KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Willy Adames had been chatting up the Royals fans behind the Milwaukee dugout all game, the good-natured ribbing carrying on as the Brewers jumped out to a two-run lead and Kansas City battled back to take its own two-run lead to the ninth.
With two outs and a pair of runners aboard, Adames found himself standing in the on-deck circle with the game on the line.
“They told me they wanted me to hit a three-run homer,” Adames would say later, “and I was like, ‘I got you.'”
Adames proceeded to drill an 83 mph curveball from Royals closer James McArthur into the left-field bullpen, sending Milwaukee to a 6-5 win Tuesday night, and leaving those Kansas City fans mock-worshipping him as he returned to the dugout.
“It was really priceless,” said Brewers manager Pat Murphy, who had watched the called-shot scene unfold. “It was really cool.”
Jared Koenig (3-1) earned the win for Milwaukee, getting Hunter Renfroe to ground out to end the seventh and then surviving a scoreless eighth. Trevor Megill breezed through the ninth to earn his third save in three tries.
Vinnie Pasquantino drove in three runs for Kansas City. Salvador Perez and Kyle Isbel also drove in runs.
“That one stings,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said, “but we’ve done that to other people as well.”
Rhys Hoskins and Joey Ortiz crushed back-to-back homers off Royals starter Seth Lugo in the second inning, but that was all the offense the Brewers could muster until the seventh, when they managed to coax another run across.
They squandered a chance to draw closer when Angel Zerpa struck out Gary Sanchez to strand a pair later in the seventh, then missed another opportunity in the eighth, when John Schreiber fanned Oliver Dunn to leave two more runners aboard.
The Brewers didn’t waste their final opportunity in the ninth.
McArthur (1-2) had retired the first two batters when William Contreras, on a full-count pitch, began the comeback with a double just inside the left-field foul line. Sanchez followed with a walk before Adames walked confidently to the plate.
“He’s carrying on with [the fans] during Gary’s at-bat, and he’s telling them — they’re Kansas City fans — he’s telling them, ‘One more ball,'” Murphy said. “Then he goes back to them and goes, ‘Here we go.'”
There it went, right into the left-field bullpen.
It wasn’t exactly on par Babe Ruth’s called shot — there’s a big difference between a regular-season game the first week of May and Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, when the Hall of Famer famously pointed toward deep center field at Wrigley Field, then homered to that exact spot to help the Yankees beat the Cubs, 7-5.
Still, it was the kind of stuff certain to go down in Brewers lore.
“Oh my God, that was the coolest thing I ever done,” said Adames, who even signed some balls for those Kansas City fans. “You know, sometimes the fans will be very hard, but these guys here, they were amazing. They were having a good time. Like, all my at-bats, we were chatting, and then the last one was obviously the most fun.”