With the baseball season all said and done, the Royals have earned their crown becoming the champions of the world for the 2nd time in their 46 year history. Nicknamed “The Comeback Kids” for their late game heroics and the ability to overcome any lead no matter how insurmountable it seemed.  While always holding a commanding series lead from the start, the Royals were thrust into some sticky situations by the great play of the runner-up New York Mets, and the red hot hitting of their playoff superstar infielder Daniel Murphy. This was an exciting season in baseball, with the fall of the previous World Series Champions the San Francisco Giants, who couldn’t reach the playoff picture and the rise of forever underdogs the Chicago Cubs who ended their season at the National Championship Series, that culminated with a World Series win for the Kansas City Royals.

This exciting postseason began with an bang, beginning with the two wild card games between the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros for the American League, and the Chicago Cubs and the Pittsburgh Pirates for the National League. For the AL, we went down to the Bronx to watch Masahiro Tanaka of NY face against Dallas Keuchel of the Astros for the chance to play the Kansas City Royals in the Divisional Series.In his first playoff appearance in the MLB the $155 million dollar man Tanaka seemed to struggle against the aggressive Astros offense, giving up 2 runs in 5 innings only getting a total of 3 strikeouts. The Astros advance to the ALDS defeating the Yankees 3-0. For the NL Wild Card we went to PNC Park in Pittsburgh to watch Jake Arrieta of Chicago pitch against Gerrit Cole of the Pirates. The Cubs ace Arrieta had an amazing performance against the hometown Pirates, pitching a complete game striking out 11 batters only allowing a total of 4 hits. With a red-hot game by Arrieta the Cubs walk away victorious to then face the number one seeded St.Louis Cardinals in the NLDS.

The MLB Divisional Series was a long and heart-racing event that kept fans on the edge of their seats with the teams playing 19 out of a possible 20 games, each of the four series (except one) going to elimination game 5. The underdog Chicago Cubs got an early start on the top ranked St. Louis Cardinals and were able to eliminate them in 4 games to play the winner of the Mets vs. Dodgers series. The other NLCS is in my opinion the most exciting of all the playoffs: The Los Angeles Dodgers vs. the New York Mets. This was a back and forth series led by a hot home-run streak by (now) star infielder Daniel Murphy coming right down to the wire which capped off with a heartbreaking 1-0 loss for the Dodgers at home. To the American League we go with the ALCS with another fantastic series, the Toronto Blue Jays vs the Texas Rangers. Making an inspiring comeback while starting the series off down 2 games to none, the Blue Jays where able to overcome a number of feats with their star outfielder Jose Bautista at the helm. Making many late game heroics including a game winning walk-off homerun in Toronto, the Blue Jays were able to conquer the furious Rangers. The other ALCS series between the Kansas City Royals and the Houston Astros was also an exciting one coming down to an elimination game, but the Royals were able to prevail giving their fans a show at Kauffman Stadium.

The MLB Championship Series, although holding more weight, was unfortunately less exciting than that of the Divisional Series. Here we saw the New York Mets face the Chicago Cubs for the National League Pennant, from the start you could tell the Cubs pitching squad was clearly outmatched for the fiery Mets offense. The Cubs were just simply outmatched exemplified by Daniel Murphy breaking the record for most games with a homerun in MLB playoff history and them being steamrolled to a sweep by the Mets. The Kansas City Royals vs. the Toronto Blue Jays was a much more interesting series for the neutral point of view. Back and forth they went early on into the series scoring a ridiculously high number of runs including a 14-2 Royals win in game #4, but the high powered offense of the Royals proved to be too much for the #2 seeded Blue Jays to handle, resulting in a 4-2 series win for Kansas City.

Now that we have the two pennant winners we move on to the 111th World Series to watch the Kansas City Royals clash against the New York Mets to earn the title of the best team in baseball. To sum this series up for the New York Mets in a couple of words: Late Game Blunders. For every single game the Mets were able to take an early lead but were never able to stretch it into a victory because of the relentless Royals offense that always found a way to overcome any deficit. Giving up late game runs and not being able to capitalize on easy opportunities, the Mets were let down by their offense not by their all-star pitching efforts led by DeGrom and Harveywho both had amazing starts but weren’t able to a seal a victory because of the sloppy play of the Mets defense..The “Comeback Kids” reign supreme sending the disappointed and frustrated Mets home with a 4-1 series victory.