The Kansas City Royals are celebrating a championship 30 years in the waiting, secured after Sunday night’s Game 5 victory that won the 2015 World Series.
After coming one game short of glory during last season’s pennant run, the Royals made no mistake of their place atop baseball this time around. They took down the New York Mets in a clash of long-suffering franchises.
The Royals’ Twitter account shared the moment the World Series was won:
Kansas City put together the ultimate team performance to etch its place as one of the most balanced teams to ever win a championship. There aren’t any superstars on this Royals roster. There’s no flair. They just step up and find ways to win games.
But a Most Valuable Player must be crowned, so why not catcher Salvador Perez? He hit at a .364 average in the series, going an impressive 8-for-22 against the Mets’ strong pitching, and most importantly, he brought the tying run home in the ninth inning of Game 5.
On top of throwing out three baserunners attempting to steal and calling a great series for the pitchers, Perez defined the Royals’ ability to hang in despite deficits throughout the postseason, as he told Christina Kahrl of ESPN.com:
You guys know what we’ve done all season. We never quit. We never put our heads down. … We always compete to the last out. And that’s what we did tonight.
MLB captured Perez celebrating with the trophy:
The moment must have tasted sweet for Perez, who was the last Royal to bat in Game 7 of their defeat last season to San Francisco, as ESPN Stats & Info noted:
Just like in Game 4 of the American League Division Series, when the Royals were nine outs from elimination in Houston, Kansas City flexed its late-inning muscle throughout the World Series. In three of its four wins, it trailed late in the game only to put together a trio of miraculous comebacks.
Victory seemed improbable again in Game 5, with Matt Harvey pitching a shutout through eight innings. But a walk to Lorenzo Cain to open the ninth and a follow-up double by Eric Hosmer had Harvey yanked for struggling closer Jeurys Familia, and the rest is history.
Andy McCullough of the Kansas City Star noted the thoughts of all Royals fans at that moment:
It took until the 12th inning for Kansas City to pull away, which it did in a five-run inning that all but put the Mets away. Wade Davis took it from there, notching three strikeouts to clinch the championship.
Moments later, the Royals were posing with the trophy they came so close to hoisting a year ago, including Mike Moustakas, as the team’s Twitter showed:
While the Mets will spend the coming days—maybe weeks, months or even the rest of their lives—wondering what could have been, the Royals don’t have to do that. They saw their opportunity and seized it in dramatic fashion.
It has been easy for any baseball fan to count out the Royals at a number of points in this postseason, but they just continued to prove their worth when the spotlight was brightest. Baseball is a game of ebbs and flows, and those certainly went the way of Kansas City throughout October and into the early days of November.
As a result, the Royals are celebrating a title that will last a lifetime.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com