KANSAS CITY, Kan. - Clint Bowyer is the ultimate Kansas City Royals fan, but even the NASCAR Sprint Cup driver didn't have good thoughts after the seventh inning Monday night with the Royals down 6-2 to the Houston Astros and on the brink of elimination.
On his plane heading to Las Vegas but needing to land in Kansas City to drop off his father, Bowyer lost his Internet signal for the five runs Kansas City scored in the top of the eighth.
"You could see it [in the seventh], you could just tell we were beat -- the guys were down and they had long looks on their faces," Bowyer said Friday at Kansas Speedway. "I didn't like what I saw, and I was bummed out. We lose Wi-Fi, we land ... and I walk into the FBO [fixed-base operator, a private jet terminal] and I'm all bummed out, kicking rocks across the parking lot, and I walk in and this place has erupted.
"I'm like, 'What are you guys watching?' And I turn around and not only were we not down 2-6 we were actually up one. That was awesome. I sat at the FBO until it was over. We were late getting to Las Vegas. And the hangover [came next]."
Bowyer has tickets for both American League Championship Series games Friday and Saturday. He doesn't want to be a bother at the stadium, but he remembers his conversation with Royals manager Ned Yost last year.
Yost is a longtime racing fan who spent the end of the 1994 season actually working for his hunting buddy Dale Earnhardt, a seven-time Cup champion. Yost helped do simple jobs at the track for the NASCAR legend, such as washing the windshield.
So Bowyer apparently provided a nice distraction for Yost before Game 1 of the division series last year.
"He invites you to the clubhouse and wants to introduce you and take you around and throws everybody out of his office 20 minutes before the game and sits you down and he's like, 'All right, now level with me. Who's good this weekend?'" Bowyer said.
Yost and Bowyer text each other to keep up on their teams and offer encouragement. And Bowyer was a special guest of the Royals on May 6 of this season, donning a uniform and taking batting practice, shagging flies and throwing out the first pitch at Kauffman Stadium.
"He's just a really, really neat guy to see," Bowyer said. "When it's an extreme element like that, he's still just super calm and collected like you see him on TV."
