This Date In Royals History--1984 Edition: March 28
The Royals ride a big inning to a win, and an NFL franchise moves out in the middle of the night.
The Royals scored seven runs in the fifth inning, cruising to a 12-7 win over the Expos in Fort Myers.
Eleven Kansas City batters came to the plate in the fifth, battering Montreal pitcher Bob James as the Royals turned a 4-3 deficit into a 10-4 lead. The key blow in the inning was a three-run home run from Darryl Motley, his fifth of spring training.
Motley also got the Royals on the board with an RBI double in the second inning, tying the game at 1-1. Other offensive stars for Kansas City were shortstop Onix Concepcion, who strengthened his grip on the starting job with four hits and raised his spring average to a team-best .435, and Butch Davis, who added three hits, including a solo home run and an RBI double.
Starting pitcher Bud Black, in his final tuneup before Opening Day, got the win despite allowing four runs in five innings. The Expos scored one run off Joe Beckwith in the seventh and three off Dan Quisenberry over the last two innings to make the score somewhat closer.
The Royals improved to 11-10 in spring games with the win.
1984 news: Most sports fans probably didn’t find out until the next day, but a fleet of moving vans descended on the Baltimore Colts’ headquarters in Maryland, workers quickly packed up the team’s belongings, and the franchise relocated to Indianapolis basically overnight. The move was the culmination of a fight for a new stadium that had been going on for more than a decade. With the Maryland legislature threatening to pass a bill giving the city of Baltimore the right to seize the team’s assets through eminent domain, owner Robert Irsay felt he had no choice. A Phoenix group interested in the team (remember, the Cardinals were still in St. Louis) withdrew in light of the legislature’s actions, but the city of Indianapolis, which had already built the Hoosier Dome, offered Irsay the use of the stadium. By the morning of the 29th, the franchise had a new home. This move did eventually have implications for baseball; unwilling to lose the Orioles as well, the city and state got serious about replacing Memorial Stadium, leading to the building of Oriole Park at Camden Yards and a new era of ballpark architecture.
Today’s birthdays: Craig Paquette (1969), Austin Cox (1997)