His home run was the first tying shot in the ninth inning or later of a World Series game since Scott Brosius connected for the New York Yankees against Arizona in 2001. “You just do what the family asks you to do, and it was real special to them that Eddie goes out and pitches this game”. It’s a heroic-type effort to go out there and do what he did.
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His last blown save was the day the Mets’ season reached its nadir, in a space-time continuum that feels so far removed from the one that warped its way around Game 1 to create such a bonkers night that started with the first inside-the-park home run in the World Series since 1929 and ended with the first World Series walk-off sacrifice fly since 1991.
Buck, during the broadcast, explained why Volquez wasn’t immediately told of his father’s death and why Fox didn’t say anything about it until late in the game.
Without the ability to transmit the game, Fox switched to its Los Angeles studio where the host, Dan O’Toole, knew nothing more than that Fox had technical problems.
“The at-bat before with Salvy, I saw him quick-pitch”. “We know it couldn’t have happened at a worse time, and we’re working as quickly as we can to fix it”.
The US broadcast returned at the start of the bottom of the fifth inning, after Curtis Granderson put the Mets ahead 2-1 with a homer off Volquez with one out in the top half.
“Volquez is a fighter, ” said fellow Dominican Yordano Ventura, who is scheduled to start Game 3.
The Royals have gone through quite a bit of mourning in the last two months or so. On September 26, right-hander Chris Young lost his 70-year-old father, Charles, also after a battle with cancer.
“To find a way to grind that way out against a great team… and to win it in the 14th inning was big”.
Afterward, Young drew a direct parallel between Volquez’s situation and his.
“I certainly sympathize with the pain he’s going through tonight, ” Young said. “It’s hard. It’s really hard”.
“I said wow! I have a chance to make this”, Escobar said. What we were told by the terrific PR director for the Kansas City Royals Mike Swanson during the game, was that [Volquez] was unaware. Volquez allowed three runs on six hits while striking out three, throwing 53 strikes in 78 pitches.
Word of the death of Volquez’s father filtered through to the players at different stages.
“We’ve been through a lot of things”, said Wilmer Flores, who is the starting shortstop for the Mets now because of Chase Utley’s slide in the NL Division Series that broke Ruben Tejada’s leg in a game the Mets lost even though Major League Baseball basically admitted the Dodgers’ winning rally never should have happened – a much tougher loss to take than this one.
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In the days leading up to the World Series, the Mets faced a barrage of questions about how they planned to handle a pesky Royals lineup loaded with elite contact hitters. Talk about the courage and the guts to go out and do that, and the focus, it’s just tremendous.
