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It’s becoming the abnormal norm: How the Royals celebrate a typical victory

SAN FRANCISCO – The Winning Light is a sad little thing, a shadeless 60-watt bulb attached to the simple sort of lamp base familiar to anyone who took eighth-grade shop. It accompanies the Kansas City Royals on every road trip and glows only after victories. The light is the Royals’ beacon. When illuminated, it calls for chaos.

In the case of Friday night, that meant two cans of Silly String emptied straight to the grill of Jeremy Guthrie, one for each side of the duality that defines these Royals. For all of the composure and maturity that belies age, experience and the other factors that are supposed to matter this time of year, they’re mostly just a bunch of kids who want to blast each other in the face with 1,000 feet of aerosolized fluorocarbon.

Ned Yost, talking to Jeremy Guthrie on Friday night, has pushed all the right buttons this postseason. (AP) 
Ned Yost, talking to Jeremy Guthrie on Friday night, has pushed all the right buttons this postseason. (AP) 

Considering how the Royals party after every victory, it’s frightening to think what they’ll do with two more wins. Their latest, a cardiologist’s dream of a 3-2 triumph over the San Francisco Giants in Game 3 of the World Series, gave Kansas City a 2-1 series advantage. Every morsel of it personified the Royals’ unlikely run. Dynamic pitching. Pristine glovework. Enough hitting. And the curious tactics of manager Ned Yost, that October Midas, working exactly as he intended.

All of it spilled into the cramped visitors clubhouse at AT&T Park, a space seemingly too small for the Royals’ antics. They made it work, a familiar concept to a team that turned an 89-win regular season into 10 victories in 11 postseason games, the latest worth celebrating because it ensured the Royals would return to Kansas City – either for a Game 6 or, with two more wins here, as world champions.

“Nobody better touch that lamp,” Royals center fielder Jarrod Dyson said. “That lamp’s been with us all year.”

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It is the Royals’ amulet, and the Silly String was a side dish served by Dyson and pitcher Danny Duffy. “The class clowns,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said, and he’s not wrong: They are two of the more boisterous Royals, eager to celebrate because every victory brings the team closer to its first championship since 1985. Hosmer wasn’t born then. Neither was Duffy. Nor 11 other Royals on the active roster, meaning more than half the team didn’t even exist during the Royals’ last World Series appearance.

Making up for three decades of absence over one month necessitates the sort of game Kansas City played Friday, one that replaced 3 hours, 15 minutes of agita with euphoria and gut-punched most of the 43,020 here hoping the Giants could capitalize on the home-field advantage they stole with a Game 1 victory. Away it washed amid a flood of triple-digit fastballs and outs from a 21-year-old who spent his summer pitching in the College World Series and dominance from two other relievers.

The Royals’ bullpen won them a playoff game again, and it featured Yost’s emblematic decision-making. Perhaps he should have taken Guthrie out following five shutout innings, particularly with his spot up in the lineup. Yost didn’t, and Guthrie promptly surrendered two hits and a run, cutting the Royals’ lead to 3-1. While reliever Kelvin Herrera allowed his inherited runner to score, he worked out of a jam to sustain Kansas City’s lead.

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Then Ned did Ned. Dyson faced a two-out, bases-empty situation in the top of the seventh inning. With his team clinging to a one-run lead, the manager of the Kansas City Royals said he wanted his batter to fail.

Royals reliever Brandon Finnegan made history in Game 3. (AP)
Royals reliever Brandon Finnegan made history in Game 3. (AP)

“I was hoping Dice would make an out there,” Yost said, “but he steps up and foils my plan and gets a hit.”

Dyson’s single brought to the plate Herrera. With Billy Butler, Josh Willingham and Nori Aoki on the bench, Yost chose to trade Herrera’s at-bat for his arm in the bottom of the inning. He struck out after three swings that could be best described as frightened and returned to do what he does best: throw triple-digit gas.

Only he walked the first hitter he faced, and with left-handed hitter Brandon Belt headed to the plate, it seemed the perfect time to summon rookie lefty Brandon Finnegan. Not in Yost’s mind. If this October has taught us anything, it is a rather simple tenet: This is Ned Yost’s world, and we’re all witnesses to his puppetry. Better to marvel at it than question it.

Because Herrera, of course, struck out Belt, and then Finnegan, the kid who sipped his first legal drink back in April, retired pinch hitter Juan Perez on a flyball and struck out Brandon Crawford with 95-mph gas. Wade Davis did what Wade Davis does in the eighth. (Dominate.) Greg Holland did what Greg Holland does in the ninth. (Dominate.) And the rest of the Royals did what they do. (Enough.)

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Alcides Escobar kicked off the scoring, parlaying a leadoff double into a run after a pair of groundouts, and he scored Kansas City’s second run in the sixth inning after new No. 2 hitter Alex Gordon doubled him home. Gordon scored on a single after a brilliant 11-pitch at-bat by Eric Hosmer, staking Kansas City a 3-0 lead it protected with its gloves. Whether it was two sliding Lorenzo Cain catches in right field, an on the run, across-the-body throw from Omar Infante, or Salvador Perez gunning down a stolen-base attempt and fielding a bunt perfectly, the Royals’ defense played to their impossible standard.

“It’s starting to get old,” Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas said, “but it’s a whole team effort.”

It is a cliché, though this team is something of a cliché, a doesn’t-know-any-better bunch that parlays an October surge into something incredible. The Royals have stared down the Giants, twice champions in the previous four seasons, and punched back at the body blow Madison Bumgarner threw in Game 1. At the center of it all – always at the center, really – stands Yost, the Royals’ maligned manager who in the most tense moments of the game turns the inexplicable into magic. Whether it’s kismet or luck matters none. He is the Royals’ manager, and the Royals moved one step closer to their first championship since 1985.

“I’m not questioning anything,” Hosmer said. “As long as we keep winning, it doesn’t matter.”

Against Bumgarner’s slight protestations, Giants manager Bruce Bochy will go with scheduled starter Ryan Vogelsong in Game 4 on Saturday at 8:07 p.m. ET, keeping the Giants’ ace on regular rest and giving Kansas City another chance to do its thing, which really isn’t all that complicated.

Pitcher Jeremy Guthrie was the Royals' player of the game Friday night. (AP Photo)
Pitcher Jeremy Guthrie was the Royals' player of the game Friday night. (AP Photo)

“When you have great defense and you have lock-down bullpen pitching,” Guthrie said, “you have a tendency to be in those types of games, and that’s what we’ve had throughout the season.”

Only toward the end did it crystallize, what the Royals could do given a short series and a more aggressive version of Yost. They started winning more, feeling invincible, craving those postgame celebrations. At home, the player of the game lights up a neon sign of a deer with a Texas heart shot bull’s-eye. A smoke machine goes off and music plays and revelry wins.

On the road, it’s not quite as loud, a little more subdued, still ever meaningful. Guthrie took the player-of-the-game honors for his five-inning effort that handed a lead to the bullpen, which these days might as well mean handed the Royals a victory. He turned on the light and got lit up himself by Dyson and Duffy, and Guthrie washed the Silly String off his face so he could bask in the glow of a lonely bulb that needs to flicker just twice more. Not for chaos. For history.