Royals back in business after business-as-usual Game 2 victory

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The sixth inning of Game 2 of the World Series had a pretty familiar feel for the Royals and their fans at Kauffman Stadium.

As they have done with great regularity this month, the Royals cobbled together a game-changing string of hits and runs to pull ahead in a very important contest. This particular grouping of Kansas City goodness resulted in five runs, more than enough for the Royals’ dominant bullpen trio of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland to lock down a 7-2 victory against the Giants that sends the World Series to San Francisco tied at one win each.

It was quite an emphatic way to respond to the relatively ridiculous questions that were being asked after — gasp! — the Royals lost the opener of the World Series.

“I mean, I guess with the run we were on no one was expecting us to lose, but that happens,” Royals outfielder Lorenzo Cain told Sporting News after Wednesday’s victory. “I guess you can’t win them all. We lost yesterday, but we all came into the clubhouse after the game and we all said to each other, ‘Keep your heads up and we’ll bounce back.’ And we did that in a huge way tonight.”

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Turns out, the sky wasn’t falling after the Royals had their eight-game postseason winning streak snapped. Go figure.

And even when the sky starts falling, that doesn’t mean it’ll completely collapse. This group of Kansas City newbies — 21 of the 25 guys on the World Series roster had never played in a postseason game before — learned that lesson in the wild-card game.

Ask anyone in the Kansas City clubhouse, and they’ll tell you the same thing. Call it confidence or maturation or whatever you want. The Royals believe that coming back from a four-run deficit in the eighth inning of the wild-card game against the A’s matters, so it does matter. Their perception is their reality.

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“I feel like everybody goes through a growing point, or a point at which they feel confident in their abilities once they’ve gotten here,” left-hander Jason Vargas told SN during Monday’s media day. “And I think a lot of guys who were probably a little bit unsure of their place have really matured and seen that their abilities are more than enough to put the team on their back and help us to get where we want to go.”

So even though the Royals lost the World Series opener, they didn’t lose the talent that helped bring them to the World Series. They didn’t lose their belief, either.

Which is why, when they had an opportunity to even the series in that sixth inning, they capitalized. Maybe more important, guys who had struggled succeeded in a huge situation.

Billy Butler, who was batting .233 in the postseason heading into Wednesday’s game, came through with an RBI single that plated Cain to put Kansas City ahead 3-2. Two batters later Salvador Perez, who was at .135, delivered a two-run double. And then Omar Infante, who was at .188, smoked a two-run homer over the wall in left field.

“We showed them we have fight in us, and I think they knew that,” Butler said. “But we stepped up big there as a team.”

And everything about that Butler quote has a familiar feel to it.

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