Now, I’m happy that Sandra talked me into going to the A’s game tonight. The A’s beat the Kansas City Royals to run their win streak to 20 games. Suhweet! Over 20,000 tickets were sold the day of the game to make for a sold out crowd of over 55,500 people.
After three innings, the A’s had put up a 11-0 lead. The possibility of winning their 20th in a row by a 20-0 score seemed realistic. At this point, the A’s could do virtually no wrong, and the Royals looked totally hapless. In the next five innings, though, Oakland was scoreless while the Royals put up 10 runs. In the top of the ninth, the Royals did the unthinkable. Sweeney drove in a run off Koch to tie the game at 11-11.
In the bottom of the ninth, Tejada was far down in the order. He had won the last two games in the ninth, so someone else would have to be the hero. Howe must have told everyone to go for the quick run via a homer. Jermaine Dye took a couple strong cuts before driving a deep fly out to right. Howe pinch hit Scott Hatteburg for Eric Byrnes. I turned to Sandra and said that Hatteburg had a high percentage of home runs in his at-bats. Hatteburg then smashed a 1-0 pitch over the right-center wall. WooHoo! Lately, the A’s seem determined to see that we get our money’s worth by leaving it up to the very end. It was definitely the most exciting baseball game I’ve ever attended.