Royals capture first World Series title since 1985
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Version 0 of 1. NEW YORK — Lock the Kansas City Royals in the garage and leave the car running. They’ll emerge tomorrow, squint into the sun and smile. They fly their plane directly into a mountainside, drive their bus off a cliff. It’s nothing more than a cartoon. When the dust clears, there they are, wiping themselves off, exchanging high-fives, grinning and winning. Their defining, back-from-the-brink characteristic would seem cartoonish if the results weren’t so real, indelible now. Sunday night, for the third time in this World Series, they trailed the New York Mets in the eighth inning or later. Their attitude, basically: Whatever, man. And so they are champions. “You knew,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said, “we weren’t going to go quietly.” [Boswell: A winning team for the ages] The Royals won their first World Series title in 30 years because they scored two ninth-inning runs off Mets ace Matt Harvey — who, by his manager’s own admission, should have been removed to start the inning. They got the decisive run in what became 7-2 victory in Game 5 when a backup middle infielder named Christian Colon — a hero of the 2014 wild-card game who had nary a postseason plate appearance this fall — singled in pinch runner Jarrod Dyson in the top of the 12th. “I never count myself out no matter what,” Colon said, ski goggles on his head to protect his eyes from champagne and beer. “If I’m in the box, I always know that I have a chance. If I’m on the field, I know I have a chance. And it doesn’t matter to me.” Wait. Was he speaking about himself, or the entire team? Never mind. They’re one and the same. How Royals, to take the World Series using two players no one at Citi Field had heard of. How Royals, to come back and win — for the eighth time in their 11 postseason victories. How Royals, to celebrate a year after they left the tying run in the seventh game of the World Series stranded 90 feet from home, a stunned crowd of 44,859 with plenty to chew on for, oh, the next generation or so. Two years ago, Kansas City could have seemed a wayward franchise, one that was dealing with a quarter century of national irrelevance. Sunday, the Royals won the series four games to one, and could rightly be looked at as a model in both execution and attitude. Only these guys, this core, could have taken that loss to Madison Bumgarner and the San Francisco Giants last fall, crumpled into a ball of rage to be nurtured in their collective gut, and used it to their advantage. “Everybody came to spring training as determined of a group that I’ve ever seen,” Royals Manager Ned Yost said. “They were going to get back and they were going to finish the deal this time. So from day one, there was no doubt in my mind that they wouldn’t accomplish it. There was no doubt in their mind that they wouldn’t accomplish it. And the cool thing about this team is everything they set out to accomplish, they do.” Regardless, it seems, of the situation. The five games of this World Series encompassed 53 innings. The Royals led after 13 of them. They were down a run with one out in the ninth inning of the series opener and won in 14 innings. They were down one with one out in the eighth inning of Game 4 and scored three times in the frame to steal another one. And here, Sunday, they faced a crowd roaring for Harvey’s return to the mound in the ninth, and Harvey’s menacing mug when he took it. “We couldn’t get to him as early as we wanted to,” center fielder Lorenzo Cain said. “It took us a little while.” It also took a while — and a full-fledged argument — to determine whether they would ever get a chance at him in the ninth. In the bottom of the eighth, with the Mets up 2-0, Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen approached Harvey to tell him he was done. “No way,” he responded. He marched over to Manager Terry Collins, whose next night of restful sleep may not come till spring. [Harvey insisted on going back into the game] As Collins recalled, Harvey said, “I want this game. I want it bad. You’ve got to leave me in.” Collins’s response: “Matt, you’ve got us exactly where we wanted to get you.” Closer Jeurys Familia was ready. Still, Harvey pushed back. And Collins relented. “Obviously,” Collins said, “I let my heart get in the way of my gut.” Against another team, maybe this isn’t a decision that hangs over an entire winter. Against the Royals, well . . . Cain led off the top of the ninth. “I’m thinking: Just get on base,” he said. These are the Royals, a brick-by-brick operation. Hosmer followed. “You knew something was going to happen,” he said. “. . . As soon as Cain gets on there, you knew we got something brewing.” Collins, though, wouldn’t acknowledge it. He allowed the right-handed Harvey to pitch to the left-handed-hitting Hosmer, even with another lefty, Mike Moustakas, behind him. “If you’re going to let him just face one guy,” Collins rationalized, “you shouldn’t have sent him out there.” Cain stole second — more typical Royals, down by two runs with no one out, obliterating convention. And Hosmer scored him with a double. Only then did Collins come get Harvey, replacing him with Familia. But by that point, the earth had tilted. Hosmer advanced to third on a groundball. And when Royals catcher Salvador Perez followed with a grounder to Mets third baseman David Wright, Hosmer decided to embody the Royals’ brand of ball. “As soon as his head turned to go to first base,” Hosmer said of Wright, “I just decided it’s an opportunity for us to maybe steal a run.” There is no maybe with these Royals. Mets first baseman Lucas Duda might have nailed Hosmer with a good throw — ending the game, sending the series back to Kansas City. But nothing in these five games was worse than the Mets’ infield defense. Duda’s throw could have sailed to Staten Island. Hosmer scored easily. This thing was tied. “If I watched very many more of these games,” said David Glass, the Royals’ 80-year-old owner, “I’d get gray-headed.” Speaking for the entirety of the Midwest, perhaps. The Royals’ bullpen — from Kelvin Herrera to Luke Hochevar to Wade Davis — took over from there. And in the 12th, Perez led off with a single. The slowest runner on either roster was then replaced by the fastest, Dyson. His mission had no mystery. “I got to do my job,” he said. “My job was to steal second base.” It was hardly a challenge. Alex Gordon then moved him to third with a grounder to the right side. Colon, who scored the 12th-inning run against Oakland in last year’s wild-card game that started this whole wild Kansas City ride, then got his first plate appearance of the postseason. Mets reliever Addison Reed offered him a 1-2 slider. “As soon as I saw it, I knew I got it good,” Colon said. He sent it into left. Dyson jogged home. An error by Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy — his second in two nights — allowed another runner to reach. Alcides Escobar piled on with an RBI double, and Cain followed with the double that cleared not just the bases, but Citi Field’s stands. Those items, though, are the minutia, the episodes folks from Kansas City will try to remember when they sit around bars years — decades — from now and try to recreate this big, sloppy, happy, beautiful mess. What they’ll remember, clearly: Team after team after team tried to step on the Royals’ throats, to smother them with a pillow. And the last time, they rose up once more, grabbed the World Series trophy, exchanged their hugs and flew back to Kansas City, more alive than ever. More coverage: Box score: Royals 7, Mets 2 (12 innings) Boswell: Fittingly, Royals rally for the Series clincher Matt Harvey to Manager Terry Collins: ‘I’m going back out there’ |