Midnight magic: Alex Gordon’s blast powers the Royals to another thrilling extra-inning win

The personification of this Royals team is a busted prospect who made himself into a star turning a fastball that catches too much of the plate into a trophy for the right-field seats.

This is what the Royals are showing themselves to be, isn’t it?

This is what this wonderful surprise of a postseason has been about it, isn’t it?

Alex Gordon is rounding the bases, pockets of Royals fans in a sea of orange here losing their minds, because the embodiment of so much of what this franchise strives to be just pushed them closer to the World Series with the biggest home run of a remarkable career.

The Royals took the lead 6-5 on Gordon’s home run in the 10th here on Friday. Mike Moustakas added a two-run homer for an 8-6 KC win in the first game of this best-of-seven American League Championship Series.

This makes five straight wins in the franchise’s first playoff appearance in a generation, four of them in extra innings, and three of them on home runs by homegrown bonus babies in which the Royals invested an incredible amount of hope and patience. No team has ever won four extra-inning games or hit three go-ahead home runs in extra-inning wins in one postseason.

These Royals, in so many ways, are unprecedented.

“Why do it any other way?” a team executive joked after the game.

Gordon’s home run — along with Moustakas’ blast three batters later — finished off another wild win in a postseason that’s included nothing else.

The Royals blew a four-run lead in the fifth and a bases-loaded, nobody-out chance to win it in the ninth. They found themselves on the wrong side of the lucky breaks that had been going their way. Their ace pitcher struggled.

And they still won, somehow, because they hit three home runs against the team that hit more home runs than anyone in baseball. One of those home runs came from Alcides Escobar, just his 22nd in more than 3,000 big league plate appearances.

The Royals will take any win they can get, obviously, but if you ask around inside the organization they’ll be especially happy that the last two have come with Gordon in the middle of the highlights.

Gordon is a rare thing in big league baseball, the star with the talent of a No. 2 overall pick who failed, then remade his professional life with a new position, and worked his way into stardom with a legendary work ethic.

There are stories of guys getting to the big leagues, and being told that to stay there, they should watch and mimic everything Gordon does. That hardly ever lasts, Gordon’s default setting of constant workouts and fine-tuning wearing out even the earnest recent call-up.

There was a time when all that hard work was seen as a negative in some baseball circles. Back when Gordon was struggling to find his way, you could hear theories that he put too much pressure on himself. If he struck out, he might try to make up for it with extra lifts, stiffening his swing and starting a bad cycle of frustration.

Maybe that was always bogus armchair psychology, or maybe Gordon has figured a way to keep up an exceptional work rate without allowing it to go counterproductive. Because the guy once seen as overthinking and overextending in key situations has now long been one of the team’s first choice for the biggest moments.

He had the walk-off home run against the Twins, you remember, and was among the biggest reasons the Royals went on that season-changing run in July and August.

That started to fade in September, but the postseason has been like a recharge. That’s never been truer than now, after Gordon had three hits, four RBIs, and was on base four times in the opener of the ALCS.

He broke another bat — shocker, his teammates almost certainly said in the dugout — on a bases-clearing double in the third inning.

Gordon has snapped, cracked, sliced and otherwise obliterated more bats than anyone else in the big leagues over the last four years.

That’s largely because he insists on bats with the thinnest handles and thickest barrels possible, creating an out-of-balance piece of wood that feels good in his hands but often breaks. It’s become a running joke with his teammates, actually. Shocker, they say when another bat dies. Shocker, Gordon said when his 1,000th career hit this year came with a broken bat.

After that hit, as a gift, his teammates presented him with a split bat, dipped in silver.

“You have enough gold,” they told him.

Gordon did this against the team his father and one of his brothers rooted for when they were growing up. Stuff like that means a lot to Gordon, like the plaque on Eutaw Street behind the right field fence marking where his home run landed six years ago. Gordon’s brother is here at Camden Yards for the first time, and made sure to check out the plaque.

Gordon joked that the wind had to be blowing out for him to hit one that far, and before the game sort of innocently mentioned he hoped to get another one.

His home run didn’t make it to Eutaw Street, but it will be remembered long after the one from 2008 is forgotten.

This whole playoff run has been like that, actually. Gordon is the guy right now. The team’s best all-around player, the one that fills the organization with pride. It’s his home run playing on all the highlight shows, and will forever mark the way the Royals won the first game of the ALCS.

The Royals are scheduled to play again today. Momentum in baseball has been proven to be mostly a myth. But if the rest of this postseason is anything like what we’ve seen so far, it will be someone else in Gordon’s place, with some new way of winning another wild playoff game.

This story was originally published October 11, 2014 at 1:35 AM with the headline "Midnight magic: Alex Gordon’s blast powers the Royals to another thrilling extra-inning win."