Kauffman Stadium was special for ALDS Game 3. KC Royals must rise to occasion now

No, it hadn’t quite been that generation gap of 10,600-ish days, like the last span between home postseason games for the Royals.

But the atmosphere on Wednesday night at Kauffman Stadium sure felt like an oasis from every single one of the 3,269 days it was this time around — a period that was often so bleak as to amplify why this moment was so stirring.

And why you could practically feel the collective pulse of the sellout crowd of 40,312 fans at The K for Game 3 of the American League Division Series against the New York Yankees.

“That’s the loudest I think I’ve ever heard,” ventured Royals second baseman Michael Massey.

Beyond the booming “Let’s Go, Royals” chants and bonkers responses to former Royals postseason star Eric Hosmer throwing out the ceremonial first pitch — and Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes stirring up the crowd on the video board — a constant ambient buzz animated the night for fans who spent long periods of the game on their feet … even when there was scant little to cheer.

It was a long time coming, too, for the players.

So much so that only Sal Perez had been here last time around, when he emerged as the World Series MVP in 2015 — while Bobby Witt Jr. was 15 years old.

But for all this night harkened back to, and the fresh anticipation that came with it, alas, one key ingredient was absent in a 3-2 loss that left the Royals trailing 2-1 and facing elimination in the best-of-five series when it resumes Thursday night.

Instead of scoring like the Royals of 2015 did at Kauffman Stadium, averaging five runs a game in winning their last seven postseason home games, the 2024 Royals reverted to the slump they were in the last time they played here.

Before embarking on a six-game road swing to end the regular season — a trip that morphed into a 16-day, four-city Odyssey after they clinched an AL Wild Card spot — the Royals had mustered just one run in their last 28 innings at home.

Now it’s just three in their last 37 innings at Kauffman Stadium.

The earlier funk and attached seven-game losing streak left them in a precarious spot down the stretch. But they crawled back out of it by sweeping Washington, sparked by a win that embodied their struggle to score: a 1-0 victory in 10 innings, furnished with the help of the ol’ ghost runner and an error.

But given that starting pitching has been the Royals’ foundation all season, they ultimately rode that into the postseason. Between sharp starting pitching and a revamped bullpen, they stifled the Orioles (1-0, 2-1) to become the first team in MLB history to rebound from a 100-plus-loss season (106) to win a playoff series.

But it was always going to take something more to beat the Yankees, who were the third-highest-scoring team in baseball this season.

In New York, as it happened, the Royals managed as many four-plus-run games (two) as they’d put up in their previous 13 while splitting with the Yankees.

Back home, though, they sputtered again.

Through four innings, they’d managed one hit, a Yuli Gurriel double off the left-field wall, to extend their home scoreless streak to 22 innings as they fell behind 2-0.

Then came the fifth, though, when it felt like they were on the cusp of one of those magical innings we’d be talking about years from now.

With two outs, Adam Frazier — making his first postseason start for the Royals — hit a slow roller to deep short for an infield hit. Kyle Isbel followed by doubling down the left-field line to drive Frazier home.

And then Michael Massey tripled to right-center past a diving Juan Soto to tie it … and it was hard to tell if the decibels were higher for his hit, Witt stepping to the plate or Mahomes trying to pump them up.

One way or another, though, it was semi-bedlam by then — as much because of what happened because of what it seemed to foreshadow.

And the place still might be rattling if Clay Holmes hadn’t worked around Witt with four straight balls after Witt’s daunting swing to foul off the first one. Or if Vinnie Pasquantino hadn’t flied out to Aaron Judge to end the inning.

Afterward, KC manager Matt Quatraro credited the Yankees’ bullpen for being “a difference-maker for them.”

But there’s always two sides to that equation, and the other part of it is this: While Massey largely at the top of the order is batting .368 this postseason, the most vital hitters on the team are struggling.

Witt is hitting .182 with two RBIs … though he managed his first hit against the Yankees on Wednesday; Pasquantino, who valiantly returned improbably early from a broken thumb, is hitting .105 with one RBI; Perez is hitting .250 with one RBI.

While it says something for Garrett Hampson that he’s made the most of his three at-bats with three hits for a team postseason-best three RBIs, that also says something about the state of the offense.

None of which is to say this can’t change in an instant … which, of course, is about all of the time they have left to do it.

The Royals’ pitching remains stellar. Any of the aforementioned big three could go on a tear. And, as the example of Hampson epitomizes, this team also has won because of a floating cast of role players coming through.

We’ve seen enough of this franchise over the last decade to understand this:

Just as you could never count out the 2014 and 2015 Royals, most memorably illustrated in the 2014 AL Wild-Card comeback against the As and Game 4 rally against Houston in the 2015 ALDS, this team has shown that same trait even when it seemed on the verge of collapse.

After they’d lost that seventh straight game, Quatraro summed up the Royals’ state of mind thusly:

“Believe, man, believe,” he said. “We didn’t come this far to pack it in, right?”

In fact, they packed up for the road and found their way back here — improbably enough under those circumstances, and unfathomably after winning 56 games last season.

Now, they are up against it again.

And the words of Perez from that last regular-season home game reverberate anew.

“You never know,” he said then, “what’s going to happen in baseball.”