DETROIT -- While the Detroit Tigers continue their playoff push, the defending World Series champion Kansas City Royals find themselves battling to finish above .500.Kansas City reminded Detroit and everybody else on Saturday that the Royals are, after all, the defending World Series champions. They scored five times in the ninth inning to turn a 4-2 deficit into a 7-4 win that brought them back above break-even at 78-77.For me, its extremely important, Royals manager Ned Yost said Saturday about moving above .500. This group has made history the last couple years and we still have a chance to do it.If we finish over .500, it will be the fourth consecutive year that weve had a winning record and thats only been done one other time in this organization.So we need to do everything we can do to achieve that because we feel next year, getting Moose (Mike Moustakas) back, getting (Lorenzo) Cain back, getting some big pieces back in our lineup, that were going to have an opportunity to be the first club in the history of the Royals to go five winning seasons.Its been a struggle here for us lately, but thats a huge goal for us.Detroit, which finished last in the American League Central a year ago after four straight division titles, is unlikely to overtake first-place Cleveland but expects to be in the thick of the battle for one of the two wild-card spots. The Tigers trail Baltimore by one-half game for the second spot.We just need to play well to get to whatevers next, quite frankly, Tigers manager Brad Ausmus said. Then anything can happen.Ausmus recalled his time as a catcher with the Houston Astros a decade ago.In 2006, the Cardinals were playing like crap the last two weeks of the season, he said. They won the World Series.They lost like nine out of 11. We swept them four straight games in Houston and they went in a tailspin.The Astros trailed the Cardinals by 8 1/2 games with 13 left but rallied to within a half-game with three games remaining. St. Louis hung on to win the division.Detroit will send a third straight young starter out Sunday to face Kansas City. Left-hander Matt Boyd (6-4, 4.16 ERA) is coming off a career best eight-inning start at Minnesota in which he allowed just one run and three hits with seven strikeouts.This will be Boyds second start against the Royals this season. He was beaten in his other start, allowing seven runs and eight hits in 3 2/3 innings. Boyd has started five times against Kansas City in his two seasons with Detroit, going 1-2 with a 7.43 ERA.Right-hander Edinson Volquez (10-11, 5.25) is on record as saying he would like to return to Kansas City next year. His contract is a mutual option situation.Volquez is 2-0 with a 4.05 ERA in three starts against the Tigers this season and is 3-4 with a 5.46 ERA in 10 career starts against Detroit. Hydro Flask Flasche . President of baseball operations Larry Beinfest was fired Friday after 12 years with the Marlins. The move came as the team neared the end of its third consecutive last-place season in the NL East. Hydro Flask Schweiz . PAUL, Minn. http://www.hydroflaskflasche.ch/hydro-flask-kinder-isolierflasche.html . The native of Mont-Tremblant, Que., captured a World Cup downhill event Saturday, his second this year and fifth career victory on the circuit. Hydro Flask Kaufen Schweiz . "Thank you for the warm welcome," Beckham said on an 80-degree February morning. In this case, it was soccer weather. The sport moved a step closer to returning to South Florida on Wednesday, when Beckham confirmed he has exercised his option to purchase a Major League Soccer expansion franchise in Miami. Hydro Flask Günstig . Following a lopsided 5-2 loss against the New Jersey Devils on Wednesday night, Paul MacLean told reporters that "theres a lack of focus, theres a lack of leadership and theres a lack of preparation" with his struggling team. That came on the heels of Bryan Murray taking the unusual step of going into the locker room at the Prudential Center and addressing the players himself. GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Florida coach Jim McElwain feels like his teams been too up and down in two seasons.Significant victory one week, pedestrian performance the next.It hasnt happened too often, but McElwain has seen it enough to know he doesnt want it to become a trend. So he challenged his players this week to show theyve grown, ready to better handle success.The 13th-ranked Gators (8-2), coming off a 16-10 upset at LSU that clinched a second straight Eastern Division title for Florida, play at No. 15 Florida State (8-3) on Saturday night.Its a rivalry game with a revenge subplot -- the Seminoles have won three in a row, including a 27-2 drubbing in Gainesville last year -- but its also a chance for the Gators to prove theyve changed their inconsistent ways.Lets call it the way it is, McElwain said. Im not sure weve had a decent win like this was and actually followed it up, you know what I mean? But whether you go win the game or not, its about the effort and the emotion and the way you attack the week of preparation. But thats part of the growth of an organization and a program.So heres another opportunity for us to learn, and weve got a lot of good, young players thatre playing their tails off. Now, can they keep putting it back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back? The sign of consistency is what helps you be successful in whatever youre doing.McElwain didnt offer any examples of his teams past shortcomings. He didnt have to. Theyre obvious.Florida beat Georgia in a rivalry game late last month and then got shellacked the following week at Arkansas, a 31-10 loss that had outsiders wondering if the Gators would win again this season.Last season, the Gators hammered the Bulldogs and then kicked a late field goal the following week to edge Vanderbilt 9-7 and clinch the East. They rebounded the next week at South Carolina, then needed overtime to pput away Florida Atlantic at home.ddddddddddddSo its easy to see why McElwain would be leery with the Seminoles up next .We got to stay hungry, quarterback Austin Appleby said. You cant exhale at all. We got an unbelievable opponent in front of us. We got everything, our goals that we set in the beginning of the season are right there for us. Our destiny is in our hands. We win and we can accomplish anything we want. We know that.We found a win, but we still have a lot of things that we need to build on. As long as we keep bringing that attitude, keep bringing that great focus, we will be OK.The Gators still have an outside shot at making the College Football Playoff. Of course, they need to beat FSU on Saturday and top-ranked Alabama in the SEC title game just to make it a possibility.Thats no easy task. But if they find some consistency week to week, and continue playing great defense and turnover-free football, McElwain believes anything is possible for this team.You learn from failure, all of us do, he said. We learned that youve got to come to play. We arent that good to be able to just show up, and I think weve done that the last couple weeks. I think weve showed up. Youve ... If you dwell on it, its going to be there forever instead of, `What did I learn from it?I thought our guys learned some things from it. And its no different than probably when you were growing up and your mom had a kettle on the stove and you wondered what that red burner was and you probably went over there and touched it and realized, `You know what, that didnt feel very good. So lets not do that again. Those are the lessons we learn in whatever we do.---More AP college football: www.collegefootball.ap.org and https://twitter.com/AP-Top25 ' ' '