What we remember from the Royals’ crazy ALDS Game 4 comeback against the Astros
Five years ago this fall, the Kansas City Royals won their second World Series championship.
Fox Sports Kansas City is re-airing the Royals’ 11 victories from that postseason this month. At 7 Tuesday night, May 5, FSKC is re-airing ALDS Game 4. To help you relive the moments from that magical October, we’ve dug into our archives. You can read our coverage of that game here.
Columnists Sam Mellinger and Vahe Gregorian, who covered the 2015 posteason, had these thoughts looking back on the Royals’ wild comeback win.
Concert to funeral
God, I really do hate Minute Maid Park. And I love ballparks! They’re the best! I even like the Trop. I’ll even miss the Oakland Coliseum, for crissakes. But there’s something about Minute Maid that just doesn’t agree with me, like bad oysters. It just feels so ... manufactured. There’s so many cheap homers to left, and I’ll never forgive them for that dumb hill in center field, even though it’s long gone.
They had the roof closed, too, and both games in Houston started on beautiful afternoons. I get it, they want the noise, it plays well on TV, but at least then don’t give everyone these dumb noisemakers like we’re at a 2-year-old’s birthday party.
Look, I realize I sound like a 90-year-old man complaining about the cost of a movie ticket or something, but I say all this to tell you that might still be the loudest baseball game I’ve ever been to. It was more noisemaker than actual cheering, but still: It was rock-concert loud right up until that eighth inning. And that, to me, is what I remember most: the transition from rock concert to wake was so damn fast, it was jarring. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced something quite like it.
What could have been
Can’t think of this game without thinking about our tentative planning memo as the Royals approached the eighth inning trailing 6-2. Fertile would-be topics included Sam Mellinger on how the season wouldn’t “be remembered for a damn after this meltdown” and by yours truly on how backing off in an 11-17 September led to their offensive struggles. Instead ... they kept the line moving to win 9-6 and make it resoundingly evident they should never be counted out.
The view from KC
I was in the office for this game but big news came before first pitch: Salvador Perez was involved in a car accident. He wasn’t driving and was fine, but it made some people jittery that it was a bad omen.
And then, during the game, Perez hit a foul ball that struck a small child in the stands. Perez also was shaken up when a foul ball hit his mask and he was lifted for a pinch-runner in the seventh inning.
After the Royals fell behind 6-2 heading to the eighth, someone in the newsroom said: “Well, I’ll see you at spring training.” Instead, the Royals rallied for the win, and Drew Butera, who was in for Perez, drew a key walk during the eighth-inning rally.
Oh, and this was the game in which the Texas governor declared victory on Twitter before the KC comeback.