Major League Baseball

Remembering the Royals' last ALCS

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 7:11 p.m. ET

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Twenty-nine years ago — well, actually 29 years and three days ago, if you want to get persnickety about it — I was in Kauffman Stadium for the Kansas City Royals’ last American League Championship Series. It was another Game 3, too.

Except it wasn’t Kauffman Stadium; it was still Royals Stadium, there was green carpeting everywhere instead of the real stuff, it was the Blue Jays instead of the Orioles ... and oh, did I mention it was a long, long time ago?

Still, I remember some moments quite well. I remember arriving with my Canadian friend, and squeezing into a couple of standing-room-only slots on the concourse between home plate and third base. I don’t remember George Brett’s first home run. But I remember his double off the wall in fourth. And I remember the third time he came to the plate — by then I was delirious —when I pointed toward the right-field wall and yelled to my Canadian friend, “He’s hitting another one! He’s hitting another one!”

And I remember how Brett really did hit another home run, this one a two-run shot that knotted the contest at five runs apiece. I remember the bottom of the eighth, too, when Brett led off with a groundball single into right field and eventually scored the decisive run, thanks to Steve Balboni’s bloop single.

Oh, and I almost forgot Brett’s tremendous fielding play in the fourth that definitely saved a run and probably saved the game.

You know what I also remember? A passage in the 1986 Baseball Abstract that I probably read a dozen times, because it came in the midst of the greatest thing that Bill James has ever written (if you’re a Royals fan) ...

I think Bill undersold Brett’s contribution just a bit … after all, Farr was the Royals’ only effective pitcher, and the other hitters’ contributions were modest. But this passage has always impressed upon me the fact that very few games are won by one or even two players, no matter how brilliant.

Which is, I think, something worth remembering.

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