Epic comeback against A’s steeled a resolve that persists today for Royals

As the Royals were shriveling behind Oakland 7-3 in the eighth inning of their American League Wild Card Game at Kauffman Stadium, they were staring at an unprecedented, preposterous comeback to extend their season beyond that flickering moment.

No major-league team had ever come from farther back that late in a playoff game to win, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Baseball-Reference.com’s “win probability chart” pegged the Royals’ chances of rallying at 4 percent.

Oh, and Oakland pitcher Jon Lester had been 85-1 in games in which he’d been given a lead of three or more runs.

So much for the numbers. The panoramic view was just as bleak, starting with 40,502 fans muted since their inspired booing of manager Ned Yost during a wretched sixth inning.

Yost was doing all he could to “change the channel” in his head, and insidious “negative thoughts” were working to creep into general manager Dayton Moore’s mind as the times between fending them off and blunt reality were converging.

Watching from a suite, George Brett was figuring “Plan B” for October was on … as usual. Plan B is just “something else planned.”

“Twenty-nine years,” he said, “it worked.”

In the bullpen, reliever Jason Frasor thought, “This was cool, this was great, but I’ll be going home tomorrow.”

Simply put, designated hitter Billy Butler said, “One hundred percent, we were on the ropes. Your chances aren’t good.”

Then, of course, came the Royals’ eighth-inning eruption.

They were still one behind after the three-run inning, but that was the pivot to the unfathomable, delirious 9-8, 12-inning victory.

But that didn’t just keep the Royals afloat for a fleeting pop-in in their first postseason berth since 1985.

It also proved a mettle-forging catalyst through the division-series sweep of the Angels that sprung them into the AL Championship Series starting Friday night in Baltimore.

“I’ve never seen anything like it; not with that much at stake,” said Raul Ibañez, the Royals’ 42-year-old elder statesmen and emerging spiritual leader, adding, “I’m a big believer that your will is more important than your skill at this point. … Skill and will? Then you’re down to four teams” in the playoffs.

There’s no way to guage yet the long-range impact of this.

Was that reversal a phenomenon along the lines of a supernova, bursting to radiate enough energy to blind a galaxy before ebbing?

Or will it surge on as a transformative springboard for some time to come … or at least through the rest of the playoffs?

This much we do know:

Through what Yost called the “ultra, ultra glare” of what was the first postseason game for all but three Royals, they were steeped in an experience that gave them a considerable reservoir from which to draw.

“I think that game alone really settled a lot of guys in for postseason baseball,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said.

Or as Yost put it: “After that game, what more experience did you need?”

All of the air had come out of the stadium, Butler recalled, after Brandon Moss’ three-run homer sparked Oakland’s five-run sixth.

In hindsight, reserve catcher Erik Kratz joked Thursday, the Royals just were providing fans “a little break.”

“We were giving them a chance to recoup, maybe go get some nachos, last call,” he said. “And then I don’t think they sat down from the eighth to, what did we play, 12?

“I don’t think some of them have sat down yet.”

Technically, the complexion of the game changed in the eighth, but the kindling for the outburst was simmering for months.

There were plenty of ups and downs in the stretch run, of course, but by the time the Royals faced the ultimate down that night they had come to see themselves as relentless and resilient more than anything else.

“What I love about our team, is we have a lot of guys who have really had to fight in their careers to get here, to stay here,” Ibañez said. “You have guys who’ve overcome adversity and overcome struggles.

“So when you have that type of guy, a lot of players with that type of mentality, that type of mindset, these guys don’t know how to fold. They just don’t know how to do it.”

So what if the scoreboard said 7-3 Oakland?

“I think we knew the entire game we were going to win,” third baseman Mike Moustakas said, “so the scoreboard didn’t really matter too much to us.”

The chirping in the dugout reflected that.

At various times, Jarrod Dyson was shouting, “We’re not done yet,” and Hosmer was yelling, “Keep the line moving,” and Ibañez was saying, “It’s our time.”

No one, Ibanez said, yelled stuff like, “Nobody makes the last out.’”

“I’ve heard that on other teams before: ‘Nobody makes the last out?’ That’s not the image you want,” he said. “Everything becomes a positive affirmation of something you’re trying to move towards instead of something you’re trying to move away from.”

Even so, there was a lot of that same chatter in the fruitless sixth and seventh innings.

And by any reasonable measure, it was all but over when the deluge began with a trickle.

Alcides Escobar led off with a single.

Then he stole second.

“It’s not something that you typically would want to risk,” Moore said, “but if the matchup says you can do it, you do it.”

Nori Aoki grounded out to the right side, pushing Escobar to third, but then Lorenzo Cain knocked home Escobar … and stole second himself.

Little stuff, yes, but it helped engage two key mood-altering shifts:

The dormant crowd was back in it, venting 29 years’ worth of hopes and frustrations through one thunderous megaphone.

“I’m 100 percent sure we wouldn’t have had that type of outcome without the fans,” Butler said.

And the fans and the rampage on the base paths also seemed to become part of the unsettling of Lester.

“That’s what you do to a starter: you try to irritate him, you try to push him, you try to get him out of his comfort bubble,” Kratz said. “That’s what we were doing.”

Lester then walked Hosmer and was replaced by Luke Gregerson, who was greeted with Butler’s RBI single that propelled Hosmer to third.

It was 7-5, and on came Terrance Gore for Butler.

His steal would be the third of four that inning by Kansas City, and it no doubt helped account for Gregerson’s wild pitch a throw later to bring home Hosmer.

Gore, in fact, would stay stuck on third, but by then anyone watching suspected what the Royals expected already.

They’d go on to tie in the ninth, then win it 9-8 when Sal Perez’s 12th-inning single plated Christian Colon to overcome another A’s lead.

None of which really accounts for how the impossible happened.

But it explains that it can.

And that’s now as much a part of the profile and personality of this Royals team as anything else.

“They weren’t going to be denied; they just weren’t,” Yost said, later adding, “I don’t know if their mentality changed. I don’t know what changed. But that was a big stepping-stone for us, that game. …

“From that point on, they were ready.”

This story was originally published October 9, 2014 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Epic comeback against A’s steeled a resolve that persists today for Royals."