Relive the crowning of the 2015 Royals: Here’s a flashback to World Series Game 4

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 Wednesday night, May 20, it’s Game 4 of the World 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 Nov. 1, 2015 editions of The Kansas City Star, the day after the Royals beat the Mets 5-3 for a 3-1 series lead:

With 5-3 comeback win, KC is a victory away

NEW YORK — The third hop did it. The ball was nothing off Eric Hosmer’s bat. A chopper. If he hits this ball 100 times against a big-league defense, it is entirely likely that he is out 90. Maybe more. The first hop went high in the air.

Hosmer ran hard, immediately. This is part of the team’s DNA. They don’t assume. You never know. Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy charged. He’s a terrific hitter, but an adventurous fielder. Hosmer was smart not to assume. The second hop seemed to die on the infield grass.

Murphy charged hard, immediately. He had more than enough time to get the out, but he had to field it cleanly. He knew this. He had the line on it, dipped his glove to the dirt, and maybe the baserunner crossing his vision distracted him or maybe it was the chaos of the moment, but the third hop glanced off his glove and the ball rolled behind him.

In the dugout, Christian Colon and Alcides Escobar looked shocked. Happy, but shocked. The tying run scored. The Royals were about to do it again. How many times have we seen this now?

Mike Moustakas was the next batter, and he hit another slow roller, this one perfectly placed through the right side of the infield. The Royals had come back, again, and six Wade Davis outs later they had a 5-3 win that shifted this World Series fully in their control. They lead three games to one. They can pop champagne with a win in Game 5 here on Sunday night or take two swings at it back in Kansas City.

A Royals postseason already full of heart-stopping comebacks has another. They have won 10 games in these playoffs and trailed in the fifth inning or later in all but three. When they get behind, they do their best work.

“It’s experience, it’s character, it’s a group of really talented players,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “It’s something that they believe in their hearts they can accomplish.”

Their greatest moments have all come after mistakes by the other side. Carlos Correa missing that grounder that bounced off the mound in Houston. Jose Bautista throwing to the wrong base in Game 6 of the ALCS. Now this.

That’s part of the story, of course. Baseball is a game of failure, it is often said, and the winners and losers are separated by how they manage.

The difference is the Royals make these things count. They’ve made their share of mistakes in this series. More than their share, actually. Alex Rios — there are four scoreboards here, by the way — lost track of the outs in one particularly embarrassing moment. The Mets scored one run on the play, and there is a good chance they would have scored that run if Rios hadn’t gone blank-brained. He hasn’t thrown anyone out at the plate in 2015.

You will also remember that Eric Hosmer — the Gold Glover — allowed the go-ahead run to score in the eighth inning of Game 1 of this World Series. The Mets scored that one run, but no more, even as the game stretched on for six more innings.

The Royals, however, tend to react to the other team making mistakes the way a hungry dog might react to you dropping a raw steak. Correa’s error kickstarted a five-run eighth inning that saved the Royals from elimination. Bautista throwing to the wrong base allowed a beautiful combination of Lorenzo Cain’s speed and Mike Jirschele’s preparation to push across the go-ahead run.

And after Murphy’s error — the ball glanced so softly off his glove that it barely rolled off the dirt and into the grass in shallow right field — Moustakas drove in the go-ahead run, and Salvador Perez drove in an insurance run with a line drive to right field. Erasing late leads is also made easier with Davis available to shut it down.

“They truly don’t ever stop,” Mets manager Terry Collins said. “They have a very good lineup top to bottom.”

The Royals now stand just one win from their first world championship in 30 years. There will be much to celebrate, of course. The franchise’s rise from punchline to pennants. The patience of Yost, Dayton Moore and David Glass. The emergence of homegrown stars such as Perez, Hosmer, Moustakas and others. Davis’ dominance. Cain’s brilliance. A city that has had precious few sports moments to celebrate over the last generation getting, finally, the biggest party in a generation.

If that’s the way this goes, a large part of the winter and the future beyond will be spent going over the magic of this postseason. The disappointment felt from coming one swing short in Game 7 last year would finally be wiped away.

The Royals could not complete what would have been an epic comeback that night, and more than anything else, that’s the difference between the team that broke through and the one that is now just one win from history. This team has completed that comeback.

Over and over and over again.

