Relive the crowning of the 2015 Royals: Here’s a flashback to ALCS Game 2

Five years ago this fall, the Kansas City Royals won their second World Series championship.

Fox Sports Kansas City is re-airing the Royals’ victories from that postseason this month. At 7 Tuesday night, May 12, it’s Game 2 of the AL Championship Series.

To help you relive the moments from that magical October, we’ve dug into our archives.

Below are original stories, front pages and photos that appeared in the Oct. 18, 2015 editions of The Kansas City Star, the day after the Royals beat the Blue Jays and headed to Toronto with a 2-0 series lead:

Another playoff game, another Royals rally

This was about as over as over could be, really. Fully baked, fork protruding and a curvy opera singer crooning in the background.

So for the umpteenth time this season, and even this postseason, in which the Royals have trailed in the fifth inning or later in six of seven games, they’d have to summon an improbable comeback to win.

Then, ho-hum, for the fourth time this postseason (and 44th time this season overall) they concocted just that for a 6-3 win over Toronto in yet another ridiculous rally Saturday at Kauffman Stadium.

“We just never count ourselves out; we always feel like we have a chance ... ,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said after the Royals took a 2-0 lead in the American League Championship Series. “You have crazy comebacks happen, (and) it’s a thing we’ve done it before, so why not do it again?”

Why not?

Well, in this case, Toronto pitcher David Price had manacled 18 straight Royals and punctuated that by striking out the side in the sixth inning.

He may or may not actually have broken a sweat considering the economy of his effort (65 pitches) and temperatures in the mid-50s.

So Game 2 was in the clutches of the Blue Jays, who led 3-0 into the seventh in a game that was on the verge of reframing the series.

Not just into a tie but tilting it to the Blue Jays’ considerable advantage given that the series now moves to Toronto for the next three.

But after 28 years of funneling any fleeting hope into futility, the Royals have been transforming the most minuscule of hopes into gold since, oh, about the time they resuscitated the franchise in the AL Wild Card Game against Oakland last year.

Now, they have the 2-0 LCS lead that historically has meant winning the series for the 22 of 25 teams (AL and NL) thus staked.

Because now any given reprieve or crack of a window can be a catalyst, or at least usher them toward an escape hatch.

So it was that Ben Zobrist on Saturday cranked open the floodgates in the seventh by blooping a ball to shallow right field.

In frustration over what he’d later say was a “sure out,” he slammed down his bat.

But he hadn’t counted on a miscommunication between right fielder Jose Bautista and second baseman Ryan Goins, who fended off Bautista before shrinking from it himself at the last instant allowing it to drop in.

“I think there’s video,” Bautista said. “You can watch it.”

As someone who has played both positions, Zobrist said, “Somebody just has to take charge and make the play. It’s tough when the crowd is that loud, and you think maybe the outfielder is calling you off. I’ve done it before, too. It’s a tough, tough break.”

And exactly what the Royals needed.

As he arrived at first, Zobrist thought, “Oh, well, there’s a break. Let’s see if we can keep it going.”

To that point, if you believe in these sorts of things, the Blue Jays seemed to be enjoying the cosmic nod of the day:

Their two-run sixth was enabled — propelled? — by Josh Donaldson’s pop-up grazing a wire in foul ground, which rendered it dead even as catcher Sal Perez made a nimble bare-handed catch.

Given new life, Donaldson’s single paved a minirally brought to fruition by two hits just out of the grasps of diving Royals Alex Rios and Alcides Escobar.

But now there was this trickle of a semblance of a sliver of an opening for the Royals, all well and good and symbolically inspiring but irrelevant in a vacuum.

“We needed more than one (hit),” Zobrist said, “and we got it.”

They exploited the moment with singles by Lorenzo Cain, Hosmer and Moustakas, a double by Alex Gordon and a Rios single.

Suddenly, it was 5-3 Royals, who of course had used a five-run eighth inning to come back from down 6-2 against Houston facing elimination in Game 4 of the AL Division Series.

“You could just feel it kind of snowball again,” Zobrist said, “and feel the momentum changing.”

The Royals, of course, didn’t win this game because of a fluke play.

They won because they were studying and adjusting to Price even as he was setting them down.

Then they won because they pounced on the opportunity it presented, and pried it open with nuanced and smart baseball.

Faced with the urgency of the moment, the Royals worked counts with more discipline, shortened their swings and fought off more pitches.

