Perez plays ball off Choo’s nose to help Royals

Danny Duffy didn’t need much help Thursday night. Still, he and catcher Salvador Perez got a nifty assist from Shin-Soo Choo’s face.

Duffy took a shutout into the eighth inning after Perez threw out a runner on a ball that hit Choo in the nose, and the Kansas City Royals beat the Texas Rangers 8-2 for their season-best third straight victory.

Perez had four RBIs on a pair of two-run singles with two outs in the fifth and seventh innings. But the catcher’s play in the first inning was more memorable.

Duffy’s pitch in the dirt bounced off Perez and then hit Choo in the face, sending him staggering out of the batter’s box. Perez scrambled to get the ball from in front of home plate and then threw out Delino DeShields trying to take second.

“I saw the ball like right in front of me,” Perez said. “I said, ‘Bro, I think you’re bleeding.’ ”

Choo remained in the game and drew a walk.

Duffy (2-6) allowed a run and four hits, struck out five and walked two in 7 2/3 innings — his longest outing of the season. The veteran left-hander entered with a 6.88 ERA and had allowed at least five earned runs in five of his previous 10 starts.

“It was nice to do something beneficial to the team,” said Duffy, who said his slider might have been his best of the season.

“He needed it,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “He was on the attack. He was throwing the ball in good spots and was ahead in the count.”

After DeShields led off Texas’ first inning with a single to right field, Duffy didn’t allow another hit until Choo singled in the seventh. Rougned Odor broke up the shutout bid with a two-out single in the eighth, ending Duffy’s night.

Texas’ offense struggled a night after matching a season high for runs in a 12-10 win over the New York Yankees.

Rangers right-hander Austin Bibens-Dirkx (0-1) gave up six runs, four earned, on eight hits in 6 1/3 innings. He made his season debut for Texas after his contract was purchased from the Triple-A Round Rock Express earlier in the day.

Kansas City’s Ramon Torres had two hits and three runs in his first appearance of the season. He was a late lineup replacement for Alex Gordon, who had a sore hip and a stiff neck.

The Royals scored two unearned runs in the second inning after having no one on with two outs. smoking and started training for a triathlon that very day, will race the international distance — a 1.5-kilometer swim, 40K bike ride and 10K run — in Monday’s Life Time Tri CapTex.

“I was a smoker since the age of 15 up until 2012 — about 20-21 years — when I discovered triathlons,” he said. “When I first started to run, I could barely do a mile. I could not even swim to the end of a 25-yard pool without stopping and gasping for air. It was awful.”

By July 2012 — just a little more than a month after that day at Lady Bird Lake — he had competed in his first triathlon, the Tri for Old Glory in San Marcos, with a borrowed bike and Speedo jammers. It was a sprint-distance race (500meter swim, 11-mile bike leg and 5K run), but Mickler-Lemelle took the swim out way too fast and had to stop several times, even walking a little in the shallow areas.

Though he was one of the last people out of the water, he vowed to finish. And when he crossed that finish line, he was hooked.

Even a medical setback failed to dampen his enthusiasm for triathlons.

“Not long after that race, I was swimming and thought I pulled a muscle in my chest. I went to the hospital, and they did an X-ray,” he recalled. “It turned out I had a collapsed lung and had to have surgery. Three weeks later, it collapsed again. I had to have additional surgery, and it’s been OK since then.”

Improvement came quickly. Now an accomplished triathlete, Mickler-Lemelle has stood on the podium a number of times in age-group competition in distances ranging from sprint to Olympic. In 2016, competing in the sprint distance, he took second in the 40-44 division at Jack’s Generic Triathlon in Pflugerville, and he nabbed another second-place finish for the sprint distance at the Life Time Tri CapTex last Memorial Day.

To date, he’s done three half Ironman races — or “70.3s,” which refers to the total distance in miles covered in the race: a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride and a 13.1-mile run. And he’s done three full Ironmans — a 2.4-mile swim, 112 miles on the bike followed by a marathon (26.2 miles).

“Racing 140.6 miles has made me learn about pacing,” he said. “I learned that you really have to pace yourself when you get to the marathon. And I’ve learned how to train.”

Mickler-Lemelle now trains with several clubs — the Austin Tri club, RAW Running, Austin Y-Tri and RunLab — and is coached by Shawn Phillips of DTH Endurance along with champion swimmer Andrea Fisher. Depending on what goals Mickler-Lemelle has on the horizon, he may swim 3 to 4 miles a week, run another 25 to 30 and bike between 75 and 100.

“To me, the challenge is the training,” Mickler-Lemelle said. “It takes a lot of time and effort, but it does pay off.”

Besides becoming extremely fit, Mickler-Lemelle’s metamorphosis into an athlete has reshaped his mental outlook.

“I have changed a lot,” he said. “I have a purpose now. I have goals. I have health now, and I have a major community. I have never been one to find a hobby and stick with it this long. This is truly a part of my life, and I am so glad. It keeps me going.”

The payoff will come Monday morning when he hits the water in Lady Bird Lake at Vic Mathias Shores for a 1,500-meter swim, then does four 10K loops on the bike between Congress Avenue and MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) before finishing up by running two 5K loops around Riverside Drive and Barton Springs Road.

“I love race day,” Mickler-Lemelle said. “It’s where it all comes together. The adrenaline kicks in, and you just fly.”