May 13, 1974: A’s win thanks to Royals’ team-record 8 errors

Any time a baseball team ends a game with more errors than hits, chances are that it had a tough day at the office.

That sums up the Kansas City Royals’ performance against the Oakland Athletics on the night of May 13, 1974. The six-hit complete-game pitching of Oakland’s Vida Blue would have been tough to beat under any circumstances, but the Royals made things worse by committing eight errors in an 11-2 defeat. As of 2021, that remained the Royals’ franchise record for most errors in a game.1

Over the full season, the 1974 Royals’ fielding performance trailed American League averages in some key areas – but not by margins that would suggest a historically bad single-game performance. The team committed 152 errors, third worst in the AL but not grossly above the league average of 146. Kansas City’s team fielding percentage of .976 fell just short of the league average of .977.

There were positive signs afield, too. The Royals’ 166 double plays were slightly ahead of the league average of 163. Center fielder Amos Otis won a Gold Glove, the last of three in his career. And the ’74 Royals – despite their performance on May 13 – improved from the previous season, when they led the AL in errors and tied for lowest fielding percentage.

The Royals had emerged as potential rivals to the A’s in 1973. Jack McKeon’s Kansas City team finished 88-74, six games behind the eventual World Series champions. At the end of play on May 12, 1974, both teams were still in the early running in the AL West. The Chicago White Sox led with a 15-13 record. Oakland sat a half-game back at 16-15. And the Royals and Texas Rangers shared third place, a single game back, at 15-15 and 16-16 respectively.

In their only previous head-to-head matchup, the Royals and first-year manager Alvin Dark’s Athletics had split a pair of games in early April. Kansas City came into the game on a roll, having won three out of four from the California Angels, both games of a two-game series with Texas, and two out of three games from the New York Yankees. The A’s brought a four-game winning streak into the Kansas City series, including a three-game sweep of the Minnesota Twins. Before that, the A’s had dropped two of a three-game series to Baltimore and split a four-game matchup with the Cleveland Indians.

Blue entered the game with a 1-4 record and 4.88 ERA, but was coming off his first win, earned with 7⅔ strong innings against Baltimore on May 8. Opposing him for Kansas City was righty Marty Pattin, who came to the Royals from Boston in an October 1973 trade.2 Pattin entered with a 1-1 record and a 4.58 ERA and was also coming off his first win, which he earned in a complete-game 6-1 defeat of Texas on May 9.

McKeon penciled in his most frequent starters, with a few exceptions. Hal McRae, usually the designated hitter, started in right field in place of Vada Pinson. Second-year player Frank White started at shortstop and batted leadoff in place of Freddie Patek. White later developed into an eight-time Gold Glover at second base, but split time early in his career between second base, shortstop, and third base as veteran Cookie Rojas started at second.

Dark juggled his lineup to account for injuries. Right fielder Reggie Jackson had pulled a hamstring two days earlier, so Angel Mangual started in his place.3 Due to injuries to second baseman Dick Green and third baseman Sal Bando, infield supersub Ted Kubiak played second while newly arrived Gaylen Pitts played third. Pitts, a veteran of active duty in the Vietnam War, had made his big-league debut and collected his first hit against Minnesota the previous day.4

The Royals took a 1-0 first-inning lead. Left fielder Jim Wohlford doubled with one out, and Otis singled him in. In the bottom half, Oakland center fielder Bill North opened with a double, but a “perfect” relay from Otis to Rojas to third baseman George Brett cut him down going for three bases, with Brett applying a diving tag.5 After a groundout, left fielder Joe Rudi, DH Deron Johnson, and first baseman Gene Tenace hit consecutive singles to tie the game.

In the third Oakland posted its second run, while Kansas City made its first error. Shortstop Bert Campaneris and Rudi started the inning with singles, Rudi’s of the bunt variety. As Campaneris and Rudi tried a double steal, Royals catcher Fran Healy threw the ball into left field, allowing Campaneris to score.6 Pattin retired Johnson, Tenace, and catcher Ray Fosse to limit the damage.

The reprieve was temporary, as Oakland kept piling on. The A’s chased Pattin in favor of Gene Garber in the fourth inning, as a pair of walks and a single by Campaneris made the score 3-1. In the fifth, Tenace and Fosse singled with one out. Rojas booted Mangual’s grounder for the Royals’ second error, handing Oakland a 4-1 lead.

