This Date In Royals History--1985 Edition: September 17
The Royals' struggles against Seattle continue with an ugly loss.
The Royals continued to struggle against Seattle, losing their seventh game in eight meetings between the two teams this season. This one was a 7-0 stinker at Royals Stadium on Tuesday night.
One night after Mike Moore shut down the Royals’ offense for nine innings, it was Matt Young’s turn. The Royals hit only 12 balls out of the infield as Young held them to seven hits, six of them singles. Young did not walk anyone, and only picked up one strikeout. Kansas City also grounded into four double plays. The Royals had only one runner reach third base—Lonnie Smith, with two outs in the sixth following his one-out single, a wild pitch, and (what else?) a groundout. But George Brett’s groundout ended that inning.
Once again, the Mariners grabbed an early lead, scoring in the first inning. In fact, it took just two hitters. Jack Perconte led off with a walk and Phil Bradley homered off Royals starter Steve Farr for a 2-0 lead.
Farr pitched into the fifth, when Seattle scored two more runs. Domingo Ramos started the inning with a single. A groundout advanced him to second. Spike Owen reached on an error by shortstop Onix Concepcion. Perconte worked another walk before Bradley singled, scoring two runs and ending Farr’s night.
The Mariners put the game away with a three-run sixth inning. Facing reliever Mike Jones, both Al Cowens and Dave Henderson singled to begin the inning. Both runners moved up on a fly ball, and Dave Valle’s single scored both runners for a 6-0 lead. An Owen single and Perconte walk loaded the bases, and one out later, Alvin Davis drew a walk to force in a run.
Royals manager Dick Howser refused to worry about his team, despite their second loss in a row and lackluster showing against the fifth-place Mariners.
“It doesn’t bother me. I know we can turn it around. We’ve done it before. We’ll just turn around and roll off a good string. Whatever a good string is–right now we’d like one in a row and then a couple in a row.”--Howser, quoted by the Associated Press, September 18, 1985
The only good news of the night for the Royals was that California also lost. That meant the Royals, at 82-62, kept their two-game lead in the AL West with 18 games to play.
Box score and play-by-play:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA198509170.shtml
Today’s birthdays: Orlando Cepeda (1937), Thad Bosley (1956), Ryan Jensen (1975)
HBD to Thad Bosley. He was one of those bench players that you'd see the Royals logo when you opened a pack of cards and get excited, then the air would be let out of the balloon when you realized it was Thad Bosley. Maybe he was better than I'm giving him credit for, I don't really remember him all that well as an actual player.
He was the first Thad I've ever encountered though, and I always thought the name was kind of cool. Funny story, when I played little league in elementary/middle school, it was a 4 team league in a small community, so all the kids knew each other. Except one year, right before the season opener against the Red team (we were Blue), one of my friends on the Red team came over and started talking trash because they had a new kid on the team named Thad. The way he talked, Thad was basically a ringer who was staying in town with his grandparents for the summer, and he was their secret weapon, a dominant starting pitcher. My friend basically declared the game over and predicted we wouldn't even be able to touch his stuff. I think we were all really concerned until the game started and we absolutely shellacked Thad. It was bad. I think he did pitch about three innings because they didn't have many other options, but I'm pretty sure we batted around a few times on him. Even that one kid who totally sucks and doesn't even really want to be playing— you know the kid I'm talking about, every little league team has one— was lacing doubles off him. Got to the point where I felt bad for the kid. It's possible he was just really. He settled down as the season went on, and while he was far from a dominant pitcher, he was fine. The second game we played against was more along the lines of an average little league game. But my friend definitely wasn't talking trash before that one. Anyway, that's my Thad story, and what I always flash back to when I hear the name.
As always, thanks for your efforts in putting out this baseball history project. It's been fun to relive (on a daily basis) the season that made me fall in love with baseball. Honestly, I don't recall most of the details of it, since I was so young, so it's been a lot of fun to revisit. And now that the 2025 Royals are pretty much done, it's cool to have a counter to the modern day stuff in my inbox, even if the Royals are currently getting knocked around by the Mariners in both the past and present.