stolen base stenciled on the front. But Epstein’s orthodoxy, reinforced by special adviser, Bill James, the creator of the whole analytical business that had debunked stolen bases in the first place, held that if you built the right kind of team, Roberts’s skills set would be largely extraneous. Except – and this was the key part of it, the flexible part of it that most people didn’t get – except when it was necessary.

And so here Roberts was, glass broken, standing on first base with Bill Mueller at the plate, the only potential run of the year that mattered anymore. It was a desperate moment, but nonetheless a moment that had been planned for. That was the difference between this time around and 1949, 1978, 2003, and all the other disappointments of the last century. God was in the details, and so were playoff victories. And the Red Sox were finally looking after the details.

Rivera threw over to first. Once. Twice. Roberts got back to the bag. Every problem is a lock looking for a key. The Red Sox had spent decades half-asleep, oblivious to the locks, never mind looking for the keys.

Rivera returned his focus to the man at the plate. Roberts took his lead – not an inch shorter than before, maybe half an inch longer now. Rivera got set in the stretch, looked once more at Roberts, then committed to home plate with a barely perceptible transfer of weight to his right foot, his left foot now rising off the mound.

But Roberts was already gone, digging toward second, erasing the past with every step.”

– from the prologue to Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning.

“I remember Maury Wills on the backfield in Vero Beach,” said Roberts. “He said, ‘DR, one of these days you're going to have to steal an important base when everyone in the ballpark knows you’re gonna steal, but you’ve got to steal that base and you can’t be afraid to steal that base.’ So, just kind of trotting out on to the field that night, I was thinking about him. So he was on one side telling me ‘this was your opportunity’. And the other side of my brain is saying, ‘You’re going to get thrown out, don’t get thrown out.’ Fortunately Maury’s voice won out in my head.”

– Dave Roberts.


Dave Roberts’ steal against Mariano Rivera in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, with the Red Sox down a run in the 9th inning and 3 games to 0 in the series, is unquestionably the greatest steal in baseball history.

But what’s the second-greatest steal in baseball history?

Maybe it came in the 9th inning that night, September 30th, 2014.

The Royals, fighting for their lives, had in a single inning closed a 7-3 gap to a single run. But they were down to the last three outs of their season, with Sean Doolittle, Oakland’s powerful closing pitcher, taking the mound. Due up to hit was Mike Moustakas, the third baseman of the Process who had struggled all year. Moustakas hit only .172/.241/.313 against lefties like Doolittle.

Now, baseball typically presents batting statistics in three numbers - your slashline. The first number is the hitter’s batting average - how often does he actually get a hit, per at bat? Moustakas successfully hit only 17% of the time, a wretched number when the league average is closer to 25%. The second number is the most important - your On Base Percentage, or how often do you reach base safely per at bat? This includes walks, and can be thought of as your probability of not making an out. Moustakas only reached safely 24 times out of a hundred - so he has a 76% chance of giving away one of the Royals’ precious three final outs. Finally, the last number is your slugging percentage - how many bases do you typically gain per at bat? Home runs are worth 4, triples 3, etc. Moustakas was only gaining roughly a third of a base per at bat - in a league where the top players, like Mike Trout, can have numbers above 1.

So Ned Yost needed another option. Sitting on his bench was that option: Josh Willingham, a recent acquisition, a veteran player who was in his first postseason ever. Yost activated Willingham and sent him in to pitch hit.

Willingham hadn’t had a base hit since September 10. Doolittle was allowing opposing batters only a paltry .169/.197/.262 off him. When Willingham fell behind in the count 1-2, it looked like the curtain was starting to fall on the Royals.

But then Doolittle left a 94-mile fastball just a hair too far over the plate - and Willingham was swinging - the bat caught the ball and sent it to right - and the A’s outfield was shaded just a little too far to the left, meaning that Reddick wouldn’t reach the ball in time - and suddenly the tying run was on first base again. And the Royals had one more pinch running weapon in their holster. Terrance Gore, the Fastest Man in Baseball, had already been spent. But Jarrod Dyson was quite possibly the Second Fastest Man in baseball, and he was even now trotting out of the dugout ot replace Willingham.

