From 1995 through 2012, I remember only one Kansas City Royals game that had a playoff atmosphere. It was 2005, a year the Royals lost a franchise-worst 106 games. They had three managers – Tony Pena, Bob Schaefer and Buddy Bell – and were outscored by 234 runs.
That team started the season 3-3, yet somehow ended April 12 games under .500. By June 1, Kansas City was 14-37, 20.5 games behind the Chicago White Sox, who went on to win the World Series.
So, how in the hell did that team have a game with a playoff atmosphere? Because it came in the most Royals of Royals moments for that era.
From July 28 to August 19, Kansas City didn’t win a single game. That’s more than three weeks without a victory. There was no break, no pandemic, no series of rainouts. The Royals were just incredibly bad. So bad that they lost 19 consecutive games.
To put that skid in prospective, it’s the longest losing streak in Major League Baseball since the 1988 Baltimore Orioles opened the season with 21 losses. The Royals’ 19-game streak is tied for the 12th longest in the sport’s history, which covers more than 130 years.
The 2005 team lives in infamy with such teams as the 1889 Louisville Colonels (26 straight losses), 1899 Cleveland Spiders (24, with an MLB worst-ever final record of 20-134 in 1899), 1961 Philadelphia Phillies (23), 1906 Boston Americans (20) and 1969 Montreal Expos (20).
As one might expect, especially if you watched Kansas City during the dark years, the Royals found some spectacular ways to extend the streak. On Aug. 4, after six straight defeats, they blew a 5-0 lead at Boston when the Red Sox scored eight runs in the fourth inning. The next day, they coughed up a 4-1 lead late against Oakland, with the winning run scoring on a wild pitch by Ambiorix Burgos.
But the worst came on Aug. 9 against the Indians. Ten games into the skid, Kansas City scored five runs in the first three innings and went into the ninth with a seemingly insurmountable 7-2 edge.
The Royals summoned Mike MacDougal, a former all-star, to finish the game and end the streak. Casey Blake doubled to lead off the inning, then Grady Sizemore doubled to cut the deficit to 7-3. A Coco Crisp single pulled Cleveland within 7-4. After a strikeout of Jhonny Peralta, Travis Hafner doubled, and Victor Martinez platted two runs with a single to left, making the score 7-6 with one out.
MacDougal recovered to get Ronnie Belliard on a grounder to Angel Berroa and appeared to end the skid when he got a fly to left field from Jeff Liefer. Predictably, Chip Ambres misplayed the ball for an error, allowing Liefer to cross the plate and tie the game. Five batters and another reliever later, the Tribe had a 13-7 lead.
To recap, an 11-run ninth inning with eight hits, two errors, two walks, 14 at-bats, and a partridge and a pear tree.
Kansas City lost eight more in a row, including one-run losses to Detroit twice and Seattle once. By mid-August, they were a national laughing stock. Talk show hosts took shots nightly. They were a focus of sports talk radio just about everywhere. It was embarrassing.
On Aug. 20, against a good Oakland team, the streak mercifully came to an end. But it was a game full of tension if you were a diehard fan. The A’s scored first in the third to take a 1-0 lead, but the Royals answered with an RBI double from Emil Brown and an RBI groundout from Matt Stairs in the fourth.
Oakland threatened all night, getting a leadoff single from Dan Johnson in the fifth and a leadoff double from Eric Chavez in the sixth. In the latter, Chavez stole third with nobody out. Oakland loaded the bases with one out, but Burgos struck out Nick Swisher and got a groundout from Mark Ellis to end the inning.
The Royals held on for dear life, closing out their first win in more than three weeks with a three-up, three-down ninth. All these years later, I can remember my heart racing as Bobby Crosby grounded out to end the game. The next day, a co-worker said, “That felt like a playoff game.” And, sadly, it did.
Anytime Kansas City gets into one of these funks, I think of that game and team in 2005. The Royals have had way too many of these skids. Losing streaks are a part of baseball, and every team goes through them, but Kansas City has more than its share. Since 2004, the Royals have had 17 skids of eight or more games. Eight times in that span, they’ve had a double-digit streak.
So, as Kansas City is mired in an eight-game skid, I think of what Buddy Bell once said: “I would never say it can’t get worse.”
Let’s hope the Royals don’t prove him right this year.