Ninety feet away: The Royals' dream season dies on third base

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Ninety feet separated Alex Gordon from the loneliest place in the world and the most thrilling. Ninety feet was perhaps 10 strides, 3½ seconds worth of running at top speed for Gordon, one straight line that could untether the Kansas City Royals from the history superglued to them. Ninety feet was nothing. Ninety feet was everything.

In Game 7 of the 110th World Series, 90 feet conquered the Royals. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning Wednesday night, Gordon sliced a single into center field off the untouchable Madison Bumgarner, and the ball skipped past Gregor Blanco, a brutal error. After a slow kick out of the batter's box, Gordon ran. He ran like he'd never run before because never before had an opportunity like this presented itself and never again would it. He ran as left fielder Juan Perez bobbled the ball against the fence. He ran until he reached third base and saw his coach there, Mike Jirschele, throw up a stop sign. Ninety more feet to home plate and the game would have been tied.

Three minutes later, at 10:21 p.m., Gordon remained in the place he'd been held, marooned on this little island on the edge of the diamond at Kauffman Stadium, frozen by the fate this game and this season would render. A weak pop-up in foul ground along the third-base line. A squeeze of the glove by Pablo Sandoval. An end to this brilliant Royals season with a 3-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants, world champions for the third time in five seasons, as fantastic as they were dynastic.

[Photos: Best of Giants-Royals in World Series Game 7]

Three-quarters of the way to among the most memorable moments baseball could invent, Gordon stared at the final quarter longingly. He could not have it. The Royals could not have it. The Giants stole those final 90 feet, as they did the hearts of 40,535 at Kauffman Stadium who would not place 2014 in the same pantheon as the champions of 1985.

"Believe me, I wanted to send him," Jirschele said. "I couldn't do it. I didn't want to go the whole offseason with Alex getting thrown out halfway to home plate right there."

This was the proper call. For all the consternation afterward, the coulda-been second-guessing, the shoulda-gone dreaming, a halfway decent relay throw from always-decent relay-throwing shortstop Brandon Crawford would have nailed Gordon by at least 20 feet. And the World Series would have ended in the sort of ignominious fashion left to be dissected and lamented for generations to come, much as nearly three decades worth of Royals' baseball has found itself under a microscope endeavoring to pinpoint the disease that until this season permeated the franchise.

The image nonetheless will remain stark and fresh in the minds of a city energized and buoyed by this baseball team since October began: Gordon, the longest-tenured player for the Royals, stranded on third base as a dream season ended with what so many wished was a hallucination.

Ninety feet. Ninety damn feet.

"Close," Gordon said, "but came up a little short."

Up to the plate strolled Salvador Perez, the Royals' gifted young catcher who nearly a month to the day launched the sort of October that Kansas City hadn't seen in a generation with a wild-card-winning base hit down the third-base line. Earlier in the game, Perez wore a fastball from starting pitcher Tim Hudson on his left thigh that elicited a purple bruise, a welt and a small cut where the seams lashed him. Perez dug in against Bumgarner, the 25-year-old left-hander who three days earlier won Game 5 with a 117-pitch, four-hit shutout. Before Gordon, he retired 14 straight Royals. Blanco's two-base error was the break Kansas City needed. Those 90 feet would have constituted the miracle beating Bumgarner would take.

"I thought Salvy was going to get it done," Royals general manager Dayton Moore said. "I thought he was going to get it done."

Perez swung at strike one, a 92-mph fastball up near his shoulders. The next four pitches were 92-mph fastballs, too, each elevated well above the strike zone, two of which Perez took for balls, another of which he swung through, the last of which he fouled off. For his 68th and final pitch, Bumgarner went fastball again, high again, fully aware that Perez operates with a strike zone of amorphous quality. He popped this one to Sandoval, who fell to his knees and was swallowed by a swarm of teammates ready to rejoice in their even-year mastery.

"If Alex goes home, he's going to be out," Perez said. "So it's up to me. I didn't do it."

Gordon skulked off the field, left to consider whether busting it down the first-base line might have made a difference (probably not) or a near-trip going around second base could have done the same (probably not, either). Outside the Royals' bullpen, Juan Perez picked up the ball to send it back to Crawford, and Kansas City's relief pitchers wished they could reach through the fence and abet the situation somehow, do something to take the burden off Gordon and ease those final 90 feet.

[Photos: Royals react to World Series Game 7 defeat]

All those days he lifted weights, abstained from fattening foods, sculpted his body into the ultimate specimen to play baseball, were for this moment, this situation. And nothing hurt more than the realization that what Gordon really needed was something natural, like the speed of teammates Jarrod Dyson or Lorenzo Cain or Terrance Gore, to take advantage of Blanco's flub.

"When it got by him, I got a smile on my face when I'm running the bases," Gordon said. "Hopefully, thinking of scoring. But he got to it quickly enough. And I don't have Dyson's speed, so I couldn't make it all the way to home."

Silence saturated the Royals' clubhouse minutes after the loss, the sort of quiet reserved in baseball only for teams that bow out in the playoffs. There's a special level of sadness reserved for teams that lose the World Series and another yet for those that drop Game 7. Champagne bottles bought a month ago in anticipation for this night remained corked. Eyes welled with tears. There were hugs good-bye. They would not be riding in a parade together.

Down the row of lockers from Gordon, three players sat in their swivel chairs, left hand on chin, sitting, thinking, wondering, mourning the end of a season they convinced themselves would be different. The pain of this loss was acute for Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer, three of the Royals' core players. Moustakas packed his bags for the winter. Cain was a statue of sadness. Hosmer nibbled his fingernails.

Only those offering consolation could break their trances. Moore hugged each and told them he loved them. Manager Ned Yost, whose usage of his bullpen in Game 7 was revelatory and superseded only by Bumgarner lowering his career World Series ERA to 0.25, thanked them for their breakout postseasons. George Brett, the Royals' lone Hall of Famer, the hero of the 1985 team, offered congratulations and bon mots that drew small, fleeting smiles.

There was nothing more to say, really, not as James Shields walked out of the clubhouse for the final time as the riches of free agency loom, not as Billy Butler spent his final moments in a Royals uniform, taking forever to change out of a T-shirt from his days as an American League All-Star that said I PLAY TO WIN. The Royals did just that. Losing deflated them.

"You work the entire offseason, the entire season to get to this point," Moustakas said. "And to come up short hurts. It hurts, man. It hurts. It's something you're never going to forget."

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As raw and real as defeat felt, as much as it gnawed at Moustakas and the rest of the Royals in this particular moment, his assessment is spot-on. Game 7 of the World Series is a gift. The Giants stole it from the Royals in their stadium, pilfered it after they answered a two-run Giants second inning with a two-spot of their own, filched it on a broken-bat single to right field by Michael Morse off Kelvin Herrera. No matter how good the Royals are going forward, repeating a World Series run takes a combination of talent, skill and luck, and the Giants make it look far easier than it actually is.

All the Royals can fall back on now is what they delivered their city. "Joy," Gordon said, and it was an accurate word. Kansas City fell in love with this team, as it ought've, because it was a team well worth falling for, a group that embraced the Royals' history and vowed to change it. This was a thought as naïve as it was noble, and to see them take it to the precipice reawakened those who long ago gave up on the Royals as hopeless. They were far from that, far from the laughable mish-mash of awfulness that passed for baseball here.

The 2014 Royals were right there, with two outs and two strikes in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series. The dream scenario manifested itself in ideal fashion. And then it died, cruelly, as dreams in baseball so often do. Ninety feet away, forever.