A Lesson In Dispelling Three Decades Of Futility.

All my life, I've listened to my mother, a Kansas City native, wax poetic about the days when the Royals were the talk of the baseball world. George Brett, Frank White, Willie Wilson, Bret Saberhagen, Dan Quisenberry...these were the men who made the Midwest feel like a palace. But 1985 was a long time ago. I wouldn't even be born until 5 years later. In that timespan, the Royals have played 29 seasons. They've had a winning record in 7 of them. And in between the moment when Andy Van Slyke flied out to Darryl Motley to end Game 7 of that year's Fall Classic against the crosstown rival Cardinals, and the moment when Mike Moustakas threw across the diamond to Eric Hosmer to get J.J. Hardy out at first to seal Game 4 of this year's ALCS encounter with the Orioles, there hasn't been any reason for me to believe that these Royals, these sneaky speedsters and streaky sluggers, would ever bear any resemblance to the men that made my mom love baseball.

But here we are. The Kansas City Royals will be playing in the 2014 World Series.

That's not a sentence I ever expected to think, type, or read.

This isn't entirely unexpected. I mean, it's certainly surprising. The KC boys are the first team to ever make the playoffs after coming in dead last in both home runs and walks. In fact, the Royals were the only team this season that didn't notch a triple-digit figure in homers. But that belies the fact that this team was actually pretty effective when it came to scoring: they ranked in the top 10 in the American League in runs, RBI and total bases, the top 5 in hits, doubles and triples, and their team batting average of .263 was second only to the Tigers. For all the talk about them lacking a true power hitter (Alex Gordon, whose defense has long been his calling card, led the team with 19 long balls), the Royals didn't seem to have much of a problem finding other ways to score. Eric Hosmer and Billy Butler hit a combined 18 homers, and Mike Moustakas (he of the 4 dingers through 8 postseason games so far) was demoted to Triple-A Omaha in late May due to a complete power outage. In spite of those hitters not muscling balls over the fence, the Royals' offense stayed afloat. Speed, of course, played a humongous part: they stole 153 bases, 31 more than the runner-up Astros. Jarrod Dyson and Alcides Escobar both ranked in the top 10 (in both leagues!) in swiped bags with 36 and 31 respectively. The story throughout October has been about the Athletics, Angels and Orioles all trying to stop the Royals' running game, and all of them failing to do so.

Of course, no story about this team would be complete without focusing on their bread and butter: the pitching. James Shields, acquired in a trade with Tampa Bay early in the 2012 offseason that I shouldn't have to remind anybody of, was their nominal and literal ace, while Jeremy Guthrie, offseason signing Jason Vargas, rookie Yordano Ventura, and reclamation project Danny Duffy kept the extremely dominant bullpen (more on them later) from getting too overworked. Even though they ranked 10th in the AL in innings pitched, they were 4th in starters' ERA, 5th in shutouts, 2nd in quality starts, and 7th in WHIP. In the playoffs, the first 4 have been good if not great, combining for a 3.17, the lowest of all AL teams this postseason. That's without a single appearance by Duffy, who enjoyed his longest, and best, season to date. There's no doubt that the Royals' starters are vital to their success. That bullpen, though...

The scariest part about this team was the idea that if they got through the 6th inning of any given contest with a lead, a victory was all but assured. That's thanks entirely to Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and closer Greg Holland. These relievers combined to make the 2014 Royals the first team to have 3 pitchers who all recorded an ERA under 1.50 with 60 or more innings pitched. They tied with the same Orioles they just eliminated for the most saves in the AL, with 53 saves notched. That's not insignificant: Herrera is a flamethrower who consistently crosses up the league's best hitters; Davis, a throw-in from the Shields trade, had one of the most dominant seasons for a reliever in history; and Holland continued his 9th inning prowess, extending his reputation as one of the best closers in the last 5 years. Through the ALDS/CS, these three allowed just two runs (Davis, ALDS Game 3/Holland, ALCS Game 1) while striking out 13. It's not a stretch to say that without any one of these three men, the Royals don't shut down the opposition with such ease.

And there would be considerably less mobbing on the mound.

We haven't even touched on some of the key players on this team. Terrance Gore is 3-3 in stolen base attempts without seeing a single pitch. Nori Aoki has been a godsend in right field, making some outrageous and potentially game-saving catches. Brandon Finnegan struggled in short relief, but was lights out in the ALDS and was drafted only 4 months ago. Sal Perez's framing and defense has made up for his lack of big hits after his walkoff in the Wild Card game. There really is no shortage of contributors to this magical run in Kansas City.

Will they win the World Series against an opponent to be determined (at the time of this writing, the Cardinals lead the Giants 4-2 in Game 4 of the NLCS, but the Giants currently hold a 2-games-to-1 lead in the series)? Maybe. They'll have home field advantage, just as they did in 1985. They're currently 8-0, the first team in history to ever reel off 8 straight wins in a single postseason. Most importantly, their style of play is very reminiscent of 100-odd years of National League baseball: they get crafty on the basepaths, they employ the sacrifice bunt quite liberally (please, Ned Yost, you don't need to open an inning by giving away an out), and they rely more on defense than offense, even though they can pull several runs out of nowhere, seemingly at will. They could very easily hit the wall against San Francisco or St. Louis, and as my mother has cautioned multiple times since they were down 7-3 in the 8th inning of the Wild Card game, nobody implodes as quickly or suddenly as this team (although, having spent my entire life in the South, I'd argue that the Braves do a nice job of that as well). But until we see some signs of slowing down, there's no reason to doubt these red-hot Royals. Baseball is alive in Kansas City once again, and it's a pretty damn impressive sight.