And it was there the chaos truly started to unfold. Familia’s 96-mph sinker turned Salvador Perez’s bat into kindling. The ball came off his bat at 43 mph, the single slowest ball in play in the series. It bounced in front of third baseman David Wright, who corralled it. He looked at Hosmer to keep him at third before throwing to get the out at first. As Wright pivoted to make his throw, Hosmer started to run.
It conjured memories of 2014, of the seventh game in the World Series against the San Francisco Giants, when with two outs in the ninth inning Alex Gordon stopped at third base on a misplay. Even a halfway decent relay home would have nabbed him by 20 feet. It was the right play. That didn’t lessen the pain when Perez popped out.
Deep down, Hosmer remembered this. And he knew that despite the Royals touching up Familia twice, banking on Gordon, standing in the on-deck circle, for a two-out, game-tying hit, was folly. And he’d heard, before the series began, that Wright’s arm is weaker than it used to be and that first baseman Lucas Duda was susceptible to aggressive baserunning. As Yost said: “Make them beat us.”
Really, though, this was Hosmer’s instinct. He grew up in a Royals organization that preached aggressiveness. Kansas City talked about pinch running for Hosmer with the speedier Jarrod Dyson but trusted Hosmer to make the right decision. As he left, Hosmer feared he hadn’t.
“When I first decided to go home, I thought it was a big mistake,” Hosmer said. “But I couldn’t turn back at that point. You’ve got to just figure out a way to get there.”
Gordon saw the play unfolding and thought to himself: “Crap.” A great throw from Duda nails Hosmer, ends the game and sends the series back to Kansas City. A good throw is a bang-bang play, a 50/50 proposition. The throw from Duda was neither. It sailed out of catcher Travis d’Arnaud’s reach and to the backstop, and the headfirst-sliding Hosmer tied the game. He popped off the ground, his uniform dirtied just as his coaches like it, and emitted a giant, “Wooooo!”, audible even amid the boos of a deflated, disconsolate Citi Field.
“That’s just the way we’ve been doing it all year,” Hosmer said. “We’ve been taking chances.”