Royals' Holland arrived late for ALDS Game 1, but had a really good excuse
The Kansas City Royals began the first game of the American League Division Series without their closer.
Don't worry, he made it by the fourth inning.
Greg Holland left the Royals immediately following the team's Wild Card win Tuesday in Kansas City, flew to North Carolina to be with his wife, Lacey, for the birth of their son, Nash Gregory Holland. The very next day he chartered a flight across the country to Anaheim for the ALDS. He learned a lesson in his Southern California travels, landing at John Wayne Airport in Costa Mesa around game time and finally making it to Angel Stadium around the fourth inning.
"Celebrated with the team after we won the crazy Wild Card game and flew straight home and went straight to the hospital and spent all night there," he said. "Then got on a plane around 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon, got here a little after 7:00, drove through traffic, ran through the parking lot trying to find a way into the park, and got down here in the locker room at the bottom of the fifth, and we did kind of a makeshift warm-up, and got down to the bullpen about the middle of the sixth."
However, it wasn't as easy as running through the turnstiles and jogging down to the bullpen. Holland's driver knew how to get him to the park, but neither of them could figure out how to get him in.
"I was kind of making a few security guards nervous running up to them with a pack over my shoulder with my ID in my hand saying, 'I'm a player! I'm a player! Don't tackle me to the ground,'" Holland said.
Finally, he called the Royals public relations staff and who relayed the information to the Angels PR staff. A call was made to security and Holland was retrieved and led down to the clubhouse.
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"It was kind of hectic running through the parking lot but they let me in," Holland said. "It was kind of weird when a guy's like, 'You're a player? That's not possible because the game is in the fifth inning.'
"But I had to explain the details and actually got a congratulations and he jogged me right down the concourse and got me where I needed to go."
Holland pitched one inning in the extra-inning affair, which he was prepared for: "Landed, I think, it was the top or the bottom of the fourth, and they said it was 1-€‘1, and I said, 'Okay, this is Royals baseball, so I'm probably going to pitch at some point in this game.'"