Between innings, with Lester out of the game, the Royals coaches met in the dugout to discuss whether to keep running now that Lester was out of the game.  Outs were precious, so perhaps the team should try to slow down and look for the long ball. “Heck no!” the Royals' improbably named first base coach, Rusty Kuntz, shouted. “We’ve got to go.” The formula remained the same: Put the ball in play. Get on base. Run like hell.

But it’s hard to run on lefties like Sean Doolittle. The lefthanded pitcher faces toward first base as he winds up for his pitch - so he knows exactly where the runner is. If the runner takes too great a lead, the leftie can easily pick him off. Too small a lead, and he can’t beat the catcher’s throw to second. Dyson couldn’t run.

So instead, Alcides Escobar sacrificed him over. He dropped a bunt perfectly, the ball slowly rolling towards the pitcher while Escobar took off for first. Doolittle scooped it up and fired to first, easily bagging Escobar - but Dyson was safe at second. Now, Doolittle couldn’t keep an eye on him. Now, he could steal the base that everyone in the ballpark knew he had come in the game to steal.

Doolittle and Dyson engaged in a battle of wits. Doolittle lifted his leg to throw home - then spun to face second. Dyson was already there, not having bought the ruse. Dyson played possum, his posture slack, his whole attitude conveying relaxation. He carefully studied the A’s pitcher as he threw a ball past Nori Aoki, the batter. Another fake pickoff, again Dyson already safe at the base.

But Dyson had Doolittle’s tell. It would be picked up after the game, but when Doolittle turned towards home and lifted his leg at the same time, he was going home, not going to second. Doolittle turned and lifted - and Dyson was gone.

Norris scooped up the low fastball and fired to third in a heartbeat - but no catcher alive could have caught Jarrod Dyson that night. The Royals’ baserunner was sliding safely across the base even as A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson fielded the ball. The tying run was 90 feet away - and Nori Aoki, the man with the lowest strikeout rate on the team, was at the plate.

Dyson glanced at the dugout, at the crowd and then - with the Royals two outs from elimination - he revved the engines of his motorcycle. 

As Rany Jayazerli would later write,

“If you want a single image to sum up the never-say-die attitude of the 2014-2015 Kansas City Royals, that’s the one. The Royals were still two outs away from elimination – and Dyson is revving the engines at third base, with complete confidence in himself and without an ounce of fear for the situation. It was if he was saying, “Nervous? Why would we be nervous?” We were losing our minds in the stands, but out on the field, Dyson didn’t have a care in the world. He was a 50th-round pick, a guy who was drafted despite not really knowing how to hit a baseball, who by sheer force of self-confidence and his God-given tools surpassed far more heralded prospects through the farm system, reached the major leagues when he was 26 years old, and has been one of the game’s best fourth outfielders ever since. That’s what speed – and a relentless belief in yourself – do.”

On the next pitch, Aoki lifted a high fly ball to right field. Reddick was there to make the catch - but Jarrod Dyson, the Second Fastest Man in Baseball, had tagged at third base and was already on his way home. The Royals had gone to the glass box, "break in need of stolen base," and there, ready to answer the call, was Jarrod Dyson. 

It was the bottom of the 9th inning. The Royals had one out left -

And the score was 7-7.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Code of Laws finishes - ahead of Emperor, at least - and I slot in the default government. We'll start working on our pantheon, but we will be VERY slow to it, with no alternative sources of faith around - damn good possibility we arrive last, in fact. I still want Goddess of the Harvest, but on an islands map with lots of coastal tiles around there's something to be said for Earth Goddess. One of the two I hope is available, as others go for Divine Spark or culture-generating pantheons. Unfortunately, everyone can read my PBEM8 thread now where I talked up GotH, so one of those jerks will probably take it - imagine the cheek! 

