Leftridge: In Case You Missed It, a Brief World Series Recap

The World Series featuring the Kansas City Royals and the San Francisco Giants is now 2-1 in favor of the Kansas City squad, and in case you haven’t been paying attention, here is what has happened so far.

Game One: SF starter Madison Bumgarner was really, really good. Like, probably even better than good, if there’s even a word for that kind of thing. He’s quickly making a case to be called one of the most dominant postseason pitchers ever, actually. Royals ace James Shields was not very good, though. In fact, he’s the opposite of Bumgarner when it comes to the postseason. (Insert your own “Big Game” jokes here, despite the fact the nickname doesn’t really have anything to do with his acumen in big games.)

The Royals’ offense was meager, as the Royals’ offense is apt to be from time to time.

A man wore honest-to-god moose antlers in the crowd, surely drawing the ire of those around him and probably garnered him death threats from animal rights activists.

Also in ire news, a man wearing a bright orange Miami Marlins pullover sat in the best seat in the stadium. Turns out, he goes everywhere wearing this thing, and everyone gets pissed, but if he wants to pay $8,000 to look like a jackass on television, that’s his business. He was sitting next to famous Kansas City rapper Tech N9ne, whose name is super annoying to spell. I do not believe they knew one another before the game started.

The Royals lost and it rarely ever felt all that close.

Game Two: For someone who wants the Royals to win the whole goddamned thing, this game was much more enjoyable. Starter Yordano Ventura was shaky at times, but ultimately very impressive. He threw 100 mph, even. Jeremy Renner Jake Peavy started for the Giants and was actually pretty okay. Then the wheels fell off. The San Francisco bullpen imploded.

Against all odds and spitting in the face of everything we know to be true in this world, Omar Infante hit a two-run blast and then the hillbilly reliever who gave up the hit (Hunter Strickland) tried to start a fight with Salvador Perez, the most lovable man in baseball. Cool.

The Marlins Man was there again. (And likely will be throughout the series.) Tech N9ne was not. In his place was a large white man wearing a “Strange Music” t-shirt. PLOT TWIST: Strange Music is Mr. N9ne’s record label. I tweeted “did Tech N9ne give his tickets to a neighbor with the caveat that he wear a Strange Music shirt?” This was retweeted by a Strange Music marketing person (who was apparently searching that phrase on Twitter’s search function), which lead to a lot of replies from Juggalos (in addition to the Insane Clown Posse, I guess they’re fans of Tech 9’s, too) who said things like, “dis nigga don’t know Travis O’ Guin, smh,” and “lmfao thats the CEO of strange music smh.” I thought it was funny that they were so puzzled by my ignorance. Nobody knew who that guy was, right?

Anyway, the Royals kicked ass and came out victorious.

Game Three: Tim Hudson— who is 80-years-old– was good. But Old Man Hudson’s best wasn’t good enough against slightly-less-old-man Jeremy Guthrie. In fact, Guthrie was phenomenal. And then the bullpen. Kelvin Herrera was called upon for extra duty but eventually ended up yielding his position to Brandon Finnegan. By now you know that Finnegan was the first player to pitch in both a College World Series and a real world series and JESUS CHRIST HE’S ONLY 21 and WHAT POISE and MY LIFE IS A WASTE. Anyway, I love Brandon Finnegan.

It was a pitcher’s battle or whatever, but in the end, the royals were better at the pitching battle.

So now KC is up 2-1 in the series. They need 54 more outs to win their second World Series trophy ever. They’ll face the inhospitable Bumgarner once more at least (I suppose he’d come out of the bullpen if the series stretches to six or seven games) but all in all, it’s manageable.

The Royals could be world champs by the end of the weekend or at the latest, before the end of next week.

It still feels weird typing it. I wonder if that feeling will ever go away?