Cain went the opposite way for his hit, as did Hosmer, who was part of another key play in the sequence as he ran in the hit-and-run with Kendrys Morales at the plate.

That averted a double play that allowed the rally to overtake Toronto instead of just tying it.

All of this was a function of knowing every cog had to produce and trusting that it would.

“Nobody was out there trying to do too much,” Zobrist said.

Not because they’re somehow enchanted.

But because they’re steeped in all this now and know what it takes to seize a moment — so why not do it again?

Alex Gordon indulges a rare show of emotion

Alex Gordon walked to the plate for the 4,906th time as a big-leaguer. More than 40,000 screamed. A playoff game was tied. Man on second base. Two outs. Situations half this tense used to freak him out. He can admit that now.

Gordon held his bat in the air. He stared into the crowd. Deep breath. Shut out the noise. Pretend this is a normal at-bat. It’s a trick he learned from Kevin Seitzer, one of the six hitting coaches the Royals have employed since Gordon’s first day in the majors 8 1/2 years ago. He was a third baseman back then, a hotshot prospect who wore No. 7 and heard comparisons to George Brett before he played his first minor-league game.

Baseball cities don’t get to know players like this much anymore. Few places have seen ballplayers grow and endure and conquer like Gordon. Deep breath. Stare into the crowd. Shut out the noise. Normal at-bat.

“Back in my young days, I used to really feed off the crowd,” he said. “Maybe I’d get too amped. Try to do too much.”

Gordon’s path is an irreplaceable reason the Royals made it here, to what will eventually become a 6-3 win over the Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series on Saturday. They now lead the series 2-0, with Game 3 Monday night in Toronto.

But as Gordon stepped into the batter’s box in the seventh inning on Saturday, the result was still in doubt. The Royals had come back from three runs down to tie the score. Incredible. David Price pitched for the Blue Jays. The former Cy Young winner had everything working. He retired 18 straight when the seventh inning began, seven of them by strikeout. Most of the contact he surrendered was weak.

A Royals win would mean control of the series. A loss would give the Blue Jays homefield advantage, with the next three games at the Rogers Centre, with those short fences that amplify the Blue Jays’ often overwhelming power and fans screaming through a long-awaited playoff return in much the same way fans did here last year.

Deep breath. Stare into the crowd. Shut out the noise. Normal at-bat.

“Whenever I try to do too much,” Gordon said, “nothing good happens.”

This had already been a bonkers inning. Ben Zobrist hit a pop fly into the sky that is an out 999 times out of a thousand. This happened to be the other one, though, and afterward Zobrist and others would say the lucky break lifted something in them. Eric Hosmer singled, scoring Zobrist. Cain scored on a ground-out. Mike Moustakas singled, scoring Hosmer. Salvador Perez struck out.

This is how Gordon came to the game’s most crucial at-bat. He has always been among the Royals’ most focused players. Always among their hardest workers. This journey matters to him in a very personal way.

The Royals lost 106 games the year they drafted him. Now they are in the playoffs for a second straight year. He is an enormous part of that, an induction to the team’s Hall of Fame a virtual certainty. All that’s left are moments like this, achievements people will remember. His teammates can see that.

“He’s been here a long time,” said pitcher Greg Holland, a longtime teammate. “He’s been on some (crappy) teams, too. So it’s like he sees the end of the tunnel, almost.”

Price started him off with a curveball. This was the Royals’ 24th plate appearance, and only the second Price started with a curveball. Everything was on the table. Gordon took it, low. The crowd cheered. Deep breath. Stare into the crowd. Shut out the noise. Normal at-bat.

Gordon would repeat that routine six more times. Price would throw 96-mph fastballs, and change-ups in the mid-80s. The count went full. This was the 14th time these two faced each other. Gordon had just three hits. None of those mattered like this one, though, and Price’s touch had left him just a little bit because his eighth pitch to Gordon was a fastball that split the plate.

Gordon focused on shortening his swing against Price, both a sign of respect for the pitcher’s talent and a recognition of the situation. His swing came quick, and simple, and sent the ball shooting into the right-field gap. Moustakas scored. The Royals led. They would win.

Kauffman Stadium went as loud as it had been all day, emotion shooting through the place, and then the damnedest thing happened — Gordon stepped forward, punched the air as hard as he could and screamed into the noise.

“Saw Alex Rios do it the other day,” Gordon joked. “I tried to be like him.”

