Homer History: Alex Gordon ties Game 1 of the 2015 World Series

In our Homer History series, writers re-tell the stories of memorable home runs from their perspective. In this installment, Yahoo Sports college football and NASCAR writer Nick Bromberg re-lives Alex Gordon’s clutch game-tying World Series home run.

Ninety feet.

The phrase haunted Kansas Citians all throughout the 2014-15 offseason. If you mentioned the distance to anyone in the metro area no matter the context, you wouldn’t get a quizzical look. Everyone knew what it meant.

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Ninety feet is the distance that separated Royals left fielder Alex Gordon from the tying run in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. Gordon, as you know, hit a should-have-been single to the left-center gap with two outs. Gregor Blanco misplayed the ball and it rolled to the wall. Gordon made it to third, where he was held by third-base coach Mike Jirschele.

(Alex Gordon came through his a huge home run in Game 1 of the 2015 World Series) Ninety feet from possibly the greatest Game 7 moment in World Series history.

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The Royals trailed 4-3 in the bottom of the ninth in Game 1 of the 2015 World Series. The New York Mets had just inserted closer Jeurys Familia, he of the 96 MPH fastball and 93 MPH split-finger fastball. Gordon was due up second in the inning after catcher Sal Perez.

Perez grounded out.

Gordon took the first pitch, a 97 MPH fastball, for a ball.

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After Blanco misplayed Gordon’s hit, left fielder Juan Perez backed him up. But as Perez went to pick the ball up at the base of the wall, he booted it towards the left field foul pole as Gordon was rounding second base.

Perez didn’t boot it far, however. He scrambled to it and fired a strike to shortstop Brandon Crawford, who was in short left field. As Crawford caught the ball, Jirschele had the stop sign up for Gordon as he was rounding third.

Ninety feet from home.

Perez, who was up after Gordon, popped out to third to end the game.

If you got tired of hearing if that dress was blue and black or white and gold, the debate* if Gordon could have scored on the play would have made you sick. The play was analyzed and recreated so many times that it wouldn’t have been surprising to see a re-enactment with poodles and labradors presented as scientific proof on a 10 p.m. newscast.

(Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images) *I was positioned along the left-field line as I watched the play unfold. There is no debate. Gordon would not have scored without more miscues.

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The Royals run to the 2014 World Series was a surprise. Sure, expectations for the season were high after the franchise’s first season above .500 since 2003, when the team went 83-79. The team’s best player that 2003 season was Darrell May. He was a pitcher and it was his second season back in the big leagues after a five-year hiatus. The team’s best hitter that season was Carlos Beltran, the man who was the Astros’ postseason hero a year later after he was traded at the trade deadline.

[Homer History: Rob Schneider recalls the time Bob Brenly made up for an awful game with a blast]

I’m 30, born two months before the Royals had won the 1985 World Series. While I can take credit for existing when George Brett and Bret Saberhagen celebrated, I can’t exactly say I remember it.

But boy, do I remember a lot of losing. Entering the 2015 season, the Royals had a record of 2148-2532 in my lifetime that included 13 seasons of 90 losses or more.

So don’t blame Royals fans for wondering if the magical ride of the 2014 playoffs was an aberration rather than the start of a multi-year championship run. The team tried to capitalize on that 2003 season — fueled by Jose Lima — by signing free agents like Juan Gonzalez and Benito Santiago. The 2004 Royals finished with a record of 58-104.

As I left Game 7 hours after it was over, I stood on the empty lower level concourse looking out over the field. I stared directly down the third-base line and wondered if 90 feet was perpetually going to separate my team from a World Series title.

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Gordon fouled off Familia’s second pitch, another fastball, to run the count to 1-1.

Gordon was drafted by Kansas City with the No. 2 pick of the 2005 draft, a selection made possible by the team’s futility. He was originally a third baseman, the same position Royals legend George Brett played. The comparisons were inevitable. Gordon, like Brett, batted left-handed. He was regarded as a surefire All-Star and an early contributor.

His development wasn’t linear. He moved to left field in 2010, a year after he suffered a hip injury that limited him to 49 games in 2009. Gordon spent part of the 2010 season in the minors and had an OPS of .671 in 74 major league games.

Things clicked in 2011. Not only did Gordon start to hit (His OPS was .879), he became one of the best left fielders in baseball, winning the first of four straight Gold Gloves. He signed a 4-year, $37.5 million deal after the season. The Brett comparisons faded away, but it wasn’t hard to see how Gordon was the cornerstone of the franchise if the Royals were going to make a World Series push.

In 2015, Gordon was entering the last year of his contract. Was the lingering memory of Gordon’s Royal career going to be him stranded at third?

