A look back at the day the 2005 Kansas City Royals ended their 19-game losing streak
With a 14-6 loss to the Angels on Tuesday night, the Baltimore Orioles’ losing streak reached 19 games.
Only one other team in his century has endured a skid of that length: the 2005 Royals.
The Royals lost four one-run games, were swept in a doubleheader and had one infamous six-run defeat that summer.
In that particular loss, the Royals led 7-2 after eight innings at Kauffman Stadium. Cleveland pushed four runs across in the ninth and had a runner on first base with two outs when Jeff Liefer lifted a fly ball to left field.
Chip Ambres settled under the ball and ... dropped it (“Yes he did,” as Denny Matthews said on the radio call), allowing the tying run to score. Cleveland followed with a walk, single, walk and Jhonny Peralta’s three-run homer. When the carnage ended, Cleveland had scored 11 times for a 13-7 win.
That was loss No. 11.
The next day, Cleveland won again and finished a three-game sweep. Then came a pair of home losses to the Tigers, completing a winless eight-game home stand. After losing three times in Seattle, the Royals headed south to Oakland.
The A’s won 4-0 in the series opener, the 19th straight loss for the Royals.
On Saturday Aug. 20, two-time All-Star and 2003 Cy Young Award winner Barry Zito was the starter for the A’s. The Royals countered with Mike Wood, a spot starter for the Royals who also had two saves that season.
Loss No. 20 seemed on tap, but Wood outdueled Zito, ending the worst losing streak in Royals history and one of the longest in Major League Baseball history.
Buddy Bell, who was the Royals’ manager at the time, summed up the Royals 2-1 win this way in an interview with The Star’s Bob Dutton.
“I’ll be the master of the obvious,” Bell said, “We needed that win.”
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t come easy for the Royals.
Oakland left two runners on base in the second inning, then got the game’s first run on a Bobby Crosby infield out that scored Mark Ellis in the third inning.
The Royals responded immediately. Terrence Long and Mike Sweeney opened the fourth inning with singles. Emil Brown followed with a double that scored Long. Sweeney scored on a groundout by Matt Stairs and the Royals led 2-1.
While that was the final score, there were a few anxious moments for the Royals.
In the sixth inning, Oakland’s Eric Chavez was on third with no outs, but Ambiorix Burgos and Andy Sisco worked out of the jam.
The A’s put runners on base in every inning in the game except for the ninth. Mike MacDougal completed a four-out save by retiring the A’s in order, and the Royals had their first win in 24 days.
“I don’t want to be too excited,” Sweeney told The Star. “We got 39 wins, and it’s the middle of August. So it’s still miserable. But maybe this is a start.”
The Royals won the next day, taking the series. But they finished the season with a franchise-worst 106 losses.
This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 12:31 PM.
