vgregorian@kcstar.com
For all the poetic scenes attached to the Royals’ 2014 postseason, the prologue was a jarring spectacle:
In the sixth inning of the American League wild-card game against Oakland at Kauffman Stadium, Ned Yost walked briskly from the mound back to the dugout.
His curious maneuver to insert Yordano Ventura for James Shields had backfired in slapstick fashion, like one of those exploding cigars, only no one was laughing.
In the Royals’ first playoff game since 1985, Brandon Moss’ buzz-killing three-run homer off a rookie who had never relieved before and had started just two days earlier had given the A’s a 5-3 lead.