There is more to it than that, of course. This may or may not be Gordon’s last season with the Royals, but either way, he is 10 years into his pro career and understands the preciousness of these opportunities.

Gordon normally goes about his work with all of the outward enthusiasm of a lamp post. In the beginning, when he struggled, he took heat for this. Some fans thought he didn’t care. People who knew him, though, they knew that, if anything, the opposite was true. There was an obsessive drive inside him that overwhelmed emotion, and when things went wrong, he often didn’t know how to cope.

He’s gotten better at that. Much better. Some of that is Seitzer’s guidance, some advice from other coaches and players, but most of it is an extremely talented athlete finding his legs.

But through the whole process — from golden prospect to bust to position switch to franchise player — Gordon has kept that steady expression. As much as anything else, it is his defining characteristic as a ballplayer. On a team full of frat boys, he’s the one who stays in on the weekends.

So that punch, that scream ... that’s the kind of thing that makes his friends and teammates know what this means to him.

“You don’t get too many words out of Gordon, let alone emotion,” Cain said.

“No, never, not at all,” Escobar said.

“I’ve played with him since July of 2010,” Holland said. “And I’ve never seen him do anything like that.”

Holland is a good person to speak on this. Including the playoffs, he saved 152 games for the Royals before his elbow finally gave out last month. He blew only 16. It is the kind of job that requires control of the moment. Some guys shut it out (Wade Davis), and some guys let it burn (Perez). But they have to control that.

Holland compares Gordon’s knack here to Derek Jeter. Gordon hit a walk-off home run against the Twins last August that helped the Royals’ run into the playoffs, and he had the two-out hit in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the World Series that kept them alive against Madison Bumgarner.

Clutch hitting is a complicated thing, often misunderstood, but Gordon has performed in moments that would overwhelm a man who couldn’t control those emotions. Saturday is only the most recent example.

“You know you can only think about doing your job and not 40,000 people, 29 years, or 30 since we won a (championship),” Holland said. “If you start to think about those things, if you’re not controlling your emotions, you’re probably not controlling your body. You see Gordo, he’s always thinking about what needs to be done.”

Luke Hochevar has known Gordon longer than anyone else in this room. He was the Royals’ first-round pick the year after Gordon, and they debuted in the big leagues the same year. Hochevar said he could only remember seeing his friend emotional on a baseball field one other time. That was the hit off Bumgarner last year.

The standard, then, is high enough at face value. But if you watch the video of that hit, you see a much more subdued reaction from Gordon. He holds his fist up, shakes it, mouths let’s go toward his teammates. That’s it.

What he did on Saturday was different. More intense. This was a punch that would’ve knocked a man out, not a shake that would’ve woken him up. His teammates saw it. They don’t forget moments like this. Neither will a lot of Royals fans.

Sam Mellinger

KC keeps it going: Royals score five runs in the seventh inning to beat the Blue Jays 6-3

By now, their instincts are keen. The Royals spend enough time with blood on their chins to deduce the scent when an opponent is cut. When presented with an inch, this team makes plans for taking a mile.

So when Ben Zobrist’s lazy fly ball fell into the outfield grass at Kauffman Stadium, their ears perked up. For six innings the team lay dormant, stilled by the left arm of Toronto ace David Price, who had retired 18 batters in a row. Now, in the climactic inning of a 6-3 victory Saturday, their minds operated as one.

“You know we’ve got something brewing,” said Eric Hosmer, who drove in the Royals’ first run two batters after Zobrist’s hit.

“It opened the door for us to do what we do,” said Mike Moustakas, who tied the game with a single of his own.

“Once this lineup gets moving, it’s one guy after another,” said Alex Gordon, who gave his team its first lead with an RBI double. “And it was a big seventh inning.”

The rally resulted in five runs, enough to ruin a performance from Price that looked as if it might border on historic. The psychic blow to Toronto cannot be considered fatal — the Blue Jays already rallied from an 0-2 series deficit once this postseason. Yet, the Royals have announced themselves, once again, and stand two victories away from a return to the World Series.

In the last 18 innings, the Royals stared down the Blue Jays, those swaggering brutes from the Great White North, and refused to blink.

On Friday, their pitching staff turned baseball’s most lethal group of hitters into a whimpering collection of outs. A day later, the offense tarnished the reputation of Toronto’s ace. In the process, the Royals demonstrated the depth of their talent and the sturdiness of their chins.