The 2015 Royals did what the 2004 Royals didn’t. They fulfilled and surpassed even the greatest of expectations in the regular season. Mike Moustakas had a career year. Lorenzo Cain too. Kendrys Morales had 65 extra-base hits and led the team in OPS, a year after being one of the worst hitters in baseball. The team’s defense continued to be stellar and the bullpen was again lights out.

The team traded for pending free agents Johnny Cueto and Ben Zobrist at the deadline. Cueto, well, didn’t pitch like the ace he was supposed to be. Zobrist added to the team’s deep lineup and was the reason Gordon was up in the bottom of the ninth. Zobrist was the No. 2 hitter while Gordon, upon his return from an adductor injury, batted eighth to spread out the lefties in the lineup.

[Elsewhere: Parents from Jackie Robinson West are suing Stephen A. Smith]

The 2014 season marked the first time the Royals had made the playoffs since 1985. Simply getting to the postseason was considered a success by many fans — I might have shed a few tears wishing I could have shared the playoff-clinching moment with my baseball-mad grandfather who was at the 1985 World Series. The miraculous comeback against the Oakland A’s in the Wild Card Game and successive seven straight wins to get to the World Series felt like a dream. With the Cueto and Zobrist trades depleting the Royals’ farm system, it was World Series or bust, a word undoubtedly creeping into the minds of many at Kauffman Stadium in the ninth inning of Game 1.

The team was trailing because of a rare defensive miscue by Eric Hosmer. He misplayed a backhand down the first-base line which allowed the go-ahead run to score in the top of the eighth. After sweeping the Los Angeles Angels and Baltimore Orioles in 2014, the Royals lost Game 1 to the Giants. A loss in Game 1 in 2015 meant, at best, the Royals were heading to New York with the series tied at a game apiece.

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Familia’s third pitch was another fastball. After two glimpses of it before, Gordon wasn’t fooled. He smashed the belt-high pitch on the outer half to center.

The sound of the contact caught fans’ attention; it felt like the entire stadium gasped. But given the vast expanse of Kauffman Stadium and the cool fall air, it took fans a moment to roar. Too many hard-hit balls have died at the warning track in front of the scoreboard.

This one didn’t. Perhaps impervious to the temperatures, or simply because it was crushed, Gordon’s hit kept on going. And going. It cleared the batter’s eye behind the wall. As Gordon rounded the bases, he might have been the only person in the stadium not in the press box or wearing Mets attire that didn’t crack a smile.

The official distance of the homer was 428 feet. 90 feet went from being a harrowing distance to one that’s never felt so insignificant.

The Royals won Game 1 5-4 in 14 innings.

Sure, you can’t win a seven-game series in the first game. But thanks to a stellar start by Cueto in Game 2 (a start one could argue was buoyed by the feel-good vibes from the game that ended the morning before), Kansas City headed to New York up 2-0.

As you know, the Series ended in five games thanks to Hosmer’s daring dash from third to home on a grounder to third to tie the game in the ninth. It wasn’t hard to see the symbolism in the Royals winning a World Series in part to an aggressive sprint to the plate. Hosmer seized the opportunity that Gordon didn’t have. The what ifs that Gordon’s homer diminished disappeared.

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I was one of 800,000 people — many of whom left their cars on the sides of roads leading into downtown Kansas City — who showed up for the victory parade two days later, not caring if they were 90 or 900 feet away from the parade route.

We’re living in a new reality now. One where the Royals not only regarded as one of the best franchises in baseball, but one where the team now has some spending power. The Royals splashed $70 million on Ian Kennedy and, perhaps most importantly, $72 million over four years for Gordon.

[Roundtable: Which baseball player broke your heart?]

It’s World Series or bust again for the next two years before much of the team is set to enter free agency. This new reality is hard to grasp. But so is experiencing your hometown team’s first World Series title as an adult closer to 40 than 20. After a lifetime of baseball fan futility, it’s imperative to savor the success.

COMING SATURDAY: Ryne Sandberg comes through twice against a great closer.

PREVIOUSLY IN HOMER HISTORY
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– When Jim Leyritz halted hopes of a Braves dynasty (by Jay Busbee)
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– Tony Fernandez’s extra-innings postseason blast (by Joey Gulino)
– Dave Kingman takes one out of Wrigley Field (by Andy Behrens)
– Joe Carter’s blast wins the 1993 World Series (by Greg Wyshynski)
– Todd Helton ignites a historic Rockies run (by Mark Townsend)
– David Eckstein once again does the improbable (by Max Thompson)
– Bob Brenly makes up for four errors with a blast (by Rob Schneider)