The Royals loaded the bases in the sixth on a single and two walks, and Dark had reliever Rollie Fingers ready in the bullpen, but Blue got Rojas to pop to first base to end the rally.7 The game got away from Kansas City in the bottom half, as the A’s piled up four more runs on four singles, two errors, and an intentional walk. The Royals’ third error, a bobbled pickup by right fielder McRae, allowed Pitts and Campaneris to take an extra base on Campaneris’s single. The fourth error occurred when Garber, described as the team’s best-fielding pitcher, fielded a hot comebacker from Johnson and threw wildly to the plate. Two runs scored on the miscue.8

Rookie Al Cowens, who pinch-hit for Brett in the seventh, stayed in to play third base. In his 13-season major-league career, Cowens made most of his appearances in the outfield, where he won a Gold Glove in 1977. This was the first of two appearances for him at third base in 1974; he played there only seven times in the major leagues. Cowens committed Kansas City’s fifth error in the seventh inning on a grounder by Campaneris, though the Royals held Oakland off the scoreboard.

The game veered into absurdity in the bottom of the eighth, with Steve Mingori on the mound for the Royals. With one out, Tenace reached second as McRae dropped his fly ball for the Royals’ sixth error. Pat Bourque, batting for Fosse, singled in pinch-runner Herb Washington. Mangual hit a liner into left field, creating a tough fielding chance for Wohlford. His attempt at a backhand shoestring catch was unsuccessful, and he was dinged for the Royals’ seventh error.

Kubiak doubled in two more runs, Pitts walked, and replacement right fielder Champ Summers reached base when shortstop White misplayed his grounder for the eighth and final Royals error.9 Mingori got Campaneris and pinch-hitter Larry Haney to pop out to first base to hold Oakland to an 11-1 lead.

McRae led off the ninth inning with his sixth homer, bringing the score to 11-2. It was the Royals’ first extra-base hit since Wohlford’s first-inning double. Blue set down the next three Royals – two on strikeouts – to close out the win in 2 hours and 48 minutes. The victory, combined with a White Sox loss to Minnesota, lifted Oakland back into first place in the AL West.

McRae’s homer didn’t assuage the pain of two errors and a lopsided loss. “It was embarrassing, man,” he told reporters. “There’s no explaining a game like this.” McKeon tried to shrug off the loss: “We played such great ball before tonight, I guess we were due for a bad one. You get to a point in a game like this where you just say, ‘It’s not your night,’ and hope nobody gets hurt.”10 The manager also found humor in the fact that the Royals had brought players from their Class A San Jose affiliate to watch the game: “We really showed ’em something, didn’t we?”11

If there was any consolation for the fumble-fingered Royals, it might have been the knowledge that only 3,615 fans turned out on a chilly Monday night to watch their follies. Despite the A’s on-field success – eventually including a third straight World Series title – the team drew only 845,693 fans in 1974, second-least in the AL.12 The Royals could also take comfort in knowing they fell well short of the modern major-league record of 12 errors in a game, set by the Detroit Tigers in 1901 and tied by the Chicago White Sox two years later.13

Acknowledgments 

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK197405130.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1974/B05130OAK1974.htm

Image of 1974 O-Pee-Chee card #563 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Kansas City Royals 2021 Media Guide: 281, Accessed November 26, 2021, https://pressbox.athletics.com/Publications/MLB%20Media%20Guides/2021%20Kansas%20City%20Royals%20Media%20Guide.pdf.

2 In exchange for Pattin, the Red Sox received pitcher Dick Drago.

3 Associated Press, “Reggie Jackson Pulls Hamstring,” Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Sunday News, May 12, 1974: 39.

4 The injuries to Green and Bando are mentioned in Pitts’ SABR Biography Project article, written by Gregory H. Wolf.

5 Gib Twyman, “Eight Royal Errors Aid A’s 11-2 Romp,” Kansas City Star, May 14, 1974: 13.

6 Ron Bergman, “A’s Regain Lead Without Stars,” Oakland Tribune, May 14, 1974: 31.

7 Herb Michelson, “A’s No. 1,” Sacramento Bee, May 14, 1974: C1.

8 Twyman, “Eight Royal Errors Aid A’s 11-2 Romp.”

9 Twyman.

10 Glenn Schwarz, “’Vulnerable’ A’s Shock Royals, 11-2, Seize Lead,” San Francisco Examiner, May 14, 1974: 43.

11 Twyman, “Eight Royal Errors Aid A’s 11-2 Romp.”

12 The Minnesota Twins drew 662,401 fans that season. The May 13 turnout in Oakland wasn’t even the A’s smallest home crowd of the season; they drew 2,718 against Baltimore on May 7.

13 Phil Thompson, “116 Years Ago Today, the White Sox and Tigers Played an 18-Error Game – 12 by the Sox – That Remains a Baseball Record,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 2019, https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/white-sox/ct-spt-white-sox-12-error-game-1903-20190506-story.html.