Epic World Series opener on historic date – The Boston Globe

Let’s take the opening game of the 2015 World Series on Tuesday night, for example. The 5-4 Royals win in 14 innings — tied for the longest game in Series history — was heartfelt and historic. One for the ages. It featured the sorrowful scene of a pitcher (KC’s Edinson Volquez) starting the game just hours after the death of his father. It featured the first Series inside-the-park homer (KC’s Alcides Escobar) since the immortal Mule Haas turned the trick against the Cubs in 1929. It featured the first Series game delay (fourth inning) owed to a television power outage. It featured the first series late-inning go-ahead run due to a first baseman’s error (Eric Hosmer) since Bill Buckner’s gaffe-for-the-ages in 1986. It featured a game-saving, bottom-of-the-ninth homer by KC’s Alex Gordon off Met closer Jeurys Familia — a Kirk Gibson-esque moment for sure. It featured an 11th-inning Dwight Evans-like running catch by Met right fielder Curtis Granderson.

All this on October 27, a historic date for the Mets, the Royals, and yes, the Red Sox.

The Royals are sitting on a World Series drought of 29 years. The last time Kansas City sat atop the baseball world was Oct. 27, 1985, when Brett Saberhagen beat John Tudor in the seventh game of the World Series.

The Mets also like Oct. 27. That’s the day that they recovered from a 3-0 deficit (two days after the Buckner game) and beat the Red Sox, 8-5, in the seventh game of the 1986 World Series. The Mets have not won the World Series in 30 years.

All good Red Sox fans celebrate Oct. 27 because it was 11 years ago on that date that the Sox broke an 86 year curse under a blood red moon in St. Louis. Oct. 27 is an unofficial Hub Hardball Holiday.

We all know that before the Sox finally won, the team and its fans were stuck in the franchise’s past. The Babe, Teddy Ballgame, and Yaz were always bigger than the young men wearing the Boston uniforms in any given season. This is where the Royals and Mets find themselves as they begin a series that assures one of them is finally going to win for the first time since the golden 1980s.

The Mets are still about Tom Seaver, Dwight Gooden, Keith Hernandez, and Gary Carter. The Royals are about George Brett, Bo Jackson, and Saberhagen. It’s going to take a championship in 2015 to awaken fans to a new generation of baseball gods.

Baseball always seems to be about the good old days. You know . . . those days before football was the undisputed king of the American sports world; the days before ESPN, Twitter, DraftKings, and FanDuel; days when the morning newspaper was one of the four major food groups; days when Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio were bigger than any athlete in any other sport. As warm and magical as this may be for Baby Boomers, it says something bad about a sport when the most celebrated members and moments can be found only on grainy footage overdubbed by Mel Allen on the old “This Week in Baseball’’ programs.

It might also be considered a bad omen for baseball when you wake up on the first day of the World Series and read that the World Health Organization has determined that hot dogs — the official food of baseball for 120 years — actually cause cancer. What ever happened to baseball standing for “all that was once good” in America?

Brett threw out the first pitch before Game 1 at Kauffman Stadium. There was no other choice in Kansas City. A full 35 years since he threatened to hit .400 (he finished at .390), Brett is still the most famous Kansas City Royal. By a lot. Fans still wear Brett No. 5 jerseys to games. He is vice president of baseball operations for the Royals, but as he told the Wall Street Journal, “I’m 62 frickin’ years old!’’

A terrific piece in Tuesday’s Journal was headlined, “The Royals and Mets Are Stuck in the ’80s,’’ and stated, “There may be no two franchises as perpetually awash in mid-1980s nostalgia as the Mets and Kansas City Royals . . . ”

It’s true. David Wright is never going to be as famous as Keith Hernandez. Eric Hosmer will never be a Kansas City god on a par with Brett.

The Royals were not invented until 1969. They made their bones in the late 1970s when they lost to the Thurman Munson-Yankees in the ALCS in 1976, ’77, and ’78. Brett finally broke the Yankee chokehold when he hit a series-clinching homer off Rich Gossage in 1980. The ’80 Royals were KC’s first World Series team, but lost the Series to the Phillies in six games. The landmark event of that World Series was Brett suffering a bout with hemorrhoids. Headline writers of America rejoiced. It was a Royal pain.

They finally broke through in 1985, beating the cross-state rival Cardinals in seven games, and Kansas City T-shirts of 2015 read, “Party Like it’s 1985.’’

The Mets were invented in 1962 (the 2015 World Series is the first “expansion” Fall Classic) and the three most famous Met seasons are 1962, 1969, and 1986. The ’62 Mets were the “Amazins,” managed by Casey Stengel and setting a record for futility by losing 120 games. The Miracle Mets of 1969 were more famous than the Moon Landing of the same summer and inspired dozens of books and at least one motion picture (see “Frequency” with Dennis Quaid). The ’86 Mets, loathed in Boston, are revered in New York on a par with the 1980 US Olympic hockey team back in New England. Picture Mookie Wilson as Mike Eruzione.

It rained in Kansas City throughout Tuesday, but there was great urgency to get Game 1 played on schedule. A postponement would have put Game 2 up againist Patriots vs. Dolphins on Thursday night football. Old-school MLB did not need that embarrassment. It’s the same reason you won’t see a World Series game scheduled on Monday night.

Football is king. Even in a town where a team called “Royals” is in the World Series. Even when Game 1 of the World Series goes down in history as one of the best Series games of all time.