Sleight of hand works for Royals, too, as they flip script on Mets

NEW YORK — On Friday, New York’s Noah Syndergaard foreshadowed his first-pitch fling toward Alcides Escobar’s head by suggesting he held a trick up his sleeve. On Saturday, Royals manager Ned Yost submitted that in Game 4 of the World Series, the Royals had contrived “a few tricks up our sleeves, too.”

Yost deflected the ominous undercurrent of his statement by denying he meant the Royals intended to retaliate by throwing at the Mets. Which left open to interpretation just what that sleight of hand might come to entail.

The answer was no more evident by mid-game, unless you counted the Royals’ goofs and gaffes since the series moved to New York.

But then, in the eighth inning, came the grand unveiling of what the Royals had tucked away — yet another rally to flip the script for a 5-3 victory and 3-1 advantage in the Series.

The latest addition to their exotic collection of improbable escapes came with the indulgence of a Mets team that was on the verge of tying the Series at two games apiece.

Trailing 3-2 on Saturday, a Royals team that for 13 months has thrived on the sorcery of the comeback conjured yet another on decidedly slim pickings:

Walks to Ben Zobrist and Lorenzo Cain; a tame grounder by Eric Hosmer that magically bypassed the glove of second baseman Daniel Murphy; and a Mike Moustakas single to right just past the groping Murphy.

Sal Perez made it 5-3 with the only emphatic hit of the inning, and, shazam, the Royals’ comeback recipe was punctuated by a six-out shutdown from closer Wade Davis.

“It’s just kind of how the ball bounced today,” Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas said. “It kind of rolled right for us.”

While this would qualify as perhaps the fourth-best Royals comeback of this postseason, given that they trailed only by a run, it still seemed far-fetched given the tone of a game until then was distinguished by their squandered opportunities and cartoonish misplays.

What only days ago looked like a team of destiny suddenly was playing like a team of density.

The same sort of markers of a lackadaisical mindset that emerged on Friday — with such curiosities as pitchers Yordano Ventura failing to cover first and Franklin Morales getting mental gridlock on where to throw — seemed to have had contagion into Saturday.

The lapses started early, when Zobrist in the first inning was called for interference at the plate with Escobar running from first.

And they spiraled into the spectacular when right fielder Alex Rios lost track of the number of outs with Wilmer Flores on third base.

Because of the depth of the ball and Rios’ mediocre arm, Flores likely would have scored, anyway, on an absurd play that also featured Flores appearing to leave early — but not to the extent replay could trump the original call.

In sum, these things served as symbolic indicators of a turn in the Series and might have been seen as symptomatic of some inexplicable ebb of intensity in the Royals.

But beneath all that noise was the simplistic nitty-gritty of what had been happening here.

Since the Series moved east from Kansas City with the Royals holding a 2-0 lead — which has meant a world championship for 42 of the previous 53 teams to seize such an advantage — the Mets had been the better team for most of two nights.

And the main reason was less about the Royals’ blunders than timely Mets hitting — including four home runs in two games after Michael Conforto’s two on Saturday — and Kansas City’s sudden inability to cash in its few-but-ripe opportunities against Mets pitching.

Add it all up, and the Royals had mustered one hit after the first two innings in their 9-3 loss on Friday and two runs in 14 innings into the eighth on Saturday.

This, after they’d amassed seven runs in their final four at-bats in the 7-1 victory in Game 2.

Some seemed to want to suggest that that somehow was related to Syndegaard’s cheap trick to open the game Friday.

But if that were the case, it would seem the Royals wouldn’t have followed up with six hits among their first nine official at-bats that night.

Some might have figured it was because of playing without designated hitter Kendrys Morales with the series in a National League park.

And, yes, the Royals surely are better off with Morales in the lineup, but Morales was 1 for 8 in the series in the first two games ... and this hardly is some newfangled rule.

“They are what they are,” Yost said before the game Saturday. “We go play the game under the rules that were provided for us.”

But the Royals are making their own rules when it comes to the comeback, and in so doing made good on Yost’s pre-game forecasts — including the way it pertained to how the team would respond overall to Syndegaard’s lingering first pitch.

“When that kind of stuff happens, they always find a way to get fired up and kind of take care of it themselves on the field,” Yost said. “Not by throwing at people, but by swinging the bats and playing good defense.”

And by turning the trick the Royals have mastered.