“Our guys, they never quit,” manager Ned Yost said. “They just keep going.”

A split looked likely when Saturday’s seventh started. Price gave up a single to Alcides Escobar on the game’s first pitch. He did not let another Royal reach base until Zobrist benefited from miscommunication by second baseman Ryan Goins and right fielder José Bautista.

“David was so good tonight that it was a shame it had to end that way,” Toronto manager John Gibbons said.

The Royals have made laments like this sound routine. The franchise shifted into a new era after the raucous win in last year’s AL Wild Card Game. This year’s team spoiled an upstart bid from Houston with its season-saving comeback in Game 4 of the last round. So a three-run deficit with three innings to go, even against a dynamic performer like Price, falls within their range of expectation.

In the sixth inning, Yost went to the mound to fetch starter Yordano Ventura. For five innings, Ventura offered a reasonable counterweight to Price. Two doubles led to a third-inning run, but otherwise Ventura kept the Blue Jays at bay. But he lost his footing in the sixth.

During a 31-pitch effort, Ventura gave up an infield single to third baseman Josh Donaldson and walked Bautista. Playing with an injured hand, Edwin Encarnacion hit an RBI single that ticked off Escobar’s glove. Troy Tulowitzki added a run-scoring double on an opposite-field liner that just evaded the glove of right fielder Alex Rios.

At the mound, before he handed the ball to Luke Hochevar, Yost consoled Ventura.

“I’m like, look, we’re going to get you off the hook here,” Yost said.

The task sounded tall. Up to that point, Price appeared on the brink of his first postseason victory as a starter. As the innings progressed, the hulking exterior of the stadium cast a shadow across the diamond.

“The shadows were really tough,” center fielder Lorenzo Cain said. “I felt like the ball was disappearing the first few innings.”

Price gave up a leadoff single to Escobar and then proceeded to devastate the Royals.

“Price is a tough pitcher,” Gordon said. “I felt like we needed to catch a break.”

The seventh provided one. Zobrist popped up the first pitch he saw from Price. He slammed his bat as the ball drifted into right.

“I didn’t think there was a chance that ball dropped,” Zobrist said.

Goins and Bautista converged on the ball. Goins waved his glove toward Bautista. At the last moment, Goins stopped, causing his momentum to send him tumbling to his backside. The baseball soon joined him in the grass.

“I just thought I heard, ‘I got it,’ but it was nothing,” Goins said. “I should have gone in more aggressively. I put my glove up, like I always do. That means I got it. I just didn’t make the play.”

From there, the Royals’ offensive machine hummed to life.

Cain singled, which stoked the crowd at Kauffman Stadium. Hosmer dug out a change-up, low and away, and punched it into left for Kansas City’s first run. First-base coach Rusty Kuntz instructed Hosmer to swipe second base, even though Price had not allowed a stolen base all season.

Hosmer barreled into second as Kendrys Morales hit a grounder up the middle. A run scored. Only one out was recorded.

“The key to that whole inning, believe it or not, was Hosmer stealing second base,” Yost said. “That was a double-play ball. That allowed us to get to a point we could score five runs. That was huge.”

Up came Moustakas, who had only one hit in nine career at-bats against Price. Price tried a change-up low in the zone. Moustakas ripped into it right, toward Bautista and his powerful right arm.

Neither Hosmer nor third-base coach Mike Jirschele fretted about Bautista. Jirschele flailed his arm to send the tying run home from second.

“It didn’t matter if he stopped me or what,” Hosmer said. “I was going either way.”

Bautista’s throw sprayed away from catcher Russell Martin. Hosmer arrived safely.

After Salvador Perez struck out, Gordon hammered a fastball down the heart of the plate for the go-ahead double.

Hochevar, Duffy hold fort ahead of Royals rally

When Danny Duffy ended the seventh inning by striking out Jose Bautista to keep the Royals’ deficit against the Blue Jays at three, he was prepared to return for the eighth.

“I was in the tunnel expecting to go back out,” Duffy said.

He likely would have if the Royals finished the seventh without the lead. But things started happening and a messenger arrived in the form of Jarrod Dyson as Alex Gordon stepped to the plate with Mike Moustakas on second in a tied game.

“He said, ‘Watch this, Gordo’s about to get locked in right here,’ and sure enough...” Duffy said.

