Kansas City Royals rally for five runs in ninth inning to beat L.A. Angels on the road

The blast soared gracefully over the Bandai Namco sign in center field, fans at Angel Stadium swelling as one. Mike Trout had done it yet again, and a Saturday night affair that started so promisingly for the Royals appeared to be slipping away from Kansas City in the bottom of the fifth.

Up on the field-level concourse above the third-base foul pole, the one pinprick of Royals-blue fandom in a sea of roaring red shook his head: 4-16 record ... looking like it was about to be 4-17.

Damon Lange was unhappy.

“It’s been a tough year, yeah,” said Lange, a Royals fan wearing a Salvador Perez jersey who’d grown up in Kansas City. His words summarized the fanbase’s feelings about this young season, and the last, and the one before that — just about every year since the Royals’ World Series championship, and last winning season, in 2015.

But for just one shining moment — one display of sheer resilience and luck and vibes that had the entirety of Angel Stadium confused and booing in perhaps the weirdest game of this major-league season to date — a tough year for the Royals produced a glorious silver lining.

Blows and bloops were traded, the scoreboard backfired and the “Dance Cam” stopped and restarted. The Royals (5-16) could’ve folded amid such madness. Instead, they fought to an 11-8 win.

“They persevered, and in the dugout, I can be honest with you, (it was) like — ‘the losses end tonight,’” KC manager Matt Quatraro said, describing the Royals’ mentality.

Every big situation, third baseman Hunter Dozier had explained earlier, is amplified when you’re not winning games. You feel like you need to come through, he said. You put extra pressure on yourselves.

That pressure only escalated Saturday in a situation worthy of a blooper reel. In the bottom of the sixth, with a 6-4 lead built on two infield singles and an error the previous half-inning, Royals reliever Carlos Hernandez got himself into a jam after surrendering Angels rightfielder Hunter Renfroe’s second homer of the game.

Eventually Hernandez escaped, inducing a popout from shortstop Zach Neto. The Dance Cam kicked off on the right-field video board. The mid-innings groundskeepers rolled into action.

Except the Angels never left the field.

The groundskeepers were sent back to their post. The dancing stopped. Hernandez, home-plate ump Mark Ripperger ruled, had balked. Neto was sent back to the plate, and he promptly dumped an RBI single into right field to tie the game at 6 — a hit so hopelessly frustrating that a member of the Royals’ personnel in the third-deck press box above home plate turned and fired something at the floor.

“You’re not allowed to go out there and argue or talk about a balk … it was frustrating,” Quatraro said.

It was a devastating blow, a six-run outburst by the Royals completely negated after starter Zack Greinke faltered and a false move by Hernandez gave Neto a second chance. Two innings later, the Angels’ Matt Thaiss added insult to injury with a two-run blast off Jose Cuas that made it 8-6.

But Kyle Isbel doubled home Nicky Lopez in the top of the ninth with a drive to right, a ball so close to leaving the yard that the umpires twirled their fingers at first before sending Isbel back to third. The scoreboard operator, likely delirious from a busy night, set the score as 15-8 Royals for a couple minutes until a wave of home-crowd boos prompted the correct figure: 8-7 Angels.

And then Edward Olivares knocked an RBI single, Matt Duffy walked as part of a three-hit game and Angels reliever Jose Quijada unraveled by hitting KC rightfielder MJ Melendez, giving the Royals an improbable 9-8 lead.

Dozier, his swing-timing in check after he’d remarked before the game that it’d felt a step slow all year, singled home a couple of additional runs for emphasis. Scott Barlow brought home the save, and the Royals, at long last, had earned a victory.

In the visitors’ clubhouse after the game, players clapped each other on the shoulders, a collective buoyancy set to the thumping bass of Lil Wayne’s “A Milli” that Kansas City has rarely felt in a trying year.

“We needed it,” said Dozier, who snapped out of a slump with a 3-for-5 night.

“For sure.”