In my home away from home hometown, Kansas
City, the month of October has proved to be an incredibly exciting experience
in the world of professional sports.
Besides Sporting Kansas City, the local major league soccer team,
clinching a spot in the MLS playoffs, the major league baseball team, Kansas
City Royals, have ended their 29 year post-season drought.
October for the Royals began with a game that
started on a September evening that ended four hours and 45 minutes later!! As a wildcard team, it was a one game chance
to move on to the best of five divisional series games. This beautiful mess of an American League
Wild Card Game went 12 innings (for those not familiar with American baseball,
a normal game is nine innings), that involved 41 players and ended with
Salvador Perez’s how-did-he-pull-that single to left, a rip that scored a
rookie utility man named Christian Colon from second base with the run that
provided a 9-8 victory
over the Oakland Athletics.
The team came back from a four-run deficit
with three runs in the eighth off pitcher Jon Lester,
then another in the ninth against Oakland closer Sean Doolittle, who had been
scored upon once in his past 20 outings. Pinch runner Jarrod Dyson stole third in
the ninth inning to set up the tying run on a sacrifice fly, one of Kansas
City’s seven stolen bases. The Royals won because a 21-year-old lefty, Brandon
Finnegan, who, five months ago, was a student at Texas Christian University my
friend Shayla’s university, held the A’s
scoreless in the 10th and 11th with dominant stuff and preternatural poise.
The Royals moved on to sweep the Anaheim
Angels in the best of five American League Divisional Championship series games. Currently, they lead 3 games to none in the best
of seven American League Championship games.
They could clinch their place in the World Series tonight!!!
Enjoy this amazing video from last nights game:
Amazing catchHere are the headlines from the local paper from the past couple of weeks:
GO ROYALS!!!!!!
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