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Five KC Royals Ejections Feed Rivalry Against A’s

By John Viril

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The KC Royals just took their rivalry with the Oakland A’s from “emerging” to “established” after an ugly game on Sunday in which five Royals coaches and players got ejected.

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The Kansas City Royals managed to pull off their sixth comeback victory of the season in a 4-2 win over the A’s. Kendrys Morales slammed a double off the wall in deep left center to plate two runs and cap a three-run game-winning rally in the 8th inning.

As fun as that victory was, the real story was that a mid-April game turned into an almost playoff atmosphere after Oakland starter Scott Kazmir hit KC Royals no. 3 hitter Lorenzo Cain in the foot in the first inning.

Home plate umpire Greg Gibson immediately issued warnings to both benches. Both the Kansas City Royals and A’s had been barking at each other the last two games of the seires after Brett Lawrie slid into KC Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar on Friday.

Escobar considered the play “dirty” leading to a angry twitter exchange between the players on Tuesday. Then Yordano Ventura beaned Lawrie after giving up a 3-run home run to Josh Reddick. Ventura got ejected from the game without a warning after he followed the home run by nailing Brett Lawrie at the plate.

This exchange led to the first inning on Sunday, where KC Royals manager Ned Yost and pitching coach Dave Eiland screamed at Greg Gibson for giving a mere warning to each team after Scott Kazmir hit Cain, rather than an immediate ejection as you can see in the video from MLB.com below:

In the 8th inning, with the Kansas City Royals trailing 2-1, reliever Kelvin Herrera threw behind Lawrie with two outs and no runners on base. Gibson immediately tossed Herrera and acting manager Don Wakamatsu along with Alcides Escobar, who has been riding the bench after Lawrie slid into him on Friday.

You can see the video from MLB.com here:

The angry KC Royals then rallied for three runs in the bottom of the 8th inning to the delight of a nearly sold out Kauffman Stadium. With 36,755 fans in the seats, and the anger displayed by both teams, Sunday felt more like a continuation of last October’s Wild Card game rather than a regular season meeting.

At this point, you have to say the A’s/Royals has turned into a full-blown rivalry in the foreseeable future. Brett Lawrie claimed after the game that Kelvin Herrera threatened to bean Lawrie next time he faced the KC Royals pitcher when Herrera pointed toward own head as he walked off the field.

Lawrie told CSN peronality Brodie Brazil:

"“That ain’t OK. This is a game, this isn’t going out there trying to hurt people. This guy doesn’t throw 85. He throws a hundred.”"

A’s closer Sean Doolittle added on Twitter:

The KC Royals will next play the A’s on June 26-28 in a three game series in Oakland. After this weekend’s heated series in Kauffman Stadium, we have to expect more of the same two months from now.

And if the two teams square off once again this October, you will be seeing a do-or-die series between teams that genuinely don’t like one another.

Welcome to relevance Kansas City. It’s been about 30 years.

Next: Alcides Escobar Calls Brett Lawrie's Slide Dirty

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