Royally loud: Fuld and Gomes collide on Hosmer’s key triple in 12th
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Arrowhead Stadium receives lots of attention for being the loudest place in sports when the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs play there. As the Oakland Athletics found out Tuesday night in the American League wild-card game, the ballpark across the parking lot at the Truman Sports Complex can get deafening enough to affect the outcome of a baseball game, too.
A’s outfielder Sam Fuld credited Kansas City fans with an assist after neither he nor Jonny Gomes could catch Eric Hosmer’s fly ball in the 12th inning that turned into a triple and sparked the Royals’ final comeback in a rollicking 9-8 victory that sent them to the AL Division Series.
The Royals already had roared back twice after the A’s had taken a lead, and needed to again in the 12th down by a run. With one out, Hosmer drove a high-and-outside pitch from Dan Otero the other way to left-center. It didn’t seem like trouble at first, but the ball carried to the warning track, where Gomes converged from left field and Fuld from center. The ball hit the fence hard, just above Fuld’s glove as he and Gomes leaped and crashed into each other. Fuld landed front-first on the warning track, kicking up a lot of dust, but Gomes got to his feet and busted after the ball, which had rolled far enough away that Hosmer was able to make third by the time it was returned to the infield.
The collision might not have cost either outfielder a catch, but it definitely helped Hosmer get to the closest scoring position possible. Gomes and Fuld probably wouldn’t have run into each other if they had been able to use their ears.
A night before during the Chiefs victory against the Patriots, football fans reclaimed the Guinness record for Arrowhead as “loudest stadium in the world.” Kauffman might not have set a record, but Royals fans should be pleased with their collective set of lungs too, Fuld said. Proud to be loud.
“Unfortunately I don’t think there was any communication,” Fuld said about Gomes. “It was just too loud. I yelled, but it was just so loud that we could be right next to each other and not hear each other.”
Fuld had shifted from left field to center, and Gomes came into the game, after Coco Crisp left because of a hamstring injury in the 11th.
“I wouldn’t have changed any way I approached it, and I’m pretty sure [Gomes] wouldn’t have either,” Fuld said. “It was a ball hit right between us. I don’t think there was any other way we could have gone after the ball.”
Christian Colon followed with another play you almost never see: A chopper literally off home plate that bounced perhaps 30 feet in the air, giving third baseman Josh Donaldson no way to make a play. Colon’s single tied the score.
After the second out, two pitching changes and Colon stealing the Royals’ seventh base of the game, Salvador Perez hooked a pitch away down the left-field line for a well-placed single against right-hander Jason Hammel, ending the A’s season.
“The game of baseball, I say this all of the time, it’s better to be lucky than good. And that’s just the fortune of what happened tonight,” Donaldson said with no disrespect to the Royals.
Luckier, yes. It’s also better to be louder.
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David Brown is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter!
