Now that was some serious playoff baseball right there.
The Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Royals kicked off the 2014 MLB playoffs in style, with one of the best postseason games in recent history.
In the end, the Kansas City Royals (and small ball) emerged victorious - their first playoff victory since 1985.
Salvador Perez pulled a Jason Hammel breaking ball down the left field line giving the Royals a 9-8 victory and punching their ticket to an ALDS matchup with the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim.
After going down 7-3 and taking starting ace James Shields out after only 88 pitches, the Royals scratched and clawed and fought their way back, relying on a stolen third base by Jarrod Dyson in the bottom of the ninth to get them within 90 feet of tying the game.
A Nori Aoki sac fly off Sean Doolittle drove Dyson in shortly thereafter for the tying run and they were off to extra innings.
After the initial five frames, the Royals held a 3-2 lead, but for Shields, who upped his postseason ERA to 5.26 in seven starts, things unraveled quickly and he was replaced by Yordano Ventura with runners on first and second with no outs in the top of the 6th.
For Oakland, ace Jon Lester allowed six runs on eight hits and went 7 1/3 innings and Brandon Moss, who had a game for the ages in the loss, homered twice and drove in five runs.
The Royals seemed determined to stay in the game and wouldn't let the A's, who were at one time this season the best team in the league, get away easy.
Per Elias Sports Bureau, the Royals became the first team in MLB postseason history to ever come back from a 4-run-or-greater deficit to win a winner-take-all playoff game.
The Royals were aggressive in the 8th and pulled within one via an error, a run-scoring single and a walk.
Oakland's Luke Gregerson was able to escape the eighth-inning jam without further damage by striking out Salvador Perez and Omar Infante with the A's holding tight to a 7-6 lead.
That set the stage for Aoki's sac fly in the bottom of the ninth that scored Dyson and tied the game 7-7.
Jason Frasor came on in the top of the 12th to pitch for the Royals with Oakland's Josh Reddick already on second. He promptly threw a wild pitch moving the runner to third and Alberto Callaspo knocked in what at the time seemed to be the Athletics game winning run, with a pinch-hit single.
In the bottom of the 12th though, Eric Hosmer, who finished with three hits and two runs scored for Kansas City, crushed a 1-out triple into the gap in left center. Christian Colon plated Hosmer with a high chopper to third that Josh Donaldson tried to bare hand but couldn't get a handle on, tying the game at 8.
Finally, in the bottom of the 12th, after a failed pitchout allowed Colon to steal second - Kansas City's seventh stolen base of the game (small ball, amiright?) - Jason Hammel gave up the game-winning hit to Salvador Perez, scoring Colon.
The Royals ALDS series against the Angels kicks off Thursday.
For now though, Kansas City and their fans can revel in the elation of this tense victory.
Even the Kansas City police department got in on the fun...
We really need everyone to not commit crimes and drive safely right now. We'd like to hear the @Royals clinch this.
— Kansas City Police (@kcpolice) October 1, 2014
