Yankees, Royals benches clear after late slide as Jazz Chisholm ends up in the mix

With the leadoff man on base in Maikel Garcia to begin the bottom of the sixth inning, the Kansas City Royals' home crowd immediately ignited. They were looking for madness with the top of the order coming to the dish to face New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole.

Naturally, things got immediately weird, but probably not in the way the Royal rooters were expecting.

With two strikes, leadoff man Michael Massey smoked a grounder to first base, where supersub Jon Berti was standing and waiting. An experienced infielder used to playing all over the diamond, Berti knew exactly what to do, tagging the bag and firing to second. Garcia arrived a split second late, but still managed to fight his way through Anthony Volpe's tag.

Volpe took minor exception, placed a bit of a harder tag on Garcia, and all of a sudden, the players on the infield began to gather. Jazz Chisholm, who's been booed since Game 2 and contends that doesn't happen to bums, popped into the middle of the fray to talk smack back at Garcia. Then came the benches. Then came the bullpens.

Late Maikel Garcia slide into Anthony Volpe leads to Jazz Chisholm jawing, Yankees and Royals benches emptying in ALDS Game 4

No hands flew, and nobody exchanged blows. Things just got a little weird for a moment as the two sides crowded around second base, assessing the lack of damage.

Of course, true to form, this moment appeared to rob Cole of a modicum of his momentum. He got to two strikes on both Bobby Witt Jr. and Vinnie Pasquantino, but finished off neither of them, with the second at-bat resulting in a RBI double to break the Royals' ice. If not for Salvador Pérez somehow not taking advantage of a second life after an Austin Wells dropped popup, this inning could've been a whole lot more damaging. Patrick Mahomes kickstarted a rally in Game 3. This time, it was 52 men sprinting around that did it.

Cole bent a bit, but didn't break, as he's been known to do after fielding errors and certain types of wonkiness. Still, the energy has been ratcheted up once again in this extremely important game as the late innings loom.