What a crazy eighth: Royals score three runs and beat the Mets 5-3 in Game 4

NEW YORK — The beginning always looks so harmless. That’s the thing. These Royals, winners again in Game 4 of the World Series, a 5-3 triumph over the Mets, never burst into a room. Their opponents cannot recognize the danger until it is too late.

So when Ben Zobrist chucked his bat toward the Kansas City dugout on Saturday evening, there was little reason for panic at Citi Field. Zobrist represented the tying run after walking with one out in the eighth inning, but the Mets had stifled the Royals all evening. Looming in the bullpen was their fearsome closer, Jeurys Familia. The Mets were five outs away from tying this series.

During the last month, as the Royals have brought themselves one victory away from a title, the team has faced longer odds than this. They make comebacks like this look routine. All they require is an opening.

The door peeked open a crack when Mets reliever Tyler Clippard walked Lorenzo Cain. Into the breach came Familia. Eric Hosmer chopped a grounder toward second base. And the arc of this series bent toward Kansas City.

The baseball slipped beneath the glove of Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy. He played the hero during the first two rounds of these playoffs. Now he served as the goat. The error allowed Zobrist to score and tie the game. Mike Moustakas and Salvador Perez gave the Royals the lead with a pair of RBI singles.

There was no crushing blow, no baseball destined to clear the fences. Two walks. Two hits. A pivotal error. Champions can be crowned on the back of such events.

“They can do a lot things and they’re athletic,” Mets manager Terry Collins said. “You have to make your pitches and get outs when you have the opportunity.”

The sequence turned this ballpark, rollicking and rolling with orange towels flapping through the air, into a tomb. The undertaker arrived in the form of Wade Davis. He authored a six-out save and pushed the Mets to the brink.

“We feel like if we can keep the game close, we’re going to find a way to win it,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “Our bullpen is so dynamic, they give us a chance to win those types of games. And it’s a team that just looks for a little crack. If we find a little crack, they’re going to make something happen.”

The Royals could spray champagne within 24 hours. The series will hinge on tonight’s matchup between Edinson Volquez and Mets starter Matt Harvey. Volquez rejoined the Royals on Saturday night after spending several days in the Dominican Republic at his father’s funeral.

Starter Chris Young and Danny Duffy combined to surrender a pair of home runs to rookie outfielder Michael Conforto. A mental lapse by right fielder Alex Rios contributed to a Mets run.

Neither starting pitcher provided much distance. Yost removed Young for a pinch hitter in the top of the fifth. Young had given up two runs. An RBI single by Cain removed Mets rookie Steven Matz from the game in the sixth. Matz yielded two runs across five innings.

The lone, lingering artifact on Saturday from Game 3 was the first pitch of the evening, the chin music from Noah Syndergaard toward Alcides Escobar. A day later, Syndergaard refused to back down from his postgame stance, when he said the pitch was premeditated. Informed of Syndergaard’s comments, Escobar was succinct.

“That’s a stupid comment,” Escobar said.

Yost relayed an interesting anecdote. According to Yost’s version of events. Yost said when Syndergaard came to the bat in the third, he told catcher Perez the pitch was an accident.

Yost did not mind Syndergaard throwing inside. Yost objected to the location of the pitch, up near Escobar’s chin. In a subtle mockery of Syndergaard, Yost offered a cryptic rejoinder.

“We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves,” Yost said. “Let’s go with that.”

But Young did not hunt the heads of his former New York teammates. Instead he yielded two runs in the third due to a home run and a slate of defensive incompetence.

Conforto supplied the homer on a waist-high, 87-mph fastball. He hammered a towering drive into the second deck of right field on the inning’s first pitch. It was the first hit of the game for the Mets and the third hit of the postseason for Conforto.

Wilmer Flores splashed a single into center. As Matz squared to bunt, Young spiked a fastball in the dirt. The ball bounced away and Flores took second. Matz bunted him to third, setting the stage for another mental gaffe by a Royal.

The sequence looked preposterous. Curtis Granderson lifted a fly ball into right. Rios settled underneath it. He relaxed his body as the ball reached his glove. When he caught it, he paused for a moment and took two jogging steps toward the dugout. His body conveyed the universal language of a completed inning.

