A generation’s worth of Kansas City hopes and prayers and pleading was finally answered Sunday night in New York. The Kansas City Royals are World Series champions.
It took 30 years for the Royals to once again reach the top of the baseball mountain. Thirty years of Opening Days pregnant with promise. Thirty years of long, hot summers drifting aimlessly toward autumn.
Thirty years of disappointment turned in a flash to shock, and quickly on to joy, when in the twelfth the Royals took the championship 7-2 after a turn in the ninth when the Mets left in their starting pitcher, Matt Harvey, with more than 110 pitches.
Lorenzo Cain walked in, stole a base and then got hit in from a double by Eric Hosmer to score the Royals' first run of the night. Then, Hosmer scored to tie it up from third after Salvador Perez grounded out to first.
With the score tied, Royal pitcher Kelvin Hererra held off the Mets in the bottom of the ninth to bring the game into extra innings.
In the twelfth, Salvador Perez singled on a soft fly and was replaced by pinch-runner, Jarrod Dyson. Dyson stole second, then brought the Royals up 3-2 after Christian Colon hit a single. Alcides Escobar hit a ball down the line to bring the score up to 4-2 as the Royals dugout prematurely erupted in excitement.
It wasn't long before the dugout was cheering again. Lorenzo Cain hit a double to bring in a run each for Paulo Orlando, Escobar and Ben Zobrist to bring the score to 7-2.
Royals pitcher Wade Davis finished the task in the bottom of the twelfth, striking out Lucas Duda, Travis D'Arnaud and Wilmer Flores.
The city itself – the fountains, even – seemed to turn blue this fall. The Royals, the Royals¸ won 95 games and left the division in the dust of a thousand singles. Five outs from a first-round exit, staring into the black void of another year of disappointment, the team rallied to save the season and eventually knocked off Houston and Toronto. A year after falling just one game short of a World Series title, the Royals steamed into New York a train without a brake.
The city will celebrate with a 2.3 mile-long parade beginning at noon, Tuesday, Nov. 3. The parade will start off on Grand Boulevard between the Sprint Center and the Kansas City Power & Light District and head north to Ninth Street.
The Victory Rally stage will be located in front of Union Station and will start at approximately 2 p.m., shortly after the end of the parade arrives.
