James Shields and company fulfill promise of his arrival in Kansas City

As he considered the infinite potential scenarios the last few weeks, Royals manager Ned Yost had come to lean on a catch-all catch-phrase:

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

That surely never was more true than Tuesday at Kauffman Stadium, where the Royals prevailed over Oakland 9-8 in 12 innings in the American League Wild Card Game to advance to the AL Division Series against the Angels starting Thursday in Anaheim.

It was a bewildering game that crammed in all the anticipation and angst and mystery and, ultimately, sense of revival that was 29 years in the making since they last had known a postseason.

“Epic, absolutely epic,” pitcher James Shields said. “You don’t write a story that goes this way. It’s truly special.”

It ended with Salvador Perez knocking in Christian Colon with the winning run, six innings after the Royals surely were doomed by a five-run Oakland sixth that made it 7-3.

But that was just the final giddy flourish in a night of dizzying ups and downs, starting with Oakland’s Brandon Moss smashing a two-run homer in the first inning off Shields to puncture the vibe.

The lapse compelled Shields to pull his jersey over his mouth and vent as he stalked off the mound at inning’s end, and it was easy to see this whole thing unraveling then against Oakland’s daunting Jon Lester.

In the bottom of the inning, the Royals scratched back out a hopeful quick run off Lester on Billy Butler’s RBI single … only for the imprint of the inning to be the spectacle of Butler straying from first in a misguided attempt by the Royals to concoct a run with Eric Hosmer on third.

The real signature of the game, though, and the Royals’ apparent undoing, seemed to come in the sixth.

Shields had been the no-brainer starter for the Royals in the single-elimination, high-wire act of a game that comes with a wild-card berth, the best possible antidote the team could have for Lester.

At considerable cost that some thought gouging, he was ushered to Kansas City to jump-start the Royals.

He was to be the bridge from the brewing promise of “Our Time,” the team’s unfulfilled 2012 theme, to … the future is now.

It was an ambitious notion.

But in every way imaginable, and then some, he provided that conduit on the mound. And he has been no less pivotal in the clubhouse.

So the trade with Tampa Bay that also brought the Royals Wade Davis essentially in exchange for Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi had long been vindicated and validated.

But it also was supposed to be a means to another end: As much as anything else, this night was the reason the Royals got Shields.

After he labored through the first inning, he gradually settled in before running into a little problem in the sixth: two men on via a walk and a broken-bat looping single.

But this was “Big Game James” Shields, after all, and he’d only thrown 88 pitches, the fewest he’d ever hurled in a start in his two seasons with the Royals.

He was only beginning to grit it out, and who else should be on the mound for the Royals in that situation in that time of the game?

Shields earned his nickname for a reason, Yost said before the game.

By virtue of that, he’d also earned the chance to keep scrapping through, especially with the Royals leading 3-2 and the less-than-ominous circumstances in which the A’s got two men on.

But Yost had an inexplicably hasty hook, yanking Shields for rookie starter Yordano Ventura … who was crushed for a three-run homer by Moss amid what became a five-run inning.

“I thought it was the right move: This is playoff baseball,” Shields said. “I had two runners on and we’re down by one. Ned made some bold moves. He’s the manager and we’ve got to respect it. I wasn’t mad at all.”

That frame doused the much-anticipated night ... before Royals rallies made for a mesmerizing finish.

If not for that improbable surge, the signature of the night might have been the vehement booing of Yost after he came out to get Ventura … and the apparent end of the Shields era, considering his looming free agency and the exorbitant price he’ll command.

But now Shields will pitch again in this transcendent season for the Royals that never would have happened without Shields and the controversial trade that brought him here.

This was a team ripening with talent but missing the central figure everyone could look to.

Even if Yost didn’t stay with him long enough on the night it mattered most, Shields’s example and exhortations of teammates could be seen in how they stayed poised and on-point with everything crashing down on them.

“We’ve got a lot of character and a lot of charisma in this clubhouse,” Shields said.

Go through that clubhouse, and you can scarcely find a man who doesn’t offer testimony to Shields’ influence on teaching him to be a winner.

That will be hard to replace, this friend and mentor, but after this most exhilarating of nights, the Royals can worry about that whenever this season actually ends.

And nobody knows when that’s going to happen.

This story was originally published October 1, 2014 at 1:27 AM with the headline "James Shields and company fulfill promise of his arrival in Kansas City."