Young Royals overcome themselves

— -- KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Kansas City Royals crammed 29 years of drama into one night of baseball with goats turned into heroes in every direction and a brand of small ball that was cringe-worthy at times.

They laid down four sacrifice bunts and recorded seven stolen bases during a most improbable 9-8 victory that took 12 innings to turn back the Oakland Athletics in the American League wild-card game. Their eventual hero, Salvador Perez, looked so bad on a strikeout with one out in the eighth inning and the tying run at third that his feeble effort figured to end his team's season.

Their manager Ned Yost (rhymes with roast) was getting torched at every turn for turning a rookie starter into a reliever in the sixth inning and then watching the kid pour gasoline on the fire that was a five-run uprising that gave the A's a commanding 7-3 lead with just three innings to play.

The Royals overcame it all with the kind of clutch hitting that comes from teams who know what to do when the stakes are at their highest, or are just so blindly confident they have no idea of the magnitude of the moment.

Count the young Royals in the latter group, and one that knows how to win the big one now.