After a while, after you’ve seen a lot of baseball games in a ballpark, you get a feeling for the place. You start to know its quirks, its peculiarities, how the wind shifts, how balls carry in the daytime and all of that. What I’m saying is that after seeing hundreds of games at Kauffman Stadium, you know what a home run looks like off the bat.
When José Guillen connected in the bottom of the ninth inning, it was a home run.
It had to be a home run. Guillen mashed it. He crushed it. The Royals are paying José Guillen $12 million a year — more than they’ve ever paid a player — to hit baseballs hard and far. When Guillen hits them, as the old line goes, they’re supposed to stay hit. And Guillen said afterward, “I don’t think I can hit any ball better than that.” It had to be a home run.
There were other reasons it had to be a home run. The Royals had lost 11 games in a row. They had been no-hit. They had blown a five-run lead with two outs in the ninth inning. Something good was due. And more than all of that, Kansas City baseball fans have endured an impossible amount of agony over the last decade plus, an inconceivable series of gaffes, we have seen a 19-game losing streak, we have watched a throw home hit the cutoff man in the back, we have seen a runner simply fall off of first base, we’ve seen a center fielder climb the fence to try to catch a ball that landed 5 feet in front of him on the warning track, we’ve seen a relief pitcher blow a game by throwing the ball 8 feet over the catcher’s head, we’ve seen two outfielders run toward the dugout together while a fly ball landed behind them.
Yes, it had to be a home run. The fates must have some sympathy.
Here was the situation: The Royals trailed Cleveland by one run, 5-4, with two outs in the ninth. Esteban German was on second base. Guillen was at the plate. Cleveland’s all-heart, no-stuff closer Joe Borowski was pitching. A fireworks-ready crowd of more than 25,000 stood and cheered and hoped.
The Royals trailed by a run because of the most staggering gaffe of the losing streak — and that’s saying something. In the sixth inning, with burner Joey Gathright on second and David DeJesus on first, German singled to right. Gathright rounded third and was so far ahead of the play that Cleveland outfielder Ben Francisco did not even throw home.
So, that obviously scored the run, right? Only it didn’t. Because in one of those moments that usually comes packaged with the “Psycho” shower scene music, DeJesus overran second base. Nobody seemed entirely sure why, including DeJesus. Francisco rifled the ball to second base, and DeJesus was tagged for the third out just an instant before a stunned Gathright crossed the plate. It was such a remarkably bad play that afterward, Hillman did not know whom to blame. He blamed DeJesus for losing his mind. He blamed Gathright for not hustling harder to get to the plate. He blamed luck and fate and Coolpapa, the Greek God of Base Running.
In truth, he only needed to blame DeJesus. That was some kind of blunder.
So that’s why the score wasn’t tied. Also, Mark Teahen had a sure RBI single stolen on a brilliant defensive play by Franklin Gutierrez. Also, the Royals drew only one walk in the game — this made eight consecutive games the Royals have drawn either one or zero walks. That’s a team record, if you’re scoring at home. The Royals have walked three times in their last eight games and struck out 46 times, and that’s really not a great ratio.
