October 7, 1981: Royals rookie Mike Jones falls just short of postseason Cinderella story in loss to A’s

In the strike-torn season of 1981, the story of the Kansas City Royals’ Mike Jones could have been an uplifting underdog tale.

With his team down one game to none in the American League Division Series, Royals manager Dick Howser tapped 22-year-old left-hander Jones to start Game Two against the Oakland A’s. Jones had been called up from Triple-A Omaha two months earlier and pitched in just 12 big-league games in 1981, in addition to three the previous season. Howser insisted that the rookie from Rochester, New York, had what it took to subdue Rickey Henderson, Tony Armas, Dwayne Murphy, and the rest of the Oakland lineup.

Jones pitched well in the spotlight, allowing the A’s only two runs in eight innings. But Oakland’s Steve McCatty was even better, giving up just one run. The A’s claimed a taut 2-1 win, closing the book on Jones’s bid for a postseason Cinderella story.

The unusually divided 1981 season required an extra round of playoffs that pitted the first-half and second-half champions of each division against each other.1 First-half champion Oakland played second-half winner Kansas City in the AL West Division, while the New York Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers faced off in the AL East. The winners of this initial round then met in the American League Championship Series to determine the AL pennant. (The National League used the same format.)

The A’s were riding a rags-to-riches story of their own as the playoffs began. After winning five straight AL West titles and three World Series between 1971 and 1975, the A’s fell to a putrid 54-108 record in 1979, drawing only 306,763 fans. Then fiery, well-traveled Billy Martin arrived as manager in 1980 and led the team to a much-improved 83-79 record, pushing the A’s to play an aggressive style that became known as Billyball.

In 1981 the team was paced by Henderson’s league-leading 135 hits and 56 steals; Armas’s league-best 22 homers; and a front-four pitching rotation that completed 56 of the 88 games it started. McCatty led the AL in wins (14), ERA (2.33), and shutouts (4) as the A’s went 37-23 in the first half and 64-45 over the full season. Reflecting the new excitement around Billyball, the A’s attendance rebounded to 1,304,052. This set a record for the team in Oakland, even though the strike cost the 1981 team 25 home dates. It was also the A’s biggest gate since their first season in Kansas City in 1955.2

While the A’s were up-and-comers, the Royals were established winners who were facing pressure to finally break through and claim a championship. The team won three straight AL West titles from 1976 through 1978 but fell to the Yankees in the ALCS each season. After a second-place finish in 1979, the Royals vanquished the Yankees in the 1980 ALCS – only to lose a six-game World Series to the Philadelphia Phillies.

The 1981 edition of the Royals sagged to a 20-30 record and a fifth-place finish in the season’s first half. With Howser taking the reins from Jim Frey in late August, Kansas City rallied to win the second half with a 30-23 record, nosing out Oakland by one game. Offensive stars included George Brett, speedy Willie Wilson, and power threat Willie Aikens, while the pitching staff was led by starters Dennis Leonard and Larry Gura and closer Dan Quisenberry.3

Jones earned a spot on the team in early August after going 11-7 at Omaha. Inserted into the Royals’ starting rotation on August 14, he went 6-3 with a 3.21 ERA. He’d pitched against Oakland twice, taking a loss on October 3, when he gave up eight hits and five runs in five innings.

After Oakland handily won Game One by a 4-0 score on October 6, Howser’s choice of a rookie to start the crucial Game Two underwhelmed some pundits. “The A’s will send Steve McCatty, the American League’s biggest winner, out to face somebody named Mike Jones,” Ron Rapoport of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote.4 Howser insisted that his young starter was capable of winning: “He’s pitched in the tough ballgames down the stretch. He’s a tough competitor. It won’t bother him. He won’t back off.”5

It looked at first as if Rapoport, not Howser, would be proven right. Oakland jumped to a first-inning lead in front of 40,274 fans at the Wednesday mid-afternoon game. Jones retired leadoff hitter Henderson on a groundout, but Murphy’s single past first baseman Aikens and Cliff Johnson’s double down the left-field line put runners on second and third. Right fielder Clint Hurdle, trying for a shoestring catch, misplayed Armas’s short fly into a double that scored Murphy and moved Johnson to third.6 Mickey Klutts flied to right, and rookie Kelvin Moore – who’d played just 14 regular-season games – struck out to hold the score to 1-0.7

No one else reached base until the bottom of the third, when Hurdle’s leadoff single and a groundout put a Royal on second with one out. U.L. Washington’s grounder and Wilson’s fly out ended the rally.

Jones defused Oakland threats in the fourth and fifth, as the A’s collected singles in each inning but could not capitalize. Henderson also picked up a two-out steal of second base in the fifth after reaching on a force play, but Murphy stranded him by flying to center field.

A two-out Royals rally in the fifth tied the game, 1-1. John Wathan, Washington, and Wilson hit consecutive singles to bring in the run. A fielding error by right fielder Armas on Wilson’s hit allowed Washington and Wilson to move to third and second base, respectively.8 Frank White grounded to short to end the opportunity.

Both pitchers continued to dance out of danger in the sixth. For Oakland, singles by Armas and Klutts put runners on first and second with one out, but Jones got Moore on a lineout and Dave McKay on a grounder. In the bottom half, McCatty yielded walks to Aikens and Hal McRae, then retired Hurdle to escape the inning. The Royals came painfully close again in the seventh, as an infield single, a sacrifice, and a groundout moved Wathan to third with two out. Again White failed to come through, flying out to right.

