Kansas City Royals sweep Baltimore Orioles to reach World Series
Unbeaten in their first Major League Baseball play-off appearance since 1985, the Kansas City Royals advanced to the World Series by defeating the Baltimore Orioles 2-1 on Wednesday.
The Royals, who won their only World Series title 29 years ago, became the first Major League Baseball team to win their first eight play-off games in a season by finishing off a four-game sweep of the Orioles in the best-of-seven American League finals.
“It has been awesome,” Royals slugger Eric Hosmer said. “But we’re not done yet.”
It has been an amazing run. We’re playing pretty good baseball
Kansas City will play host to the National League winners, either the St Louis Cardinals or San Francisco Giants, in game one of the best-of-seven championship final on Tuesday.
“We’re going to try to make this season even more special,” said Royals outfielder Alex Gordon. “It has been an amazing run. We’re playing pretty good baseball.”
Should the Royals win their World Series opener, they would equal the all-time longest major league play-off multi-year win streak – 12 games set by the New York Yankees between 1927-1932 and matched by them in 1998-1999 – even with a 29-year gap between wins three and four.
The Royals captured the 1985 World Series by winning the final three games to defeat Missouri state rivals St Louis in the maximum seven games.
Since then, Kansas City fans had suffered the longest drought of any major league team without a play-off game, but were rewarded for their patience this October when the Royals beat Oakland in the wild-card game, swept the Los Angeles Angels in the best-of-five division series and dispatched an Orioles squad seeking their first World Series berth since winning in 1983.