As Moustakas crossed the plate on Gordon’s double, Duffy’s day was over as the Royals would employ their eighth- and ninth-inning specialists, Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis, to close out the 6-3 victory on Saturday in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series.

But the job of Duffy in the seventh and Luke Hochevar in the sixth was every bit as meaningful to the outcome. The middle relievers held the fort.

Hochevar stopped a Blue Jays rally in its tracks. Duffy took on the top of Toronto’s order and shut it down, striking out Bautista to end the seventh. When the Royals posted five runs in the seventh, Duffy got the victory. He preferred to pass it along.

“Hoch was unbelievable today,” Duffy said. “If it wasn’t for him, you’re looking at an entirely different ballgame. ... He should have gotten the win.”

Starter Yordano Ventura’s effort was solid, but as the sixth inning progressed, his pitch count climbed and effectiveness waned.

The Blue Jays had pushed across two runs, and the bases were loaded with one out when Hochevar entered.

Kevin Pillar, who doubled and scored in the third inning, stepped in. Pillar took a strike and fouled off the second pitch. On the third, Hochevar delivered a 94-mph fastball that Pillar popped to second baseman Ben Zobrist.

Up stepped Ryan Goins. Hochevar pumped a strike past Goins, who grounded his second pitch to first baseman Eric Hosmer. The flip throw to Hochevar finished the inning and kept the Blue Jays’ lead at 3-0.

Playoffs are a family affair for Zobrists

The champagne spattered from a green bottle, and Ben Zobrist held his thumb over the spout like a garden hose, devising a line of mist that darted through the Royals’ clubhouse. The target: His 6-year-old son.

Zion Zobrist wore ski goggles, just like his father, while his younger sister, 4-year-old Kruse, ducked behind her mom and then behind the plastic wrap in fear.

As teammates sipped the celebratory beverage long after a decisive American League Division Series victory Wednesday against Houston, Ben Zobrist took a moment to acknowledge the accomplishment in his own way. With his family.

“It’s a huge blessing,” Zobrist said. “You don’t get a chance to go to the playoffs very often, but to be able to win in the playoffs and experience that with the people you love the most in the world is really fun.”

It’s part of the balancing act of the professional athlete, of course, in which the job — and its requisite travel schedule — often takes precedence over family, friends and a social life. But the postseason offers a bit of an exception, and the Zobrists have taken full advantage.

The Royals permit families to travel with the team on its charter planes to and from playoff games, and allow them to partake in the series-clinching parties. After the ALDS Game 5 win, the Kauffman Stadium field and locker room overflowed. Lorenzo Cain’s 1-year-old son, Cameron, who was born last October, crawled around the infield, pacifier in tow. Terrance Gore’s niece, 4-year-old Claire, wandered through the clubhouse, donning a shirt that said, “My uncle runs faster than yours.”

Ben Zobrist captured his family’s celebration on Snapchat.

“This team has made it easy for families to be a part of it with the way they treat them, the way they take care of people and make things available to them,” Zobrist said. “It’s been great being here. But that’s certainly a big challenge for any major-league player — trying to keep your family together.”

Zobrist and his wife, Christian music artist Julianna, who sang the national anthem before Game 1 of the ALDS, have adopted a special set of guidelines to make it work. Julianna calls it the “six-day rule,” in which she and Ben never spend more than six days apart. They’ve broken it only a handful of times over the last 10 years, she says.

This has required some creativity and sacrifice. On most occasions, Julianna, Zion and Kruse travel to at least one city during every road trip. Julianna home-schools Zion during the trips, with hotel rooms across the country serving as makeshift classrooms.

“We have to be creative,” said Julianna, who is pregnant with the couple’s third child, due in three weeks. “For us, it’s what’s more beneficial at the end of the day — for the kids to be able to be with their dad, even for a short amount of time on the road, or keep them on a schedule, which might be more simple logistically. At the end of the day, we felt like in the long-term for us, this is just what made sense — to spend time with their dad.”

Zobrist’s combination of versatility in the field and production at the plate will likely lead to a sizable contingent of suitors this winter. And that could equal yet another move for the family, which makes its offseason home in Nashville.

At 34, Zobrist might be looking at his final multiyear contract. His family awaits a life after baseball — when perhaps the roles could reverse.

“Once baseball is totally over and done in however many years, I would want to dive more into my songwriting and performing more,” Julianna said. “Ben always says, ‘I’m going to carry your bags one day.’ “