The broken-bat double. Doesn’t happen often, but then neither do teams like the 2014 Kansas City Royals. And the chances of this rare thing—the broken-bat double–driving in three runs in the third inning of a playoff game? And then the team with that kind of luck still needing 10 innings before the same guy who hit the broken bat double, Alex Gordon, homers leading off to put his team ahead again? (And yet the Royals, full of magic, still needed yet another homer in the 10th from Mike Moustakas against the indefatigable Orioles.) The statisticians tremble. But the Royals, last night becoming the first team to hit three extra-innings go-ahead homers in any postseason in history, assured they won’t be daunted by the odds. They were supposed to lose to the Angels in the last series.
Baltimore, at home–a riotous orange-infused home–simply lost what their center fielder Adam Jones called “a great baseball game.” The final was 8-6, and that’s only because there were some stranded runners. The broken-bat game was just Game 1 of this American League Championship Series. Game 2 is today, 4:07 PM on TNT. Don’t miss it.
