BALTIMORE (AP)– The Baltimore Orioles earned a piece of history by becoming the seventh team in the modern era to hit two grand slams in the same inning.
Between those two home runs, Chris Davis got plunked with a pitch. And that is why Orioles manager Buck Showalter had to watch the second home run on television.
Nolan Reimold and Steve Clevenger both hit slams during a 10-run eighth, giving Baltimore a 14-8 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Friday night.
Since the start of the 20th century, six teams have hit grand slams in the same inning. The Orioles are the only ones to do it twice — they also pulled it off in 1986 — and no team had done it since the New York Mets in 2006, STATS said.
“Yeah, it was crazy,” Reimold said.
Baltimore trailed 6-4 in the eighth before a double, an error and an infield hit loaded the bases for Reimold, who lined a 2-0 pitch from Kelvin Herrera (4-3) high off the left-field foul pole.
Manny Machado followed with a solo shot off Franklin Morales. After Adam Jones singled, Morales hit Davis in the back with a pitch. Davis slammed down his bat, breaking it in two, as Showalter sprinted out of the dugout.
No one else emerged from either dugout during the potentially volatile situation, although Davis glared at Morales while taking his base.
“We hit a grand slam, another home run, a couple rockets,” Davis said. “It just didn’t look right, regardless of whether it was on purpose or not.”
Showalter thought it was, and was ejected for arguing that point.
Thus, he missed what happened next: Morales lasted one more batter before being replaced by Joba Chamberlain, who yielded Clevenger’s slam. Clevenger entered the game earlier in the inning as a pinch hitter.
Royals manager Ned Yost insisted that Morales was not throwing at Davis.
“You’re going to react like that because it does hurt,” Yost said. “But that pitch wasn’t on purpose. There was a lot of hullabaloo after that. But it wasn’t on purpose.”
Baltimore improved to 3-62 when trailing after seven innings. Kansas City is now 63-3 when leading after seven.
Lorenzo Cain hit two solo homers and Alex Rios also connected with the bases empty for the Royals, who have lost eight of 11.
“You go through stretches like this,” Cain said. “We can’t let it worry us. We understand we’re a good ballclub. We’ve just got to find a way to bounce back.”
The Orioles’ three-game winning streak comes on the heels of a stretch in which they lost 15 of 18.
Mychal Givens (2-0) got the win despite giving up two runs in the ninth. Fellow rookie Dariel Alvarez hit his first big league homer for Baltimore.
It was the Royals’ first visit to Baltimore since last October, when they opened the AL Championship Series with two straight wins at Camden Yards and completed the four-game sweep at home.
While first-place Kansas City appears poised for a return trip to the postseason, the defending AL East champion Orioles started play Friday trailing six teams for the league’s final wild-card spot. Baltimore must win 13 of its last 22 games just to finish .500.
The Royals’ early 3-0 lead dwindled to 4-3 before Rios led off the seventh with a drive off Brad Brach — his first home run since July 17. Davis countered in the bottom half with a run-scoring single to increase his RBI total to 105.
Salvador Perez restored the two-run cushion with an RBI single in the eighth, setting the stage for Baltimore’s grand comeback.