Anyway, I've finally cornered the scout and can hopefully kill him with the slinger next turn. Settler is due in 2, so we'll kill the scout, then detach one unit to escort the settler to Zobrist while the other finishes scouting out the vicinity of Cain. Culture research is set to foreign trade, since Maritime Industries is more important than Agoge. Do I wait to get out a galley and go find another continent, though? Or just research through it? Culture is limited, true, and if I use my SECOND galley for the MI -> HS chop, then I'll have two galleys out and Lord knows I'll need lots. That might be the path I take. 

Today is the last day I'm talking about the Wild Card Game. Even if you haven't been following along, I found a video that effectively condenses the game, which I highly, highly recommend you take the 14 minutes out of your day to watch. Even if you think baseball is boring and incomprehensible - you might just surprise yourself. I also thought baseball was boring and incomprehensible, but now I have been enlightened. 

Blue October: The Beginning

======

Brandon Finnegan had come a long way in four months. He was a young man, only 21, sporting a scruffy beard in a vain attempt to make himself look less boyish. He was slightly stocky, with long brown hair curling out from under his cap as he sat in the Royals' bullpen, watching the team carry out one of the largest comebacks in baseball history. Four months earlier, he had been a senior at TCU, pitching for his team in the College World Series. The Royals had drafted him that June - at #17, not even in the top half - and then Finnegan had caught fire, quickly working his way through the minor leagues. In September, the Royals had called him up.

“How the f*** do I know what I’m going to do with Finnegan if we make the playoffs?” Yost had commented at the time, when reporters pressed. Now, it was the 10th inning of the wild card game, and Yost needed a pitcher. Shields was done. Ventura was done. Herrera had pitched 2 innings already, Davis had covered the 8th, and Holland had covered the 9th, but not before using 23 pitches and loading the bases before escaping. Yost was almost out of pitchers. He knew now how he’d use Finnegan.

There have been easier assignments. Finnegan was up against the A’s explosive offense, which had already chastened James Shields, Yordano Ventura, and Kelvin Herrera with 7 runs - all pitchers with supposedly more talent and a lot more experience than the kid. Now, it was extra innings, and Finnegan had to be essentially flawless - any run the A’s scored could be the winning run.

And flawless he was.

In the 10th, he got Freiman to fly out. He put away Norris with a weak grounder on the first pitch. And then, getting ahead of Punto 1-2, he scorched a 96 mph fastball by him. Finnegan pounded his fist in his glove like a madman as he walked off the mound after the 1-2-3 inning.

In the 11th, after the Royals squandered a leadoff hit in the bottom of the 10th, Finnegan did it again. He struck out Coco Crisp. Sam Fuld tried to bunt his way on, but Finnegan fielded the bunt himself - a tricky play for a young pitcher, without fielding instincts yet - and cut him down at first. Josh Donaldson - who would be the AL MVP the following season - singled, bringing up Brandon Moss, who had already homered twice, with 5 RBI, in the game. The 21-year old faced down the man who had been killing the Royals all night, working the count to 2-2 - then fired a fastball just through the outside corner. Moss was fooled and struck out looking. Finnegan couldn’t resist a mini-fist pump as he walked off the mound.

In the 12th, though, the young pitcher’s stamina started to falter. He walked Reddick on 5 pitches, then Lowrie bunted him over to second to put the go-ahead run in scoring position. Yost came out to pull Finnegan, but the damage was done - Jason Frasor, the last pitcher the Royals had, threw a wild pitch to put the runner on third, and then yielded a single to Alberto Callaspo that let Reddick dart home. It was 8-7 Oakland in the 12th, and Finnegan’s heroic effort was destined ot end in a loss.

The Royals had already come back twice in this game, from being down 2 runs and down 4 runs - now they would need to do it a third time, down only a single run this time, but with only a single inning to do it in. 3 outs to go.

Which quickly became 2 outs as Lorenzo Cain grounded out weakly. He walked back to the dugout dejectedly, convinced the game was over, passing Eric Hosmer on the way.

