The greatest baseball game of all time was played 10 years ago
Long live the Wild Card Game
My favorite memory of the 2014 Wild Card Game between the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland Athletics is not, in fact, Salvador Perez’s game-winning single past an outstretched Josh Donaldson in the bottom of the 12th inning. Rather, my favorite moment came much earlier—on the first pitch of the game. James Shields took the mound in the top of the first inning and fired a fastball to Coco Crisp, who watched it go by.
It was a strike. The stadium, already in the midst of a “Let’s Go Royals” chant, erupted in a cheer that I didn’t know Kauffman Stadium could make. And that was on the first pitch. In Royals lore, it is known simply as the Wild Card Game, proper noun. It happened on September 30, 2014, 10 years ago to the day.
Plenty of words have been written about that game, a back-and-forth contest with the Royals’ odds to win the game dipping to 3% in the bottom of the seventh inning. Royals legends like Alex Gordon, Salvador Perez, Billy Butler, Eric Hosmer, Wade Davis, and Lorenzo Cain contributed to the win. So, too, did cameo appearances from supporting players like Josh Willingham, Brandon Finnegan, Christian Colon, and Jason Frasor.
But in looking back at the decade of baseball that’s transpired since then, my main takeaway is just how special that game, those two playoff runs, really were. We’re never going to see a better baseball game.
In 2014, Kansas City sports fandom was nearly a shameful experience. At that point, the Royals hadn’t been to the playoffs in 29 years, and had accrued more 100-loss seasons (four) than winning seasons (three) in two decades. The Chiefs were in a rough spot of their own, whose playoff victory drought had just gotten old enough to legally drink alcohol. Nobody under the age of 30 was old enough to remember Kansas City postseason success. That’s an entire generation of sports fans.
And for the Wild Card Game to take place as a single elimination game, a quasi game seven right off the bat? Are you kidding me? Those games are already electric enough. Royals fans were there to party.
So when Shields threw that first pitch, it wasn’t just a pitch. It was an almost literal manifestation of generational sports hope from a fandom who never lost their loyalty and enjoyment of the game. September and October of 2014 were unbelievable. The entire city came together to support the team. Everything was blue. You could cut the excitement in the air with a knife.
The Wild Card Game lasted four hours and 45 minutes. I remember lots of little things. I remember going to get some water after Brandon Finnegan pitched what felt like the 46th inning and wondering at his journey that year. I remember looking at the hands on my watch hit midnight with the Royals down four runs and thinking that, hey, at least the Royals made it to October. I remember giving Max a high five in the parking lot after the game. I remember that first pitch, the couple who left after the awful sixth inning and missed all the fun, the music I listened to on the way home.
You could have a game as crazy as that Wild Card Game, sure. But it took decades of pent-up frustration and futility to reach the payoff of that game. Even if that game happened this week, it just wouldn’t be the same. You can’t have that same euphoria without a significant amount of pain and heartbreak beforehand. I’m glad that it didn’t take nearly 30 years for the Royals to make the playoffs afterwards. But by God did they make that wait count.