Five months after Eric Hosmer’s iconic dash, Royals open season with World Series rematch

On a cool night last fall, in Game 5 of the World Series, the difference between an iconic comeback and a painful loss was measured in 90 feet. Sixty-five feet from home plate, Eric Hosmer believed he knew the answer: He was dead.

By now, the sequence is so familiar, like a memory playing on loop: Hosmer sprinting down the third-base line in New York. The Royals trailing by one run with two outs. Game 5 of the World Series coming down to one throw. As Hosmer peered down the line toward home plate, it all suddenly felt like a terrible idea. Salvador Perez had hit a broken-bat flare to third base. Mets third baseman David Wright had thrown the ball across the diamond. First baseman Lucas Duda was set to nail him at the plate. Hosmer was going to return to the visitors clubhouse at Citi Field, stand in front of his locker, and explain how he got thrown out at the plate to end a World Series game.

“The first couple steps,” Hosmer says now, “I didn’t really think it was a good idea.”

And then everything changed. Duda pulled his throw to the left, passed a lunging stab from catcher Travis d’Arnaud. Hosmer dived headfirst across an empty home plate. The 2015 World Series had its iconic moment, the shock and horror inside Citi Field, the joy inside the Royals’ dugout, the climax in the Royals’ series-clinching victory on a crisp night in New York.

“I just remember laying out for that dive and looking up,” Hosmer says. “It was just a wide-open plate. It almost seemed like instead of just putting my hands on it, I hugged it.”

In the five months after the World Series, the play has followed Hosmer like a shadow, from the late-night television circuit, to charity appearances this offseason, to the Royals clubhouse in Surprise, Ariz. The memories will be rekindled once more on Sunday night, as the Royals open their regular season against the New York Mets at Kauffman Stadium.

In the first season-opening World Series rematch in baseball history, the principal characters from Game 5 will reconvene just five months after that fateful night. The Royals’ Edinson Volquez and the Mets’ Matt Harvey will duel after facing off in the final game of 2015. Duda and Wright will be back at the corners in the Mets’ infield. Hosmer, 26, will take his place in the heart of the Royals’ lineup, positioned for a career season as he enters his prime.

The Royals will raise a World Series champions flag with the Mets looking on. Two days later, the club will pass out championship rings on Tuesday afternoon. Five months ago, the Royals were crowned champions away from their home ballpark. On Sunday night, they will return home to begin their first title defense in three decades.

“Just to be a part of history in baseball, to be the first team in history to start off the regular season with the previous World Series (opponents),” Hosmer said. “I think that’s pretty cool.”

As Hosmer braced for the opener, he reflected on the events of the past 12 months. The Royals won 95 games in 2015, winning their first division title since 1985. They set an all-time attendance record at Kauffman Stadium. They continued Kansas City’s baseball renaissance with a postseason performance for the ages. Their modus operandi was distilled into one play in the ninth inning of Game 5, a combination of scouting and preparation and reckless abandon.

“As soon as Wright turned to first,” Hosmer says, “I just said: ‘We’re gonna do it.’”

Royals manager Ned Yost says the play still sparks memories of a lesson he learned as a young coach in Atlanta. In the late 1990s, Yost had taken over as the Braves’ third-base coach after eight years as bullpen coach. The assignment came with a message from friend and fellow Braves coach Bobby Dews.

“Coach third base to win, not to cover your (expletive),” Yost remembers Dews saying.

When Yost took over as Royals manager in 2010, he sought to impart a similar message with a young core of players. As he watched the moment unfold in the ninth inning of Game 5, Yost said he already knew: Hosmer would take off for home.

“You play to win, not to cover your (expletive),” Yost says. “That’s why I’m so proud of these guys, because they play to win.”

For the last five months, Hosmer has re-lived the events of Game 5 on a daily basis. The last two weeks have been no exception. Earlier this week, The New York Times published a story documenting the anguish of the Mets fans sitting adjacent to home plate. A week earlier, ESPN published an oral history of the play, in which Duda suggested that Hosmer would have looked like a “moron” if he would have been out.

“I’d guess I’d thank him for not making me look like a moron,” Hosmer says.

In the final game of the World Series, Hosmer took off for home, forcing Duda to make a play. Five months later, the Royals and Mets meet again. And if Hosmer gets an opportunity to test Duda again? Yes, he’s going.

“No question,” Hosmer says, “It’s in the scouting report.”

This story was originally published April 2, 2016 at 5:50 PM.