Except there were only two outs. Rios realized in time to heave the baseball home. There was no play. The Royals challenged the call, suggesting Flores failed to tag up properly and left early. The replay officials upheld the call.

To that point, the Royals could not touch Matz, a 24-year-old lefty pitching in only his ninth major-league game. Matz faced only one batter more than the minimum through four. He struck out five during that time. But his arm slot dropped and his energy lagged as the evening continued.

Kansas City halved the deficit in the fifth. They benefited from a mistake in center by Yoenis Cespedes. He took an inexact route for a liner from Perez, which he kicked into a double. Alex Gordon roped a single into right to score the run.

With two outs and Gordon at first, Yost decided to gamble. Near the on-deck circle, Young dropped his bat and pulled on a sweatshirt. His night was over. Kendrys Morales would pinch hit for him.

In a vacuum, the move worked. Morales roped a single up the middle. There were two men on for Escobar, who lined out to right. But now Young was out of the game, and the Royals had used their most dangerous pinch hitter.

With Young done, Duffy entered the fray. He flung two fastballs for strikes to Conforto. Then he abandoned the heater in favor of his breaking ball. On the third consecutive curveball, Conforto drilled the bender over the right-center fence. Rios scaled the wall but could not retrieve the ball.

The Royals continued to have success against Matz in the sixth. Zobrist tied a record with his eighth double this postseason. Cain rolled a single up the middle to score him.

In came Jon Niese, a southpaw who spent much of the year as a starter. He retired Hosmer and Moustakas. Hosmer stung a ball to center, but it veered right at Cespedes.

Next came burly right-hander Bartolo Colon to face Perez. During a 10-pitch duel, Colon threw only one definitive strike. Perez swung through a slider for the third out.

A Royal double whammy

NEW YORK — The top two in the Royals’ batting order continue pile up the playoff numbers and win postseason games.

Leadoff hitter Alcides Escobar and No. 2 hitter Ben Zobrist did what they do best in the batter’s box in the Royals’ 5-3 victory over the Mets in Game 4 of the World Series on Saturday.

That doesn’t always mean a base hit, although they both reached milestones.

Zobrist started the Royals’ game-winning really with a one-out walk against Mets’ relief pitcher Tyler Clippard.

The Royals trailed 3-2 at the time and were down to their final six outs. The Mets could feel the momentum continue to shift their way and tie the series.

But Zobrist’s sharp eye drew a five-pitch walk.

Lorenzo Cain then fell behind 0-2 and worked his way back for a walk. Eric Hosmer followed with a slow bounder that dribbled under the glove of second baseman Daniel Murphy and into short right field.

Zobrist scored and the Royals’ three-run rally had started without the benefit of a hit.

“It doesn’t matter how it starts,” Escobar said. “We find ways to score.”

And now the Royals are one game away from a World Series title. They tend to score their runs in bunches by, as they like to say, keeping the line moving.

It often starts with Escobar and Zobrist.

Escobar led off the game with a sharp single up the middle. It wasn’t on the first pitch, as it often has been during the playoffs. That was a swing and a miss.

But with two strikes, Escobar lashed a single to center and extended his postseason hitting streak to 14.

That’s a Royals record. Escobar had been tied with Cain, whose 13-game streak extended over two seasons and ended in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series against the Blue Jays.

Escobar went hitless in the Royals’ first playoff game this year, against the Astros in the division series. He’s had at least one hit in every game since, and entered the game as the Royals top hitter in the playoffs with a .356 batting average.

The 14-game streak ties for the longest in a single postseason, matching Manny Ramirez of the Red Sox in 2004 and Marquis Grissom of the Braves in 1995.

The single also gave Escobar 22 postseason hits, which ties the Yankees’ Derek Jeter as the most in a postseason by a shortstop. Jeter reached 22 in 1996, 2003 and 2009.

Zobrist keeps seeing double. His sixth-inning two-base hit was eighth of the playoffs, and that also matches a postseason record.

David Freese and Albert Pujols each had eight doubles during the Cardinals’ run to the 2011 World Series title.

Zobrist’s double was his fourth of the World Series, and it led to the Royals’ second run. Lorenzo Cain followed with a single up the middle to cut the Mets’ lead to 3-2.

But it was Zobrist’s patience that got the game-winning rally started. Keeping the line moving has to start with someone. Saturday, it was Zobrist.

This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 5:00 AM.