Sometimes you can go to a baseball game and end up seeing a little brawl. That is especially common when you have two teams in the same division that see each other a little bit more often and have more reasons to get upset with each other. It appeared that was at least part of the story between what happened between the Kansas City Royals and Chicago White Sox last night in their first game of the four game series.
After Jose Abreu had been hit by Yordano Ventura and Mike Moustakas had been hit by Chris Sale earlier in the game, both benches had been warned, and then with two outs in the bottom of the seventh Adam Eaton hit a chopper to the mound and Ventura appeared to swear at the White Sox outfielder as he was easily thrown out at first. Eaton turned around and took a step toward the mound as both benches cleared and the umpires were trying to sort everyone out. Ventura was one of three Royals ejected from the game, including Lorenzo Cain and Edinson Volquez. For the White Sox, pitchers Chris Sale and Jeff Samardzija were both ejected. Samardzija seemed particularly unafraid to go after several Royals players which makes sense given his background as a Notre Dame Fighting Irish safety. But despite the fact that there are potentially suspensions looming for these players, especially Ventura since he has been a bit of a fireball so far this season, let's take a look at what happened in the baseball game.
Kansas City scored their first two runs in the first inning of the game. Kendrys Morales singled to centerfield and scored Moustakas and Cain, but Sale settled down and was able to get the last two batters of the inning out as Kansas City would be shut down offensively for quite some time after that.
The White Sox finally got on the scoreboard in the bottom of the fourth when Avisail Garcia would score on an Alexei Ramirez single before Tyler Flowers would ground out with runners on first and second to end the inning. They got another run in the bottom of the fifth inning when Jose Abreu, fresh after getting hit by a pitch in his last at bat, doubled to center to score Melky Cabrera. That was pretty much all of the offense in this game as the pitching staffs did quite well since it was all bullpen after the fight in the seventh inning.
Jake Petricka was able to navigate the top of the 12th inning before pitching in the 13th inning. Eric Hosmer doubled in Jarrod Dyson to score the potential winning run, as it was the only one scored in the half inning. Wade Davis came in for the Royals and got Jose Abreu to pop up, Adam LaRoche to strike out, gave up a single to Garcia before Gordon Beckham would fly out to center for the final out of the game. Petricka got the loss, his first loss of the year, Davis got the save for the Royals, and the win was credited to Franklin Morales who pitched the bottom of the 12th inning for the Royals.
These two teams play game 2 in a 4 game series tomorrow night at 8:10 PM ET again at U.S. Cellular field. The Kansas City Royals (12-4) will put Danny Duffy (1-0, 5.51 ERA) on the mound to face Jose Quintana (1-1, 8.40 ERA) of the Chicago White Sox (6-9).