And Just Like That, It’s Done

Sep 30, 2014; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer (35) scores the tying run against the Oakland Athletics during the twelfth inning of the 2014 American League Wild Card playoff baseball game at Kauffman Stadium. The Royals won 9-8. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports

In a game that saw the pitcher acquired for A’s slugger Yoenis Cespedes starting the game and a pitcher received in exchange for top-prospect Addison Russell on the mound when it ended, the Wildcard play-in game exemplified the 2014 Oakland Athletics cursed season.

Early on with the injury to Geovany Soto who was in the lineup to prevent the running game, and the lack of Jon Lester throwing over to first, the Royals started their track meet on the base paths with 7 stolen bases that led to 5 of them scoring, including the ninth inning tying run and winning run in the twelfth.

Like the season, the A’s started strong, taking an early lead, and eventually a 7-3 score into the eighth inning. They then saw that dwindle down to a 1-run lead as inherited runners continued to score going into the ninth with their closer on the mound and light still at the end of the tunnel.

The A’s lost their lead when the KC ninth started with a base hit by a former Athletic – an evil spell that’s followed the A’s throughout the season – and went to extra innings.

In due course, the guys from Oaktown regained a one-run advantage in the twelfth needing three more outs that never came.

They lost by one-run, like they had 28 times before and just like 11 of their last 17 losses, ending a series of collapses by its bullpen, a demon that’s had reared its ugly head numerous times this season.

It was the final breakdown in a season that looked so assuring.

The A’s have reached the postseason eight times since the start of 2000, advancing as far as the ALCS just once, and never beyond.

Fans have to go back to 1973 for Game 7 of the World Series vs the Mets for the last time the A’s won a deciding winner-take-all post season game. (of which I am the only member of the Swingin’ A’s writers to have been alive for)

In 2000, they lost to the Yankees in deciding Game 5 of the ALDS. In 2001, they lost another ALDS Game 5 again via a Jeter flip. In 2002, ALDS Game 5 was surrendered to a Twins team that hadn’t made the playoffs in 11 years. In 2003, they lost another ALDS Game 5 to the Red Sox. Then in 2012 and 2013 the rejuvenated Oakland Athletics lost successive Game 5 ALDS games to Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers.

“This is way worse, it hurts way more,” said closer Sean Doolittle after the game comparing it to the Game 5 losses to Detroit the previous two seasons. “Knowing that it’s a must-win game, and in the position that we had them in, not being able to get it done, it’s way worse than the last two years.”

Worse or not, it just hurts to be an A’s fan this morning.