The Royals’ win expectancy now stood at 11% - stratospherically higher than the 3% they had had in the bottom of the 8th, but still not great. 9 out of 10 teams in the same situation would lose.

A year later, Hosmer would review the at-bat:

Eric Hosmer sidled into the dugout at Fenway Park one day this past August. He peered down at an iPad screen replaying his last at-bat from that night. He did not require much visual aid. He watched this encounter countless times during the winter.

Hosmer had hit only nine homers during the regular season, but he wanted what all power hitters desire in these situations: a fastball up in the zone to drive out of the ballpark. The duel with Otero lasted six pitches. As he watched himself 11 months later, Hosmer pinpointed the fourth pitch as the most critical one. Hosmer had just fouled off two fastballs and was furious about missing them. Then Otero threw a slider in the dirt.

“After that slider, you can tell,” Hosmer said. “He threw that, and didn’t feel too comfortable about it. From that point there, after fouling off two heaters, especially in hitter’s counts, you’ve got a good feeling that a fastball’s coming.”

Hosmer sprayed another fastball foul. He planned to cheat on the next pitch, starting his swing early to generate as much power as possible. As the 2-2 fastball approached, Hosmer leaned his face closer to the iPad’s screen.

“There it is!” he shouted.

The ball leapt off Hosmer’s bat, speeding for the gap in left-center field. Every head in the ballpark turned to watch it. Rany Jayazerli put his arms around both his neighbor’s shoulders, chanting, “It’s not going out, it’s not going out…” to keep from getting his hopes up. Outfielders Jonny Gomes and Sam Fuld were both racing towards the wall as the ball hung suspended in the air. The bar where Taylor Fritz and his dad were watching was dead silent, as everyone watched.

Gomes reached the wall, leapt to catch the fly - and Fuld was there too, also lunging desperately - and the ball was bouncing off the wall, back towards the infield - the two outfielders had hit the ground in a tangle, and now here came Gomes pushing himself to his feet and dashing after the ball - Hosmer was around second - and when the dust had lifted, Hosmer was standing safe at third, exuberant. There were only two outs to go (again), but the Royals were still alive. They were still in the game.

COming to the plate was yet another young player, Christian Colon. Billy Butler, recall, had been batting behind Hosmer, but he was lifted in the 8th for pinch-runner Terrance Gore. One thing the Fastest Man in Baseball is NOT, however, is a good hitter, and so Colon was put in Gore’s place to hit. He came to the plate needing to get the ball out of the infield to score Hosmer.

A’s pitcher Dan Otero got unlucky. He tried to blow a 92-mph fastball by Colon, with a nasty late sink to it that SHOULD have seen it smoothly dart past Colon’s bat. But instead, Colon desperately clipped the top of the ball. The ball shot straight down in front him - bounced off home plate - and into the infield. Colon took off for first - and down the third base line came Hosmer. Put the ball in play. Run like hell.

“High chopper!” the broadcaster, Ron Darling, exclaimed. “They’ll never get him! Tie game!”

8-8.

Otero got Gordon to pop out for the second out of hte inning, then was lifted for the A’s final pitcher, Jason Hammel. Coming to the plate was Salvador Perez, the young Venezuelan with a gigantic smile, who had been signed for $65,000 as a kid in 2006. Perez was a notoriously impatient hitter, offering at pitches nowhere near the Zone. Hammel quickly got him to 2 strikes.

Over at first base, Rusty Kuntz (heh) had told Colon that if Perez got to 2 strikes, Colon had to run. Unfortunately for Colon, the A’s knew he was going to run, too. On the next pitch, Colon took off - and the A’s pitched out.

A pitch-out is when the pitcher and catcher mutually agree to throw a ball far outside the strike zone. The pitcher will get it to the catcher as fast as he can, and the catcher can catch the ball already coming to his feet and firing to second base. It’s a play designed to foil steal attempts, and it’s almost never done - the A’s had pitched out only 16 times in 162 regular season games in 2014. But now they pitched out in the 12th inning of a tied double-elimination game - and they guessed right. Colon was dead to rights.

