KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The official celebration would come later, a third champagne blizzard in nine days after 29 long, dry, parched years — and then an even bigger, wetter gala in the rain, players and fans joining together in soggy communion to shoo three gloomy decades.
But for the 40,657 people inside Kauffman Stadium, of whom roughly 40,651 were cloaked in the blue-and-white vestments of the home team, the party began much earlier. This was the first inning. The bases were loaded, there were two outs, Alex Gordon was at the plate.
“It was already pretty loud in there,” Gordon would say, “and was about to get much, much louder.”
Gordon was the warning flare, the second-overall selection in the 2005 draft, Midwestern kid, Nebraska kid, old teammate of Joba Chamberlain’s. Across the vast baseball apocalypse, the Royals’ long road back to respectability, Gordon was the first cry of hope, even as he struggled early, even as the team kept scuffling.
Yes, perfect: Gordon at the plate, C.J. Wilson on the mound, the star-spangled Angels clutching hard to their first lead in this American League Division Series thanks to a Mike Trout moonshot, now looking awfully intimidated, even with that 1-0 lead.
Then Wilson threw an 83-mph curveball. And Gordon swung. And the moment wood met horsehide, the folks in the stands knew. They KNEW. This was October, the Royals’ first meaningful home game in baseball’s greatest month since Game 7 of the ’85 World Series. The last time they’d felt a moment like this Ronald Reagan reigned in the White House and Cliff Huxtable ruled the Nielsens.
“They’ve been waiting a long time,” Royals manager Ned Yost would say, “to let loose like that.”
By the time the ball landed, up against the fence in left-center, you could hear these voices leap out of the stadium, scrape against the sky, speed along I-70 all the way to St. Louis to the east and Denver to the west and beyond. By the time Billy Butler, chugged his way home, that 1-0 Angels lead was 3-1, Royals.
And the noise … well, it was beyond sound.
“It was,” pitcher James Shields said, “incredible.”
It was visceral. It made the 41-year-old ballpark shake and it made the grandstands wobble, you could feel it in your chest and you could hear it on the basepaths, Gordon clutching his helmet with both hands, his teeth rattling and his legs shaking. It was that loud. And stayed that loud.
The final was 8-3 but those were mere integers for history books. It was over then. There will be four days to worry about the Baltimore Orioles; this was going to be a hell of a party in Westport, and at the Plaza, and in all the sectors and segments of the city where people had hoped against all logic and reason for a night just like this one.
When the rain came, nobody cared, they barely noticed: they merely slipped into their blue slickers or their white ponchos, and they screamed themselves hoarse over the storm.
“You could tell how much this mattered to them,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia said.
And you were reminded how sports can affect hungry cities, towns tied together through the power of their teams. Sociologists can tell us how silly that is, economists can argue how alternative means grow civic pride.
Yet you see Camden Yards embracing the Orioles this week, a fierce energy that twice carried the day for a starving baseball town. You see the other side of the Beltway, the other side of the ball, Washington, D.C. — forever a baseball doormat, all the way back to Walter Johnson — devolve into a mess of second guessing and sleepless nights.
And you see Kauffman Stadium. On Sunday, with the chance to clinch an honest-to-goodness series, The K was a tinderbox of tension and delight an hour before the first pitch and it only got crazier. A good crazy. The kind of crazy a hearty appetite demands.
If you are a Yankees fan, it allows you to recall Yankee Stadium that first return to October in 1995, and the title that fell out of the sky a year later. If you are a Mets fan, it afforded a trip to a gaggle of cherished memory at old Shea — pick one, any one.
Sometimes, it takes a little innocence — if not a long famine — to remember precisely what October is supposed to sound like, and feel like. The rain kept falling. The players took a victory lap. All that was missing was Wade Boggs’ horse.