Jones stayed in the game in the top of the eighth to face the top of Oakland’s order – and it bit him, just as it had in the first. Murphy singled and Johnson laid down his first sacrifice of the season to move Murphy to second.9 Armas, 3-for-3 so far despite suffering from a sore groin, was next up.10 He laced a double through Brett’s legs at third base and into left field, scoring Murphy.11 Just as he had in the first inning, Jones rebounded to retire Klutts and Moore, but Oakland had a 2-1 lead.

Howser was later criticized for not ordering a walk to Armas – including by Armas, who said, “Because of the way I’ve been swinging, I thought they would want to put me on. … I don’t know what was on [Howser’s] mind.” “I considered not pitching to a lot of people,” the manager replied, “but sooner or later you have to. [Jones] hadn’t really been beaten around.”12

A single by Brett and a walk to Aikens gave Kansas City hope in the bottom of the eighth before McCatty shut down Amos Otis, McRae, and Hurdle to hold his slim lead.

Quisenberry worked the ninth for the Royals. McKay opened with a single and made his way to third with two outs. But Henderson capped an 0-for-5 day with a fly to center, bringing up the Royals for one last chance. McCatty showed why he was the league’s top winner, getting Wathan to ground to second, Washington to strike out, and Wilson to hit a foul pop to catcher Jeff Newman. The game ended in 2 hours and 50 minutes.

McCatty earned the win with a six-hitter. Jones gave up nine hits and two runs, both earned, in eight innings, walking none and striking out two. The A’s clinched the series two days later with a 4-1 win in Oakland.

Although he’d kept his team close, Jones voiced no pleasure after the game: “I feel lousy. It doesn’t matter how well you pitch if the team doesn’t win. There’s no time to be happy.”13 A postgame photo in the next day’s Kansas City Star showed Royals pitching coach Billy Connors consoling the dejected rookie.14 Howser stood up for the youngster. “Jones’s game was the best he has pitched since I’ve been here,” the manager said. “If he doesn’t get hurt, he’s going to be so good it’s scary.”15

Howser’s words proved sadly prescient. In the early hours of December 21, 1981, Jones’s car skidded off a slick road in Pittsford, New York, a suburb of Rochester. Two vertebrae in the pitcher’s his lower neck were dislocated, requiring surgery and costing him a small amount of mobility in his neck.16 He missed the entire 1982 season and spent all of 1983 at Class A Fort Myers. Jones made it back to the Royals for 56 appearances in 1984 and 1985 but pitched less effectively, posting a 5-6 record and a 4.84 ERA. When the Royals finally won the World Series in 1985, he did not appear in the postseason.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the 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/KCA/KCA198110070.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1981/B10070KCA1981.htm

Photo of 1982 Fleer card #412 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Fortuitously, all four divisions in the AL and NL had different champions in the first and second halves of the season. In the NL, the Philadelphia Phillies and Montreal Expos faced off to decide the NL East Division title, while the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros played for the NL West title. The unique 1981 playoff system punished teams that played consistently well all season but didn’t win a first- or second-half title – like the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds, who posted the best full-season records in the NL East and West Divisions but watched the postseason at home. (The Reds, at 66-42, had the best record in baseball but no postseason berth to show for it.)

2 Oakland Athletics franchise page on Baseball-Reference, accessed August 2023. The 1981 record has since been shattered. As of 2023, the all-time top annual attendance for an Oakland A’s team is 2,900,217 for the 1990 team, defending World Series champions who lost in that season’s Series.

3 Quisenberry led the AL in saves in 1980 and again from 1982 through 1985. His 18 saves in 1981 placed him third in the AL behind Milwaukee’s Rollie Fingers (28) and New York’s Rich Gossage (20).

4 Ron Rapoport (Chicago Sun-Times), “‘Embarrassed’ KC Royals Play Like They Don’t Belong in Playoffs,” Charlotte (North Carolina) News, October 7, 1981: 5D.

5 Randy Brown, “Royals Had Plays, Didn’t Make Them,” Wichita (Kansas) Eagle, October 7, 1981: 18A.

6 Mike Fish, “Royals’ Mistakes Put Them on the Ropes,” Kansas City Times, October 8, 1981: E1; Kit Stier, “A’s Pitchers Dig Huge Hole for Royals,” Oakland Tribune, October 8, 1981: F1.

7 Jim Spencer, Oakland’s most frequent starter at first base in 1981, was left-handed; Martin was likely starting Moore, a righty swinger, for a right-on-left advantage against Jones. Spencer’s paltry hitting might also have cost him the start: In a season divided between the Yankees and A’s, Spencer hit .205 in Oakland and just .188 in total. Spencer started Game One of the series against Royals right-hander Dennis Leonard, going 1-for-4; Moore started the series-clinching Game Three against lefty Larry Gura.

8 Stier, “A’s Pitchers Dig Huge Hole for Royals.”

9 United Press International, “A’s Beat Royals, 2-1,” New York Times, October 8, 1981: B11.

10 The United Press International game story, cited above, reported that the A’s trainer wanted to remove Armas from the game in the sixth inning because of his groin pain. After his game-winning double, Armas was removed for Rick Bosetti.

11 Fish, “Royals’ Mistakes Put Them on the Ropes.”

12 Stier, “A’s Pitchers Dig Huge Hole for Royals.”

13 Fish, “Royals’ Mistakes Put Them on the Ropes.”

14 The photo, by Kansas City Star staff photographer Dan Peak, appeared on the front page of the October 8, 1981, Star.

15 Joe McGuff, “Fans Vent Frustration with Boos,” Kansas City Star, October 8, 1981: 1C.

16 Gary Gerew and Jack Jones, “Pitcher Mike Jones, Hurt in Crash, Undergoes Neck Surgery,” Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, December 22, 1981: 1B; Jody McPhillips, “Jones’ Injury Could Affect Contract Talks,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, December 24, 1981: 1B.