Except…

Except Derek Norris is not Gary Soto. He’s a fantastic bat, but a poor defender. His eyes were on Colon, not on the ball coming in - and it clipped off his glove. He missed the catch and the ball fell harmlessly to the dirt while Colon skidded safely into second.

Over at third base, Josh Donaldson shaded over towards second to help protect outfielder Jonny Gomes’s arm.

On the next pitch, Hammel through a slider. It wasn’t a great slider, but it was 6 inches outside. It was the 385th pitch of the game, and the time was 11:52 - 8 minutes to October. Perez lunged desperately for it. There were 2 strikes - if he missed, the inning was over and the game was going 13 innings, with the Royals pitching running on fumes.

But he did not miss.

The ball skipped down the third base line. Josh Donaldson hurled himself towards the ball, diving to stop it. He got close:



One inch from preventing history.

But Donaldson did not catch it. The ball skipped past - and Perez was running to second - and here came Colon around third and the crowd was erupting.

9-8, Royals.

“The noise felt volcanic. The stadium shook. In the stands, strangers embraced. Fans jumped on their seats. Beer and water rained down upon them. Inside Moore’s suite, George Brett, the legend who predicted victory when the situation seemed most dire, clasped his hands on his forehead and shouted. A mosh pit formed around Perez. The group somehow stayed upright, their momentum propelling them into center field. The stadium blared Archie Eversole’s “We Ready,” the song that became the team’s anthem en route to the World Series. After the celebration, Hosmer received a request from a team official to do a television interview on the field. “I literally told him I had to wait two minutes,” Hosmer said. “Because I felt like I was going to throw up.”

Inside the broadcast booth, Darling shook hands with Ripken and Johnson after they went off the air. Darling knew, already, it was one of the greatest games he had ever called. “My reaction, after the game, is unprintable,” Darling said. “It was ‘Holy (expletive). Can you believe what we just saw?’ I wish I could have said that on the air.” He walked back into the parking lot, which teemed with fans. To Darling, the group looked ecstatic. And exhausted. “It was almost like ‘The Walking Dead,’ ” Darling said. “The fans were walking around, zombie-like. Like they were kids who had too much sugar. Or adults who had too much coffee.”


Abby Elmer and her parents struggled to reach their car because of the crowd surrounding Joel Goldberg and Jeff Montgomery’s stage for Fox Sports Kansas City’s postgame show. For the drive back across the state, Seth Atkins listened to Josh Vernier on 610 Sports Radio. He lost the signal near Columbia, so he put the show on his phone.
At his home in Overland Park, Kent Swanson watched highlights until 3 a.m. When he heard Ryan Lefevbre’s radio call of the final hit, as the night baseball returned to Kansas City drifted toward the morning, he burst into tears.”

Three times, the Royals had trailed. Three times, they had come back. They had overcome the largest deficit of any team in an elimination game in history. They gotten lucky, skated on the edge of disaster, they had been brilliant - and in the end, they had won. The most important game in Kansas City in 29 years ahd also turned into the best game in 29 years. The celebration throughout the city was universal.

Well, except for one household.

Papa never woke up from his surgery.

[aetryn]

I've had a hard time finding a reply simply because everything I want to say seems weak and inadequate. This is such a great story and I can really feel the impact it had to you. You have me hanging on waiting to see the next installment.

[williams482]

I remember watching this game (a damned good one), but you've still had me at the edge of my seat. I certainly got more than I'd bargained for in asking about city names, and you still haven't covered Ben Zobrist yet. Well done!

I'll admit I was rooting for the A's then. I've been partial to them since I read Moneyball for the first time. Throw in a roster full of moving parts that any Strat-O-Matic player would love and a generous assortment of former Red Sox (my team), and it seemed like the natural choice. 

