Athletics Nation

Got to hand it to these last-place teams; they do manage to entertain. 

Not that anyone was around to notice.

Well, except here at the AN pub.

These one-liners are sure annoying.

Yeah.  So the A's and Royals played a little baseball tonight, and there's a crazy rumor going around that 10,376 people showed up to watch.  For the first couple of frames the natives were displeased, as Gio Gonzalez showed the visitors his shiny new fastball.  Those mean Royals, they kept hitting the cheese but hard, breaking through for three in the first, courtesy of a run-scoring two-bagger off the wood of Mark Teahen, and a single by Alberto Callaspo that plated two runners.

David DeJesus made it 4-love with a long homerun in the second.

Ah but we've been here before with Gio at home, haven't we?  A little more than a month after coming back from 10 runs down to shock the Twins, the A's shrugged off this little deficit, and put up a crooked number to take the lead in the third.

They rattled Royals starter Luke Hochevar with an impressive display of baserunning.  Cliff Pennington walked to lead off the inning, stole second with one out, and came home on a base hit by Rajai Davis.  Davis moved up ninety feet on a throwing error by right-fielder Willie Bloomquist, and scampered to third when Hochevar took his sweet time walking back to the mound- with his head down.  Yikes.  Kurt Suzuki was robbed of a single by Callaspo, but it was enough to score Davis.  Jack Cust walked, Scott Hairston singled, and both scored on a triple down the right-field line by Ryan Sweeney.  Mark Ellis made it 5-4 A's with a base hit to center.

Kansas City tied it in the fifth on an RBI-triple by Callaspo, but the home team took the lead back, and for good, with three runs in the sixth.  Christmas is four months away, but the Royals were surely in a giving mood tonight.  With the bags loaded and one out, Adam Kennedy hit one back to reliever John Bale, who instead of starting an inning-ending double play, decided to throw the ball into center field, and it so confused Sweeney and Daric Barton that they ran all the way home.  Davis singled to score Kennedy with the game's final run.

The contest was then left in the reliable hands of the A's bullpen, and an assembly line of Craig Bleslow, Michael Wuertz, Brad Ziegler, and Andrew Bailey (who picked up his 21st save) shut down the Royals down on just a pair of hits over the last 3-2/3 innings.