“The heart, the desire, and their competitiveness and their character showed through every single game”, Kansas City manager Ned Yost said about his players.
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Perez hit safely in all five games of the World Series against the New York Mets, batting.
It took 12 innings to decide a victor, but speed once again proved to a killer for the Royals’ opponents. After Ben Zobrist was intentionally walked, Lorenzo Cain hit a three-run double off Bartolo Colon. The Royals carried the memory of Game 7 into 2015, into another game where they had a chance to win Kansas City’s first World Series since 1985.
This video includes images from Getty Images.
“I played this at-bat over and over in my mind”, Colon said.
They worked all season to take one more step in the World Series.
Down 2-0 in the ninth, Kansas City fought back against two of the top arms on the pitching-rich Mets: Matt Harvey and Jeurys Familia. In addition, Perez has caught 38 spring training innings over the past two years plus 36 innings during the major league All-Stars’ 2014 post-season tour of Japan.
“I’ll tell you one thing: They learned how to get through this”, Collins said of the pitchers.
“As much as it stings, a couple days from now, a couple weeks from now, you’ll be able to sit back, kind of take a deep breath and just think about how cool this was and how much fun we had and how proud we should be of what we were able to accomplish this year”, Wright said.
In the 12th, Christian Colon took the lead for Kansas City – and then the Royals ran to a crushing victory, 7-2.
But for these resilient Royals, no deficit is too large, no time in the game too late. “But the way the game was going and the way I felt, I felt like I wanted to control the game and go back out there for the ninth”.
Catcher Salvador Perez was named Most Valuable Player of the Series after batting. The winning run in Game 1 of the World Series came after an error by Wright, in Game 4 after an error by Murphy and in Game 5 after Duda’s inexcusably bad throw allowed Hosmer to tie the game. “I poured my heart out and gave everything I had”.
Harvey was pulled for Familia, and Hosmer advanced on Moustakas’ groundout to the right side.
So up stepped Perez with the potential tying run 90 feet away, same as past year when he fouled out against Giants ace Madison Bumgarner to end the World Series. He hit a slow roller to first baseman Lucas Duda, moving Hosmer to third.
Hosmer, however, bolted for the plate when Wright released the ball.
“I wasn’t surprised when I got the opportunity”.
“There’s no fear in anybody on this team”, he added.
Hosmer was greeted by excited teammates, while Familia was saddled with his third blown save of the Series, though two were the result of shaky defense.
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Cespedes popped out and limped off the field and the Mets would only manage to score one run in the inning. 290 in 43 games while spending a lot of time stuck behind Kansas City’s talented infielders.