Reading this, I'm glad that Kansas City took that game.

I'm so sorry about your grandfather.

[Ituralde]

That was a sad ending. Sorry about your loss.
Thank you for a great story and bringing Baseball a little bit closer to me. Too bad the YouTube video you linked is blocked in my country, but I know what to look for now.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

[quote pid='679465' dateline='1530208714']I've had a hard time finding a reply simply because everything I want to say seems weak and inadequate. This is such a great story and I can really feel the impact it had to you. You have me hanging on waiting to see the next installment![/quote]

Don't hesitate to reply! If no one says anything for a while I start to think that I'm talking to myself. This isn't a baseball fan forum, after all, but I do hope that I can sell why the game is important to me, personally, at least. 

[quote pid='679475' dateline='1530213507']I remember watching this game (a damned good one), but you've still had me at the edge of my seat. I certainly got more than I'd bargained for in asking about city names, and you still haven't covered Ben Zobrist yet. Well done!

I'll admit I was rooting for the A's then. I've been partial to them since I read Moneyball for the first time. Throw in a roster full of moving parts that any Strat-O-Matic player would love and a generous assortment of former Red Sox (my team), and it seemed like the natural choice. 

Reading this, I'm glad that Kansas City took that game.

I'm so sorry about your grandfather.[/quote]

Yeah, it sucked at the time. But I still have a connection to him through the Royals. Still cheer for them even though we're mired in literally our worst season ever (and yet we're STILL not going to get the #1 draft pick! What the hell, Baltimore!?). 

[quote pid='679564' dateline='1530258628'] That was a sad ending. Sorry about your loss.
Thank you for a great story and bringing Baseball a little bit closer to me. Too bad the YouTube video you linked is blocked in my country, but I know what to look for now. [/quote]

I don't want these thread to turn into "Chevalier talks about dead pets/family members," that really wasn't my intention, but yeah, for me the reason why baseball is important to me is all tied up with the loss of my granddad, coinciding with the best Royals game in 30 years. 

Anyway, don't tune out just yet. The story is not over. 

Try this link, I uploaded the video myself: https://vimeo.com/277677812

Maybe Vimeo is more tolerant than YouTube.

---

Turn 17

Finally, some movement. We're one turn away from our settler, and the scout is cornered:




I whack it for 50 damage. One more hit will finish it, but the bastard's gonna run away over those hills. I don't want to chase him to hell and back, so I'm thinking I might try and pull mys linger south, lure him into where I can attack him. I really, really need to get scouting underway again in the south. 

Abroad, Rowain grabbed his pantheon thanks to his religious state. Emperor still hasn't finished Code of Laws, but he should this turn.

-----

I found another video summary - lightly edited by me to make it fit up with my narrative a little better. Take ten minutes to watch this if you hate reading, or if you just like to supplement the reading (I do recommend watching it if you can, it’s a good bridge from 1985 to 2014). 


I drove back to Kansas City for the funeral.

Everyone in my extended family was coming into town, from as far away as New Jersey. It was the first time I had seen my family in months, living out of town as I did for university. I confess, I’m not sure how to approach the next section. There’s two intertwined stories here, of course: One, my bidding farewell to my grandfather, and simultaneously, the way that the Royals came to assume the same importance for me that they had for him. But how can I really do Grandpa justice? Not sure that my writing skills are up to the task. Just know that for everything that follows, I was back in town, with my family, and our source of entertainment during the funeral and the aftermath was the Royals, in the playoffs for the first time in my life.

When I got back to Kansas City, it was a sea of blue. Everyone had seemingly dug out a dusty Royals cap from the back of their closet. Everyone had the wild card game on their lips. Everyone was talking Royals this, Royals that. I had never seen the city so united on one object. It seems Kansas City had just been aching for some team, any team, to give them something to root for - and the Royals obliged.

