The Royals pull off historic postseason comeback, just like the last one

When Carlos Correa hit a two-run homer Monday to give the Houston Astros a 5-2 lead in the seventh inning, it seemed like the young Astros had realized their postseason potential. When Colby Rasmus followed with a solo homer right after, it felt like a dagger.

Well, maybe against another team. The Kansas City Royals, you'll remember, had come back in glorious fashion in the postseason before. And on this day, trailing 2-1 in the ALDS, they'd come back again. Mike Moustakas rallied the Royals in the dugout, gave them a pep talk with plenty of profanities, then they went out and gut-punched the Astros.

[Look: Texas governor's premature tweet jinxed the Astros]

A lead-off single in the eighth inning turned into five straight hits. One run by the Royals turned into another and eventually turned into five in the inning. A ball that looked like a double play off the bat of Kendrys Morales took a bad hop off Correa's glove and two runs scored. That tied it. Alex Gordon grounded to second. Jose Altuve made a great play to curtail the Royals' rally, but the go-ahead run scored.

By the time Eric Hosmer came up in the ninth inning and hit a two-run homer to cement the Royals' comeback, the tide change was clear. The Royals — the resilient clutch-hitting surprises of last year's postseason — had awoken.

If any Oakland Athletics players felt a great disturbance in The Postseason Force, it's because this was really close to what the Royals did to the A's in the AL wild-card game a year ago. Those Royals were down 7-3 in the eighth, then they scored three and added another in the ninth. They won it in the 12th.

[Look: President George H. W. Bush throws first pitch at ALDS Game 3 from wheelchair]

Here's where history comes into this. According to Elias Sports Bureau, only two postseason teams in history came back to win an elimination game after being down by four runs in the eighth inning. Those teams? The 2014 Royals and the 2015 Royals. They're in a class with themselves.

The Royals know that well. Last year's team bottled up that momentum and went on a run to the World Series. And these Royals? Well, it's too early to tell about the World Series, but they'd been outplayed in this series until Monday's eighth inning. They were six outs away from becoming a 95-win, first-round disappointment.

Now they're alive. They've been on the brink. And they've lived to play another day. If the underdog Royals are back, playing with that 2014 gusto, this might not have just changed the course of this series. It might have changed the course of this postseason.

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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz