Royals

SportsBeat KC: Drama on the field (and in the press box!) as Royals crowned champions

Kansas City Royals’ Eric Hosmer helped the team to its second World Series title in 2015.
Kansas City Royals’ Eric Hosmer helped the team to its second World Series title in 2015. AP

The Royals had pushed through the Houston Astros in the division series and the Toronto Blue Jays in the ALCS to win the American League pennant.

It was on to the World Series for the second straight year. The Series tone was set in Game 1 against the New York Mets. Alex Gordon’s dramatic home run in the ninth sent the game to extra innings and the Royals won in the 14th. In five games, they’d captured the second World Series championship for the franchise.

Kansas City Star columnists Sam Mellinger and Vahe Gregorian and SportsBeat KC host Blair Kerkkhoff were part of the coverage team, as was then-Royals beat writer Andy McCullough. In his two years in Kansas City, McCullough, who now works for The Athletic, covered two World Series.

On this episode of our daily sports podcast, Andy joins his former colleagues in remembering the Royals of 2014 and 2015, with an emphasis on the 2015 World Series and a gutsy Game 5 embodied by Eric Hosmer’s clutch run home from third to tie it in the ninth.

Story links:

Reliving the crowing of the 2015 Royals. Here’s how they won it in World Series Game 5

In a postseason of epic Royals comebacks, none were more poignant than Edinson Volquez’s

That time the Royals changed Kansas City’s relationship with baseball forever

Andy McCullough: “It was time to win. Inside the Royals’ trade for James Shields and Wade Davis

This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 10:41 AM.

Blair Kerkhoff
The Kansas City Star
Blair Kerkhoff has covered sports for The Kansas City Star since 1989. He was elected to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023.
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