The Kansas City Royals won the World Series on Sunday night in the most appropriate possible fashion given how they’ve played this season, somehow erasing a two-run deficit in the ninth inning before winning Game 5 in the 12th inning, 7-2.
The Royals have quite literally made a habit of scoring runs late in games. They scored 51 of their 90 runs this postseason in the seventh inning or later, the most in baseball history, according to Elias Sports Bureau (via SportsCenter on Twitter).
They were truly the Comeback Kids, as Buster Olney of ESPN The Magazine noted:
Maybe it was just the mentality they had. After all, when Matt Harvey stepped to the mound in the ninth inning—the man who had stifled the Royals for an entire game, remember—the Royals seemed pleased to greet the challenge, as Lorenzo Cain told Bob Nightengale of USA Today:
Maybe it was just a hunger the Royals had and the belief they possessed all season long, as manager Ned Yost spoke about after the game, per Fox Sports MLB:
Maybe it was just the fact they were a well-built, well-rounded group of players that had a set philosophy and executed it well. Adam Schein of SiriusXM didn’t see many weaknesses:
What didn’t the Royals do well this year? This was a team with a group of players that aggressively approached each at-bat and didn’t swing and miss often. They fielded well, had solid starting pitching, possessed an awesome bullpen and always seemed to come up with a clutch hit.
After losing in last year’s World Series, they also brought a lot of experience into this year’s postseason. And it showed. Where the New York Mets seemed to make mistakes at the worst possible moment—Eric Hosmer should have been been gunned down at the plate in the bottom of the ninth in Game 5, but Lucas Duda sailed his throw, for example—the Royals seemed to play better as the pressure grew.
And let’s give credit to Hosmer, who had the guts to put Duda under pressure in the first place, something the Royals didn’t do in last year’s World Series, as Jason Catania of Bleacher Report recalled:
Hosmer spoke about that decision after the game, per Olney:
But when Rachel Nichols of Turner Sports asked him what he was thinking as he made his dash toward home, he admitted, “At first—that I made a mistake.”
It was just that sort of season for the Royals, however. Even their mistakes turned into strokes of genius.
There will be the temptation to say the Mets threw this World Series away as much as the Royals grabbed it for themselves, especially in New York. Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com doesn’t think that’s a fair perception, however:
It’s easy to be cynical after teams blow leads they probably should have protected. But let’s also enjoy a Royals team that put so much pressure on the Mets—and every team they faced, for that matter—that they created the cracks that eventually became leaks that inevitably caused the dam to burst late in games.
For a moment, let’s just appreciate what the Royals accomplished. And perhaps the other organizations seeking a World Series after a long drought can learn something from them, too, as Scott Van Pelt of ESPN noted:
For Royals fans, the celebration was on. Actor David Koechner, reprising his role as Champ Kind from the film Anchorman, perhaps summed up the feelings of Royals fans everywhere the best:
The drought is over, Kansas City. Enjoy your champions. They were clearly the best team in baseball. They were arguably the most fun team to watch. They provided all of baseball with an October to remember.
And few would be surprised if they did so again next year, too.
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