Advertisement

The catch that helped push the Royals to the brink of the World Series

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The wind started early in the day, blowing from west to east, rippling the flags at Kauffman Stadium. It rarely moves beyond a light swirl here, only occasionally unleashing the sort of gust that plays havoc on the baseball, as it did in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series. Hit a ball in the air Tuesday night and it was bound to move fast, like it was late for a date.

Mike Moustakas understood this as he clomped toward the dugout suites along the third-base line, a place where people willing to shell out big bucks get to hobnob with the dirt track that rings the field. Corner infielders who join the Kansas City Royals learn early the trick to traversing the dugout suites: Go to the front edge, plant yourself, find the ball and make a choice. The choice is the difficult part.

Without the wind, it would have been easy. The ball would have landed out of Moustakas' reach, maybe on the suite's roof, and been a foul ball. The wind whooshed, though, and it was pushing back against Adam Jones' popup in the sixth inning, and Moustakas was standing exactly where he was supposed to, and that gave him about 1.25 seconds to make the choice, which was to jump.

It was a bit awkward, a tad inelegant, because Moustakas isn't so much an athlete as he is a fullback with a bat and a glove. And he thrust that glove into the air as the ball tailed from him, squeezed it, fell head over heels the way this city has for its Royals, landed in the arms of the bourgeoisie, thrust the ball into the air, exited without injury, felt the appreciation of 40,183 and got right back to business, which was trying to deflate whatever will the Baltimore Orioles had left after running into the buzz saw that are these Royals.

Kansas City won again Tuesday night, which registers as little surprise at this point, seeing as the Royals last lost a baseball game Sept. 27. That's 18 days, 14 in a month where the best teams play, three different teams taking a total of seven cracks at Kansas City and none capable of scratching out even one victory. This was a classic Royals win, too, a 2-1 nailbiter that featured incredible fielding, good starting pitching, enough offense and a bullpen so stingy Scrooge looks like a spendthrift next to it.

Mike Moustakas tumbled head over heels to make the sixth-inning catch. (USA Today)
Mike Moustakas tumbled head over heels to make the sixth-inning catch. (USA Today)

All of it adds to the most improbable story of the 2014 baseball season: Not only are the Kansas City Royals one victory from the World Series, they've got four shots to clinch their spot, including the next two at the house of horrors Kauffman Stadium has turned into in a month that appreciates reapings long in the making.

"There's always these surprising things that happen in baseball," Moustakas said. "You really can't explain them."

How to explain these Royals then. How to encapsulate a team that won 89 games during the regular season, fought back from down four runs in the wild-card game, swept the team with baseball's best record and now holds a 3-0 ALCS advantage on the one with the second-most victories. How to properly elucidate what this group that knows no better means to a city that knows nothing like this, not after 29 years since its last playoff appearance, which resulted in its only championship.

Beyond Moustakas' catch, perhaps it's best to start with the run that won the game. A backup outfielder named Jarrod Dyson scored it. The only thing that runs faster than Dyson's legs is his mouth, and it has turned him into something of a star this postseason. He is flypaper for the media because no filter exists between his brain and vocal cords, and it is a beautiful thing. Dyson gives not a damn, and there is great power in his honesty.

He said, for example, that he thought this series wasn't going back to Baltimore. This did not rest well with the Orioles. They didn't fire back publicly, because for one, the baseball code rewards robotic answers, and also they know better than to get in a war of words with someone who lobs nuclear bombs. Still, it became a talking point going into Game 3, even though the rest of the Royals totally agreed.

"Everyone in here thinks that," first baseman Eric Hosmer said. "He came out and said it. He's not a guy who's going to hold back anything. Whatever he thinks, he's going to tell you his honest opinion. And you know what: That was everybody's honest opinion."

Dyson found himself on first, pinch running for Nori Aoki after a single, and he sped to third base on Hosmer's single to right field. Baltimore brought in reliever Kevin Gausman to face Billy Butler, hoping to induce a double play, and right away manager Buck Showalter went to his bag of tricks. He called for Gausman to step off the mound, fake a throw to first base and wheel around to pick Dyson off third. Dyson scrambled back, and as he dove into third safely, his shoulder collided with third baseman Ryan Flaherty's knee. It may well have been incidental. Dyson didn't think so.

"He dropped a knee, hoping I would get upset," Dyson said. "I just looked at him. He can get mad. I'll let our sticks do the talking."

Jarrod Dyson (right) scored the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly by Billy Butler. (AP)
Jarrod Dyson (right) scored the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly by Billy Butler. (AP)

Dyson meant the Royals' bats, though a bevy of broomsticks will accompany fans to Kauffman Stadium on Wednesday for a 4 p.m. ET start. Butler's fly ball to left field that scored Dyson, and the peerless relief work of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland, ensured the possibility of another sweep.

All three games have brimmed with tension into the late innings, enough so that Showalter said: "I wish I didn't have so much stake in it. I'd probably enjoy watching both teams play more than I do." Left unsaid was the truth about Baltimore: The Orioles have teetered at the most inopportune times while Kansas City continues a run of flawlessness that trickles down to manager Ned Yost, whose strategic bungling during the regular season has all but disappeared in the playoffs.

He handled Game 3 with a deft touch, pulling starter Jeremy Guthrie after the fifth inning, employing his bullpen with proper aggression and understanding that with the seventh inning on the horizon and the Three Amigos ready to say adios to any chance the Orioles might have, sending Dyson in earlier than usual represented a risk worth taking.

Guthrie wore a T-shirt to his postgame press conference that read: THESE O'S AIN'T ROYAL, an homage to a Chris Brown song that later prompted an apologetic tweet from Guthrie. Here's the thing: They aren't, not yet, not ever unless they pull off perhaps the greatest comeback in baseball history. At least the Red Sox were home for Games 4 and 5 of the 2004 ALCS. The Orioles need to steal two at Kauffman Stadium before returning to Camden Yards, and they need to do it from a Royals team that can smell its own history.

"We're one game away," Hosmer said. "So, win and we're in."

That's the sort of thing that motivates the choice. Moustakas could have played it safe, taken a half-hearted jab at Jones' popup. The dugout suite is treacherous. Tough to blame him for not wanting to throw himself at a bunch of strangers who may or may not catch him.

All year long, Moustakas saw Lorenzo Cain dive for balls, Alex Gordon crash into walls, Alcides Escobar run 100 feet for a popup, Salvador Perez take foul tips off his face, and he understood: October is not for the anodyne. So he took a chance, and when Moustakas came up, all he heard was the guttural noise the people here make whenever he does something right: "Mooooooose," they bellowed.

To the uninitiated, it sounds like a boo would, and he's heard a few of those as well. Not long ago, the Kansas City Royals weren't phenoms cruising through October. They were an out away from the end of their season. They were struggling in the middle of the summer. They were a trendy pick at the start of the year, with the caveat that they haven't been here, they haven't done this.

"We all know what we can do in here," Dyson said. "I just came out and said some bold words."

Now they don't seem so bold. They just sound like the truth, one the Kansas City Royals now have four chances to fulfill. Twenty-nine years is a long time to wait for a date. Better late than never.

More MLB coverage: