This (stuff) – as the Kansas City Star would transcribe it –
is starting to get real. Some tie-breaking hits, some crucial insurance runs,
and three clinching moments in this set of ten, and we’re not even to the
halfway point in this series.
Moment #:
120
Date: October 2, 2014
Game: 2014 ALDS Game 1, @ Los Angeles Angels
of Anaheim
Score: Kansas City 0, Los Angeles 0, Top of
the 3rd
Situation: Two outs, man on first
Count: 2-2
Matchup: Alcides Escobar vs. Jered Weaver
Result: Double, go-ahead run scores
WPA: 14%
Summary: Alcides Escobar
doubles with two outs, and aided by Josh Hamilton’s misplay, Mike Moustakas
scores the first run of the ALDS all the way from first base.
Jered Weaver treating MIKE MOUSTAKAS like Rickey Henderson. Hangs one for Escobar. THE ROYALS ARE IN THEIR HEADS.— Rany Jazayerli (@jazayerli) October 3, 2014
How many things have had to go right for the Royals to be
where they are today, the defending world champions and two-time AL pennant
winners? Let me rephrase the question: how many moments have there been in the
last two years in which, if you just change the outcome slightly, the whole
championship run unravels?
This is one of those moments, and it says something about
how charmed an existence the Royals have enjoyed that you probably don’t even
remember it. Game 1 of the 2014 ALDS was scoreless through two innings, and it
looked like it would be scoreless in the middle of the 3rd as well when Jered
Weaver struck out Salvador Perez and Omar Infante to start the top of the
inning. But then Mike Moustakas walked on a full count, and then after doing his best to hold Moustakas and his game-changing speed at first base, Weaver then left a slow curveball up for Alcides
Escobar,who drove a ball beyond Josh Hamilton’s reach in left field.
And even then, the Royals should not have scored. Moustakas
isn’t exactly a burner on the basepaths, and Hamilton has a strong arm; if he
just plays this ball for a double, Moustakas holds and then doesn’t score when
Nori Aoki grounds out. But Hamilton tried to be the hero and catch the ball,
and when he didn’t, it bounces off the short wall and back towards the field;
by the time Hamilton gets to the ball, Moustakas has passed third base and he
scores without a throw.
Like the following night, when (Moment #156) Alex Gordon
turns a single into a double when Mike Trout briefly loses the fly ball in the
lights, and then scores on two fly outs, a fielding misplay so minor that no
one would think to call it an error nevertheless turns into a run. And like the
following night, the game would be deadlocked after nine innings only for the
Royals to win it in extras. If Hamilton concedes the double and plays the ball
off the wall, the Angels probably win Game 1. If Trout doesn’t lose Gordon’s
ball in the lights, the Angels probably win Game 2, and the Royals, not the
Angels, are the ones playing for their lives in Game 3.
It is the nature of the sports fan to lament the tiny
things that derailed your team’s path to a championship; as someone who has
rooted for a Marty Schottenheimer-coached football team, I know that feeling
all too well. It is not the nature of the sports fan – or the human being,
frankly – to reflect on the tiny things that derailed the other team’s path to beating yours. One of the goals of this
project were to make sure those things weren’t forgotten. I feel like the
project has been validated by the fact that there were even more of those
things than I had remembered.