The next round was the American League Division Series, a 5-game series against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the team with the worst name in baseball but the best record in 2014. First team to win 3 games advances to the next round, loser goes home for the winter. The Angels had won 98 games to the Royals’ 89, and had on their roster the undisputed best player in baseball, Mike Trout. It was a tough challenge, and really no one in Kansas City expected the Royals to actually beat the Angels. Just being there was enough.

Going into Game One, after the exhausting, wild, emotionally draining Wild Card Game, we weren’t expecting much. The team would be tapped out, and probably come out flat in the ALDS (Angels had home field advantage, of course, with the better record).

But in that first game in Anaheim, we realized that what no one had counted on was the Royal’s defense - and they proceeded to put on a defensive clinic. The Angels hit fly ball after fly ball in their expansive stadium - and every one found its way into a Kansas City glove. The Royals scratched out two runs in the usual way - stretching singles into doubles, running aggressively, putting the ball in play, but the Angels managed to answer each time with a timely home run.

But they could not break through. The game stayed tied at two. Again and again the Angels would threaten, and again and again Lorenzo Cain would make a diving catch, or Alex Gordon would make a perfect throw, and the moment would vanish.

The Angels’ best chance came in the 6th inning:

Ned Yost stuck with his starter a little too long, and a single and a walk had put the go-ahead run in scoring position. I remember watching this game standing around the kitchen table with my family, eating and drinking the night before the funeral, and everyone in the room was screaming at Yost to take Vargas out and replace him with Herrera.

Yost stuck with Vargas. And on a 1-0 pitch, Vargas threw an 89 mph fastball basically down the middle. Kendrick drove it deep to the opposite field. Lorenzo Cain sprinted at full speed, and at the last moment tried to jump and catch the ball against the wall, but he was a couple of feet short and the ball eluded his glove.

And instead it landed in the glove of Nori Aoki, who had sprinted over from right field and was, at that moment, practically spread-eagled against the fence.

This was perhaps the most unlikely play I have ever seen, and one of the most crucial. If that ball is not caught, the Angels take a 4-2 lead and win Game One of the ALDS. And it should not have been caught. Aoki is not a great defender - solid, but not spectacular. But he had somehow dashed all the way from right field in the same amount of time it took Lorenzo Cain - one of the best outfielders in the game - to get there. Then, he had flung himself spread-eagle against the wall and sort of stuck his glove out and hoped. To top it off?

His eyes were closed:

Like I said: I don’t know how it happened. I’m still not sure it did happen, because that’s not supposed to happen. But the Royals joyfully ran off the field, the Angels retreated back to their dugout, the game moved on to the 7th inning still tied, and the Royals won in extra innings.

Aoki saved the game again in the 7th inning with another seemingly-impossible catch (about the 5th of the game for the Royals, if I talked about all of them we’d be here all night), and the game moved through the 8th and 9th innings into extras. The Royals had clung to the tie by their fingernails against the best team in the American League through the 10th…

And then in the 11th, Mike Moustakas, who had never shown the power that he once promised, hit a solo home run to give Kansas City the lead. The Royals stunned the Angels and won Game 1. Two games to go.

Then, they did it again.

Again, the Royals took a narrow lead - a single run, in fact, but again their defense shined and the Angels couldn’t scratch out more than one themselves later. The game stayed tied. Again, the Angels had a chance to break through in the late innings, and again, the outfield was heroic. This time it was Jarrod Dyson.

Wade Davis had come on, and had somehow given up a double. The Angels, knowing how crucial this run could be, had gone to their own pinch-running weapon, Colin Cowgill. Davis then unaccountably hung a curve ball to Chris Ianetta.

Ianetta hit the ball hard into the left-center gap, but it hung in the air a little, and Jarrod Dyson – who had just come into the game for defense, moving Lorenzo Cain to right field and Aoki to the bench – was able to run it down pretty easily. But still: he caught the ball in fairly deep left-center field, maybe 30 feet in front of the warning track, and Cowgill had just come into the game precisely for his ability to run. Cowgill tagged. Dyson threw.

