Kansas City Royals Coach Matt Quatraro Just Announce The Return of …see more …
When Major League Baseball puts together the 2064 schedule, it absolutely must have the Seattle Mariners play the Royals in Kansas City on June 7 of that year. And if you’re a Royals fan who is somehow reading this four decades from now, buy a ticket to the game, regardless of the forecast. History suggests you won’t regret it. Call it fate, dejà vu or an amazing coincidence, but the Royals rallied from a 7-0 deficit at Kauffman Stadium and beat the Seattle Mariners on Friday (June 7). Exactly 40 years earlier, the Royals trailed Seattle 7-0 but came back and won on June 7, 1984. And there was rain in the forecast that night, too. Is that freaky or what? In the 1984 game, Seattle scored three in the first inning and added four more in the third inning. George Brett was hoping the skies would open up. “Guys were saying let’s get the game over. Just let the rain fall. Let’s get out of here — we’ve got no chance,” Brett said after the game. “But after it was 7-5 in the fifth, we knew we were going to win it. The feeling was there. We knew we were going to win.” Baseball Reference shows the Mariners had a 98% chance of winning in the fifth inning in the 1984 game, but then the Royals scored five times. Seattle got a run back in the sixth inning. Frank White clubbed a three-run homer off Dave Beard, scoring Brett and Hal McRae, as the Royals scored four times in the seventh inning and went on to win 9-8. That took starting pitcher Larry Gura off the hook. White’s dinger came on a 1-2 pitch and he told reporters afterward that he was looking to hit a home run. “When I was walking up to the plate, I said ‘I’m going for broke and I’m going to try to get it up in the wind,’” White said. Catcher John Wathan said: “It’s hard to think victory when you’re seven runs behind in the third. This was a good one to win.” Trailing by seven in the third inning is not a recipe for success, but the Royals pulled out a win in similar fashion on Friday.
