Royals win absurd World Series Game 1 in 14 innings

Death comes in threes, they say.

Death cares not whether you are poor or rich, anonymous or famous, commoner or royal.

The mother of Kansas City Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas died two months ago. The father of Royals pitcher Chris Young died last month. The father of Royals pitcher Edinson Volquez died Tuesday, in the hours before Game 1 of the World Series.

And then Volquez pitched. His loss will be forever.

“Another angel above,” Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer said.

Volquez left the game after six innings, then left the ballpark with his family — an evening of sadness, and beyond that an instant classic.

The game lasted 14 innings, tied for the longest in the 112-year history of the World Series history. It ended at 12:19 a.m., on a walk-off sacrifice fly by Hosmer, giving the Royals a 5-4 victory over the New York Mets and tagging Bartolo Colon with the loss in his third inning of relief, in the first World Series appearance of his 19-year career.

There was an inside-the-park home run, from Alcides Escobar, on the first pitch the home team saw. There might have been a homer by Jarrod Dyson, for a walk-off, had Curtis Granderson not coaxed a ball into the very top of his outstretched glove in the 11th inning.

There was a ground ball that bounced off third base, for a single, and a third strike that boomeranged off the backstop and right back to the catcher, who threw the batter out at first base.

There were the Mets taking the lead in the eighth inning, as Hos-
mer — the American League Gold Glove first baseman in each of the last two years — misplayed a sharp ground ball for an error.

There was Alex Gordon tying the score with one out in the bottom of the ninth, on a home run to center field. For Mets closer Jeurys Familia, the run was the first he had given up this postseason, the blown save his first since July 30, the home run the first he had given up on the road since July 19.

The last time a player hit a tying or go-ahead homer in the ninth inning of Game 1: Kirk Gibson, in 1988.

Volquez’s father passed away in the Dominican Republic, at 63. The Royals said Volquez was not told of the death before the game, at his wife’s request. Fox did not say anything about it on the broadcast while he pitched, for fear Volquez might wander into the clubhouse between innings and hear about it.

Hosmer said the players did not know that Volquez’s father had died until a brief team meeting after the game. Gordon said he found out in the 14th inning, from Manager Ned Yost.

Royals pitcher Jeremy Guthrie, who is not on the postseason roster, said he was aware of the death from Twitter. He said he did not believe his teammates in the dugout knew but said he was unsure whether Volquez knew.

Still, Guthrie said he could sense a difference in Volquez’s demeanor.

“I didn’t feel he had the same glow and countenance to him,” Guthrie said.

Yost said he and the coaches found out about the death before the game. The family wanted Volquez to pitch. The Royals told Chris Young to be ready in case Volquez somehow learned of his father’s passing.

“I didn’t want him to hear about it,” Yost said. “I was keeping my eye on him.”

Volquez worked six innings, tying his high this postseason, with the Kauffman Stadium crowd serenading him with “ED-DIE’ chants. He appeared subdued in the early innings, at least in the context of the October backdrop.

In the fifth inning, after giving up a go-ahead home run to Granderson, he left the field and slammed his right hand against his right leg, in apparent frustration. In the sixth inning, after Moustakas saved a run with a diving stop, Volquez pounded his glove, pointed to Moustakas, then waited for him so the two could tap gloves coming off the field.

And that was all for Volquez. Six innings, three runs, a quality start in the ordinary sense, on a day that was anything but ordinary.

After Volquez came out of the game, he huddled with his family inside the clubhouse.

“He definitely wasn’t in the mood for talking,” Guthrie said. “I did what I could do to console him.”

The Royals aren’t sure when Volquez will return to the team. He had done what he could for the team, had even sent text messages of thanks after the game, and time had come for him to grieve.

All in all, the game was far from ordinary.

The television feed was interrupted in the fourth inning by what Fox called “a rare electronics failure” of the primary and backup generators, not only causing the broadcast to disappear from the air but causing a delay of the game, until feeds for replays could be restored to both clubhouses. That delay resulted in such scenes as Mets Manager Terry Collins chatting up Moustakas on the field, and Mets starter Matt Harvey alternating between throwing warmup pitches, standing by himself near the mound, and chatting up a nearby umpire.

Daniel Murphy’s streak of consecutive postseason games with a home run was ended at six, but he got the Mets’ first hit, a leadoff single in the fourth inning, and his postseason average plummeted from .421 to .400 with a two-for-seven night.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

Twitter: @BillShaikin

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