This Date In Royals History--1985 Edition: September 21
A late-inning comeback leads to a walkoff win for the Royals, as KC remains tied for first in the AL West.
The Royals scored three runs in the eighth to tie the game, then one run in the 10th for a scintillating and hugely important 6-5 walkoff win over the Minnesota Twins on Saturday night at Royals Stadium.
Twins starter Mike Smithson held the Royals to seven hits, one walk, and two runs through seven innings. Holding a 5-2 lead, he returned to the mound for the eighth inning. Lonnie Smith led off with a walk. George Brett’s double scored Smith, and the Twins turned to closer Ron Davis. But a wild pitch advanced Brett to third, and he scored on Jorge Orta’s sacrifice fly. Steve Balboni followed with his 34th homer of the season. That tied the game at 5-5 and also tied the Royals’ single-season home run record, set by John Mayberry in 1975.
“I knew it tied the game. That was the first thing on my mind. I knew it was gone, but it scared me for a second when it started to hook.”--Balboni, quoted by Howard Sinker, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, September 22, 1985
The Royals had been climbing uphill almost the entire game. Minnesota scored a run two batters into the first inning. Kirby Puckett led off with a single against Royals starter Bud Black, and Dave Engle followed with a double for a 1-0 lead.
Minnesota added one more run in the second. Gary Gaetti led off with a single, took second on a groundout, and scored on Greg Gagne’s single.
The Royals cut the lead in half in the bottom of the second. With two outs, Jamie Quirk walked and scored on a Buddy Biancalana double.
But the Twins tacked on two more runs in the fifth. With one out, Puckett walked and Engle singled. With two outs, Tom Brunansky doubled to drive in both runs for a 4-2 lead.
Reliever Joe Beckwith took over for Black after that and kept the Twins off the board until the eighth. Mark Funderburk led off that inning with a home run for a 5-2 lead. But Beckwith retired the next three hitters, and the Royals were able to tie the score in the bottom of the inning.
The score remained tied at 5-5 until the bottom of the 10th. Davis, still in the game, walked Brett to start the inning. Orta sacrificed Brett to second, but Davis walked Balboni in an attempt to set up a double play. Frank White foiled that strategy with a grounder that hit the third-base bag and bounced into left field. Brett hurried home with the winning run.
The Royals improved to 84-64 with the win. They remained in a first-place tie in the AL West with California, who easily defeated Cleveland. The two teams were knotted up with just 14 games left.
Box score and play-by-play:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA198509210.shtml
1985 baseball news: As the New York Yankees fell out of contention in the AL East (a seven–game losing streak that ended Saturday afternoon left them 5.5 games behind Toronto), tensions were surely climbing in the locker room. Sure enough, after manager Billy Martin got into a brief scuffle with a couple of members of a wedding party in Baltimore Friday night, the manager and pitcher Ed Whitson got into it at a bar Saturday night. Whitson, peeved because Martin had skipped his turn in the rotation on Friday, got aggravated with a fellow bar patron. When Martin and other Yankee personnel tried to intervene, Whitson kicked Martin in the forearm. After the two men were separated, Whitson managed to slip away and gave Martin a kick in the groin. Understandably angry, Martin told the pitcher he was going to kill him. The two men once again tangled before finally being separated and escorted to their hotel rooms. Martin turned up for Sunday’s game sporting a cast on his arm, joking that he hurt it while bowling, while Whitson was driven back to his home in New Jersey.
1985 sports news: One Kansas City-area college football team won, and the other two came very close to picking up their first wins of the season. Kansas ran its record to 3-0 with a 37-10 thumping of I-AA opponent Indiana State. Missouri’s comeback attempt came up just short in a 21-17 loss to Texas in Austin. And Kansas State, in interim coach Lee Moon’s first game, missed a chance to tie Texas Christian when their two-point conversion pass attempt was knocked down with 49 seconds left in a 24-22 loss. Elsewhere in the Big 8, 18th-ranked Nebraska routed Illinois, 52-25. Iowa State kicked a field goal with three seconds left to pick up a 20-17 win over Vanderbilt. Ohio State whipped Colorado, 36-13.
Today’s birthdays: Ewing Kauffman (1916), Gary Lance (1948), Aurelio Lopez (1948), Carlos Rosa (1984), Jeremy Jeffress (1987)