This Date In Royals History--1985 Edition: September 1
Last-place Texas finishes off a sweep of the Royals.
The Royals ended a disappointing series in Texas with a 5-3 loss to the Rangers on Sunday night at Arlington Stadium. The win gave Texas, 23.5 games out of first place in the division, a sweep in the three-game series, a week after the two teams split a four-game series in Kansas City.
The story in this game was Rangers starting pitcher Mike Mason, who scattered eight hits over seven innings. He walked two and only struck out one hitter, but the Royals could muster little offense.
Texas wasted little time getting on the board. Oddibe McDowell continued punishing the Royals with a leadoff triple against starter Danny Jackson in the first inning. Toby Harrah’s sacrifice fly gave the Rangers a 1-0 lead.
The Royals manufactured a run in the third to tie the game. Onix Concepcion and Lonnie Smith began the inning with singles. Lynn Jones put down a sacrifice bunt. George Brett’s groundout scored Concepcion, but the Royals could not get the second run home.
Texas answered in the bottom half of the inning, helped out by some wildness on Jackson’s part. With one out, he hit McDowell with a pitch. Harrah singled, moving McDowell to third. When Jackson threw a wild pitch, McDowell scored and Harrah took second. Pete O'Brien’s single scored Harrah for a 3-1 lead.
The Royals managed to tie the score in the fourth. Steve Balboni led off with a home run. With one out, John Wathan singled. Concepcion grounded out, with Wathan taking second. Smith singled, bringing Wathan home to even things up at 3-3.
But the Rangers took the lead for good in the fifth. Jackson walked Steve Buechele to start the inning. Wayne Tolleson singled, moving Buechele to third. Tolleson stole second, and both runners moved up when Wathan’s throw sailed into center field. That gave Texas a 4-3 lead, and McDowell’s single scored Tolleson for a 5-3 lead.
Mason retired the side in order in the sixth and seventh innings, but hit Brett with a pitch to start the eighth. Reliever Dwayne Henry got McRae to ground into a double play, then set down the next four hitters to pick up the save.
The Royals fell to 69-58 with the loss. The silver lining was that California also lost, so Kansas City remained 2.5 games behind in the AL West. The cloud to the silver lining was that the Royals had missed a chance to beat up on one of the worst teams in baseball.
Box score and play-by-play:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TEX/TEX198509010.shtml
1985 news: As Hurricane Elena continued meandering around the Gulf of Mexico, it reached Category 3 status. The storm continued to confound forecasters but now appeared to be headed for landfall on the coast of Mississippi, which was the original prediction before the storm made an abrupt right turn and seemed headed for Florida. That meant thousands who had evacuated the area, then returned, had to quickly leave again. All these evacuations were complicated by the fact that this was Labor Day weekend, adding an untold number of tourists to the mix.
Today’s birthdays: Monty Montgomery (1946), Derek Wallace (1971), Sean O'Sullivan (1987), Anthony Veneziano (1997)