KC Royals: Ten Best Games So Far This Season
Kansas City Royals players celebrate after defeating the Oakland Athletics – Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports
Royals VS Athletics: April 19th at Kauffman Stadium (Royals won 4-2)
When the second weekend of the season rolled around, the Kansas City Royals were already in hot water with other teams in the American League. Obviously there was the opening day drama with the White Sox, then Yordano Ventura and Mike Trout exchanged words in Anaheim, and then… Brett Lawrie.
It all started on the Friday night game. In a night that was thought to be about Billy Butler‘s Homecoming to Kauffman Stadium, nobody ended the night talking about Country Breakfast. Instead, everybody was talking about Athletics third baseman Brett Lawrie, who had a dirty slide into second base and injured Alcides Escobar in the process. The Royals won that game, but the drama continued, and Brett Lawrie would never be able to return to Kansas City again.
It seriously felt like a playoff game taking place at Kauffman Stadium in April, and I remember being stunned at how much Kansas City was behind this team.
Things carried over into Saturday’s game, as Ventura beaned Lawrie with a pitch after he had given up a home run and was down 5-0 in the fifth. Ventura was ejected and that was the end of that chapter… or was it?
Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.
The next day’s game continued the charades when Scott Kazmir hit Lorenzo Cain with a pitch. From then on it was here we go again, and Kelvin Herrera finished it in the seventh inning. Lawrie came up to bat and Herrera threw a 100 MPH fast ball behind Lawrie’s head, that resulted in him immediately being ejected.
The Royals were trailing by two runs at that moment, and Herrera exiting the game did not put his team in a position to win. Still though, he was sticking up for his boys and that was cool to see.
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The Royals went on to plate three runs in the eighth inning and won the game by a score of 3-2. It was a crazy game, as the Royals had five members ejected, but still went on to beat the A’s and live up to their reputation as the bad boys of baseball.
I was at this game and man, was it crazy! It seriously felt like a playoff game taking place at Kauffman Stadium in April, and I remember being stunned at how much Kansas City was behind this team. From Lawrie getting booed all weekend long to the cheers of Ned Yost going out to argue Cain getting hit to the winning efforts in the eighth, this crowd showed they were here to stay early on in the season, and they’ve definitely stuck around.
The Royals won this series two games to one and went on to sweep the Athletics in an undramatic series in Oakland in late June.
This was the best game all season due to the drama and the fact that the Royals came back to win in the eighth inning. Also, this was before the Athletics looked as bad as they do now, so when this game happened it was considered a big win against a good team.
Next: What a season!