Royals Are in Their Same Old Trap, but Blue Jays Survive One, Win, 6-5

It’s as if the Kansas City Royals have replaced Halloween as October’s primary masquerade. It’s as if they are again pretenders at the Contenders Ball.

The Royals lost to the Toronto Blue Jays, 6-5, in 10 innings Wednesday. They trail the best-of-seven series for the American League championship, two games to none.

They have lost 10 postseason games in a row, including the last eight under Manager Dick Howser, who has a personal winless streak of 11 as a playoff manager.

The streaks seem to weigh heavily on the Royals, who led, 3-0, after 3 1/2 innings Wednesday, and led, 5-4, entering the bottom of the 10th.

They seemingly had the streaks buried, only to hand the opportunistic Blue Jays all six of their runs via a series of misplays and miscalculations, including the final decision: To pitch to Al Oliver with first base open in the 10th.

A disappointing but not disappointed crowd of 34,029 saw Oliver slap a single off Dan Quisenberry to drive in the winning run and cap a two-run rally generated by the generosity of the Royals.

A controversial umpiring decision helped the Royals take their 5-4 lead in the top of the 10th, but this was another game in which the star-crossed Royals had difficulty holding anything.

“You can play like this in April and May,” third baseman George Brett said. “You can play like this even in June, July and August.

“But you can’t play like this in October and expect to win.”

Said Howser:

“We had a chance to put it away and didn’t because we didn’t play well enough. We made defensive mistakes you can’t make in a close game.

“It’s the one thing we didn’t really do this season and can’t afford to, because we don’t score enough runs.”

Howser sat at a desk in his clubhouse office. An assembly line of reporters asked him about his winless streak.

“I know it’s there,” he said patiently, “but it doesn’t bother me, it doesn’t keep me up nights. I’m not thinking, ‘Hey, let’s break out of this for Dick Howser.’ I’m thinking, ‘Hey, let’s break out of this for the Royals.’

“I mean, I don’t believe in jinxes, but I do believe in breaks occasionally and I thought they were finally going our way.

“We get a check-swing single by Willie Wilson to open the 10th, then the controversial call by the umpires. We get back in the game against their best (relief) pitcher with our best on the mound, and we still couldn’t get it done. That’s the part that bothers me.

“Instead of being even (in games), we’re two down. We can still do it, but it gets tougher and tougher. The odds get more difficult. The only thing we can do at this point is think in terms of winning one in a row.”

Even that, of course, has eluded Howser and his Royals. This time, in the course of 3 hours 39 minutes on an overcast, 63-degree afternoon, the defense betrayed a strong starting performance by Bud Black, who permitted only five hits in seven innings, and then turned on successor Quisenberry.

Here is the litany of Kansas City mistakes:

--With his team leading, 3-0, in the fourth, Brett bobbled George Bell’s one-out grounder to third. Cliff Johnson followed with the first hit off Black, a double into the left-field corner, scoring Bell with an unearned run.

--With two out in the sixth and leading, 3-1, southpaw Black hit Bell with a pitch on the inside of the right arm. Bell pointed menacingly at Black as he walked down the first-base line, but the 6-4, 230-pound Johnson pushed his teammate toward the bag, then sent him to second with a single to left.

A wild pitch by Black put both runners in scoring position. Then, Jesse Barfield delivered the game-tying hit by bouncing a full-count single up the middle, a seeing-eye hit of the type that raised the Royals’ ire in Game 1.

“I thought it was the third out,” Black said later. “I couldn’t believe it had gotten through.”

--With the score still tied, 3-3, in the eighth, Quisenberry allowed a one-out single to center fielder Lloyd Moseby, who stole second and continued to third when catcher Jim Sundberg’s throw bounced into the outfield. Thus, Moseby was in position to score another unearned run, the go-ahead run, on Bell’s ensuing fly to right.

--With the Royals leading, 5-4, in the 10th, Quisenberry watched Tony Fernandez hit a ground ball to the left of shortstop Onix Concepcion, who gloved it as he crossed second base, where his first effort to dislodge it failed. The double pump allowed Fernandez to beat the delayed throw.

“You have to give him a hit,” Howser said of the scoring decision, “but it should have been an out. One out. No one on.”

Damaso Garcia’s grounder to third put Fernandez on second, and in position to score on Moseby’s second key hit, a single to right that tied the game again.

But the Royals weren’t through.

First baseman Steve Balboni further contributed to international relations when he failed to hold a soft pickoff throw from Quisenberry. The ball dribbled far enough away to allow Moseby to take second.

Bell flied to center, bringing up Oliver, who became the designated hitter when Johnson was lifted for a pinch runner in the sixth.

Quisenberry had trouble with left-handed hitters, who hit .320 against him, en route to 37 saves and an 8-9 record in the regular season. Oliver is a left-anded hitter who batted .251 with 23 RBIs following his July acquisition from the Dodgers. The next hitter would have been the right-handed batting Barfield. Right-handers hit only .229 against Quisenberry, but Barfield is not just any right-handed hitter. He drove in 84 runs, hit 27 homers and had a .289 average.

Howser went to the mound. First base was open, but the decision was made to pitch to Oliver.

“It’s what both Quiz and I wanted,” Howser said. “Oliver is a great hitter, but our reports indicated that he hasn’t been swinging very well. And the guy behind him has a lot more experience against Quisenberry.”

The Royals could have issued an intentionally unintentional walk, but Oliver spoiled the possibility by swinging and missing the first pitch, which was in the dirt. He took a ball, then swung violently, missing again for strike two.

“I’m sure they pitched to me,” he said later, “because they felt my timing would be off from not playing regularly. I made it easier for them by swinging at that first pitch, then I tried to put my Reggie Jackson swing on it. That snapped me back to reality, made me realize I had to hit it where it was pitched.”

Quisenberry thought he had Oliver struck out on the next pitch, but it was called a second ball. Oliver then went with an outside fastball, grounding it between Brett and Concepcion for the game-winning hit.

“Quiz did his job,” Howser said. “The outcome wasn’t good, but you can’t pitch any better than he did. He goes 1-and-2, throws what we all thought was the third strike, then throws another good pitch on which Oliver reaches out and hits a weak ground ball.”

Weak? Oliver said it was his biggest hit since he helped put Pittsburgh in the 1971 World Series with a three-run homer against San Francisco in the playoff series.

The Royals, who had been limited to one run in their last 20 playoff innings, collected 10 hits, and they provided Howser with his first lead in seven playoff games as Kansas City manager when Wilson hit a two-run homer in the third. An RBI double by Jim Sundberg in the fourth led to starter Jimmy Key’s departure.

Dennis Lamp came on to pitch a flawless 3 innings. The Royals, in fact, did not get another hit until pinch-hitter Pat Sheridan opened the ninth with a home run off Tom Henke, who saved 13 games after being recalled in July, gaining the nickname of “The Terminator.” Sheridan’s homer tied it, 4-4, and put the game into extra innings.

Wilson then opened the Kansas City 10th with a single, stole second and scored on Frank White’s two-out single, a sinking liner on which Moseby seemed to make a shoestring catch, only to have crew chief Dave Phillips, umpiring on the right-field line, call it a trap. The enraged Blue Jays argued heatedly, but Moseby would help defuse the controversy with a game-tying single in the home 10th.

He ultimately scored the unearned winning run on Oliver’s single. Weak? Try the Kansas City defense for weak. Or as Barfield said: “They keep complaining about us not driving the ball, but we hit it like they pitch it.”