Kansas City Faces Toronto For AL Championship

After 12 meetings this season, the Kansas City Royals and Toronto Blue Jays are as familiar with each other's approaches, tendencies, strengths and weaknesses as they're ever going to be.

With one or possibly two games remaining in the American League Championship Series, it basically comes down to the Royals' killer instinct vs. the Blue Jays instinct for survival.

After Kansas City won the first two games of the series at Kauffman Stadium, the teams headed north to Toronto and both achieved their objective, in a manner of speaking. The Royals maintained home-field advantage with a 14-2 obliteration of R.A. Dickey and the Toronto bullpen in Game 4, and the Blue Jays sandwiched that sorry performance with a pair of wins to bring the series back to the heartland.

So now it comes down to this: David Price, the most decorated starting pitcher in this series, will try to pull Toronto even Friday night and record his first career postseason win as a starter. The Blue Jays hope he resembles the David Price who mesmerized Kansas City in the midafternoon shadows with six shutout innings in Game 2 -- and not the guy who went downhill fast after an outfield miscommunication between Ryan Goins and Jose Bautista helped turn a 3-0 Toronto lead into a 6-3 Kansas City victory.

NL Series Had Largest TV Audience Since 2010

The NL Championship Series had its largest television audience since 2010 despite lasting just four games.

The New York Mets' sweep of the Chicago Cubs in a matchup of big-market teams averaged 7.9 million viewers on TBS. The network said Thursday that was the most since the six-game Giants-Phillies series five years ago on Fox.

The audience was up 55 percent from last year's four-game ALCS on TBS between the small-market Royals and Orioles.

Mattingly, Dodgers Part Ways

Don Mattingly said he didn't decide to walk away from being the Los Angeles Dodgers' manager until he returned to his native Indiana on Tuesday, four days after he began discussing his future with the team's front office.

After he and the team announced Thursday that he was leaving in what they said was a mutually agreed-upon arrangement, Mattingly, who joined the Dodgers as hitting coach eight seasons ago and was in his fifth managerial season after succeeding mentor Joe Torre, said he'll go with mixed feelings.

"I can't sit here and say I'm just bubbling over," Mattingly said. "There are a lot of emotions that go into this, a lot of discussion, a lot of talk, but it gets back around to the same thing as we kept talking and going over it. We all came to the same conclusion. This is best for both parties."

Friday, October 23 Schedule (Time Central)

Toronto at Kansas City, 7:07 p.m.