And Cowgill was out at third. So much had to go right on this play: Dyson had to plant his feet and get off a strong throw. Alcides Escobar, who saw the ball right in front of him and knew that it was a bit off-line, nonetheless had to make a judgment call to let the ball go through and give Mike Moustakas a chance to make a play. That by itself required a tremendous amount of baseball awareness – watch how Escobar moves his body out of the way at the last moment – and that’s like the fourth-best thing about the play.

And then Moustakas had to reach to his left to glove the ball and then immediately dive back to third base to tag Cowgill just inches before he reached the base. If anything goes even slightly wrong with any part of this play, Cowgill is safe, and the Angels have the go-ahead run on third base with one out. But thanks to a very good throw from a player who 1) is known almost exclusively for the talent in his legs, not his arm and 2) had just come into the game five minutes earlier and might not have had his arm completely limber, a heady non-play by the shortstop, and a terrific field-and-dive by the third baseman, the Angels had nobody on and two outs.

In the 11th inning, with the game still tied at 1, Lorenzo came beat out an infield single that he probably should not have (run like hell), and then Hosmer followed up with ANOTHER extra-inning homer.



The Royals had now won 3 extra-inning games in a row, and they had a 2-0 lead against the best team in the American League. It was impossible, it should not have happened, but it did - and now the Royals needed to just win one game at home and they would have swept the Angels right out of the playoffs. One more win and they would play for a chance to go to the World Series, the Promised Land all baseball teams aspire to.

If the Wild Card and Games 1 & 2 of the ALDS had been tension-filled, closely fought battles against evenly matched teams, October 5th, 2014, Game 3 was a party. It got started early.

The Angels took their first - and only - lead of the series in the first when Mike Trout homered, but the Royals struck back immediately, loading the bases in the bottom of the first before Alex Gordon tripled to clear them. 3-1, Royals. In the third, with a man on first, Eric Hosmer homered again. 5-1, Royals, and the jubilant crowd started to grow raucous as everyone started to realize: Oh, my God, this might actually happen!

Oh, and Billy Butler stole second base. Seriously, what else do you need to know?

This stolen base wasn’t really necessary. And Butler didn’t score after Alex Gordon grounded out and Salvador Perez struck out to end the inning, so this stolen base wasn’t really productive. But in response, all I have to say is Billy Butler stole a base. In a playoff game.

Butler did not steal a base during the 2014 regular season. He did not attempt to steal a base during the regular season.

Butler did not steal a base in 2013. He did not attempt to steal a base in 2013.

Butler did not steal a base in 2015. He did not attempt to steal a base in 2015.

In the last three seasons, Billy Butler has attempted to steal a base only one time. This is that one time. And he was safe. Against a left-handed pitcher. Hector Santiago isn’t a particularly easy pitcher to run on – during the season, runners were just 10-for-17 (59%) in stolen base attempts. But Butler went. And he was safe.

This moment didn’t make sense. Not one person in the stadium that day thought it made sense. Look at Butler flashing Jarrod Dyson’s “vroom vroom” sign.



Pure, unadulterated joy. It was starting to become the Royals' trademark, between Cain's dazzling smile, Aoki's goofy cheerfulness, Salvy's constant laughter. The Royals weren't just winning, they were having fun doing it.

In the 4th, after Albert Pujols tried to get the Angels back into the game with a home run, Moustakas immediately grabbed the run back with another homer.

And the Angels collapsed. The final score ran to 8-3, Royals, and when Greg Holland took the mound Kauffman stadium was basically a gigantic party. Eric Hosmer promised to buy everyone in the city drinks at McFadden’s, a local bar (and he damn near did - the party continued there with the players and fans celebrating together). The 9th, with a 5-run and Holland on the mound, was foregone conclusion. 3 outs later, the Royals were going to the ALCS.

Watching in the living room with my family, I think the moment the final out was made was the first time I had smiled since September 30th.

EDIT: I'm looking over the code to try and figure out why my quotes are broken, but everything seems to be in order. Dunno.