Royals Rout Sends 'Crazy' World Series Spinning into Game 7 Wednesday Night

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The crowd roared. The fountains danced. Mike Moustakas bowed.

Twenty-nine years since the Kansas City Royals have been in a World Series? Heck yes, let’s drag this baby out as long as we can.

Game 7, here we come.

Hey, Madison Bumgarner, if Tim Hudson needs a little help Wednesday night, how long can you go in relief?

"Maybe 200 pitches," the ace deadpanned after it seemed like his San Francisco Giants teammates threw at least triple that amount while taking a 10-0 Game 6 blistering. "I don’t know. As long as you’re getting outs."

Hey, Ned Yost, what about James Shields backing up Jeremy Guthrie?

"Everybody’s available," the Royals manager said.

Everybody? You bet. Jason Vargas was on call Tuesday night in Game 6 if Yordano Ventura didn’t last. Now, because Ventura chopped through opposing lumber like his hero, Pedro Martinez, in his prime, Vargas is on call for Wednesday.

So clear your evening. Stock up on chips (or, if you lean Hunter Pence’s way, kale). Settle in. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? The Giants and Royals are going to finish this the only way they should.

As usual, Yost was managing several steps ahead of the crowd. After the Royals got their "tails whipped" 11-4 in Game 4—Yost’s words—here is what the manager said: "Oh, man, somewhere inside of me secretly I had hoped that it would go seven games for the excitement and the thrill of it."

That cagey, cagey man.

Presently, you might say, the Royals are a little more excited and thrilled than the Giants. They were one loss away from extinction, then they turned Game 6 into a back-alley ambush of Jake Peavy, Yusmeiro Petit and Jean Machi (then, and I believe it is required by postseason rules, Hunter Strickland gave up his daily home run, which resulted in a Moustakas curtain call to deafening chants of "Mooooose!").

Now look. Going back to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982, home teams have won Game 7 of the World Series on the last nine consecutive occasions. Yep, the Cards, Royals, Mets, Twins, Twins, Marlins, Diamondbacks, Angels and Cards.

Last road team to win a Game 7? The 1979 We Are Fam-a-Lee Pittsburgh Pirates. All hail Willie Stargell and Sister Sledge.

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Giants manager Bruce Bochy, who had plenty of time to read up after the Royals dropped a seven-run second inning on his club, knows his history.

What will he tell his boys before Kauffman Stadium goes into a full-throated roar again Wednesday?

"My answer to that is to tell these guys that they’re going against the odds, because we’ve done that before," Bochy said. "You go back to ’12 and look at this postseason. I think a lot of people had us getting beat in the first and second round.

"This club’s so resilient. They’re so tough. They’ll put this behind them. It’s nice to know that you’ve done it. You’ve come back against the odds, and you can do it again."

The Royals’ clubhouse was like a nightclub afterward, stereo cranked, throbbing bass, cocktail waitresses serving appetizers. Wait, no. Sorry. There were no cocktail waitresses. That was Peavy with the appetizers. Mmm, mmm.

The Giants’ clubhouse was stone-cold silent, hushed voices, ice melting. Only sound was the page turning.

Crazy thing about any World Series, and particularly this one, is the way the momentum swings so wildly from game to game in a sport that, truthfully, depends on momentum less than any other. It’s like reading a great book, one chapter leading to the next, plot thickening. Then you can’t wait to reach that last chapter, and hello, Game 7.

"It’s been a crazy ride, it really has," Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer said. "Postseason baseball, you always hear people saying it’s a different animal. And it is. People are living and dying with each pitch.

"I know my family is exhausted after these games."

Growing up in Miami, Hosmer vividly recalls his trip to then-Pro Player Stadium in 1997 to watch his then-beloved Marlins edge the Indians 3-2 in an absolutely thrilling World Series Game 7.

"Craig Counsell crossing the plate and jumping up," he said of the winning run. "And Bobby Bonilla hitting a home run. I was only one or two sections from it."

Two days earlier, he had turned eight.

He’s 25 now, and in just a few hours, he’ll have a chance to do the same thing Counsell and Bonilla did.

"I’m a big LeBron James fan," he said. "One thing he always says is keep your mind off of things until you get to the field."

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So how will that be remotely possible Wednesday?

"I’ll be with my family," Hosmer said. "And hopefully my family won’t talk about the game.

"I’ll lock in with my iPad. Watch movies or something."

Good luck with that.

Maybe Hosmer really will be able to lock in on Robert Downey Jr., or Brad Pitt, or Emma Stone. Everybody else will be wondering whether Bochy will go with defense and start Juan Perez in left field instead of Travis Ishikawa (don’t be surprised), and how long it will be before the Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry music starts and Bumgarner begins warming up in earnest.

"Hopefully we’ve got a lead before we get to him," Hosmer said, grinning wide, except you know that’s no joke. "That’s all I can say."

The guy’s thrown 265 innings this season, already 63.2 more than last season.

"The best thing I can tell you is, we’ll watch him," Bochy said as interrogators lined up one after another hoping for a revelation as to how much of a Game 7 workload Bumgarner can carry. "We’ll see where he’s at and how he’s doing out there.

"I can’t tell you exactly how far he could go or how many pitches he could go. I think you read him and see how he’s doing out there."

Here’s where we pause for a special message to Twitter: All ye who went into overdrive as Game 6 evaporated on the Giants, back off. Hudson will start. Write it in permanent ink. Scrawl it into wet cement and let it dry. Bumgarner will not start. No way. No how. I repeat...

"This guy just pitched," Bochy said. "He’s going to be on two days’ rest. He just threw a complete game [117 pitches]. Our confidence is in Huddy.

"You know, this guy is human. I mean, you can’t push him that much. He’ll be available if we need him. But to start him, I think that’s asking a lot. I have a good pitcher going tomorrow who has done a great job for us. That’s the reason.

"So when they tweet you, just tell them that."

A roomful of reporters and a manager who had just taken a World Series knee to the groin all howled with laughter over that one. No, Tuesday didn’t go the way the Giants (or all those cases of champagne on ice) would have preferred. But understand this: The only thing melting into a puddle in the Giants’ clubhouse was the ice. Not the team.

"If you want to be a baseball player, this is what you think about," Bumgarner said of Game 7. "It couldn’t be a better story for Huddy. He’s prepared to compete, and I think it will be a really good game for him."

Across the hall in the other clubhouse, the conversations were similar.

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"I’m there for whatever Skip needs me for," declared Shields, on deck for free agency, millions of dollars and, maybe, an inning or two Wednesday night.

The way this World Series is going, there is no telling who will need what. Before the Royals whupped ‘em 10-0 Tuesday night, the Giants outscored them 15-0 over Games 4 and 5.

It was as the Royals were packing to return home after Game 5 that a certain manager peered into the future and saw all this.

"We win Tuesday, nobody’s got a net," Yost had said. "It’s going to be winner-take-all."

As he left the podium and threaded his way through the media crowd and toward the charter, I leaned over and told him what a great show this World Series has been. He grinned, punched me in the arm and said, "I can’t wait to get back home. It’s going to be great."