NEW YORK -- The Kansas City Royals are world champions for the first time since 1985.
Christian Colon's RBI single in the 12th inning capped another in a postseason-long run of late-inning rallies, and the Royals beat the New York Mets 7-2 to capture the World Series in five games.
While Edinson Volquez pitched admirably in his return from his father's funeral in the Dominican Republic, the Royals were no match for Matt Harvey for much of the night and entered the ninth inning trailing 2-0.
But as they've done throughout the postseason, the Royals made an improbable late-inning comeback to bring an opposing team to its knees.
Kansas City finally dented the scoreboard in the ninth on a walk to Lorenzo Cain, a stolen base and Eric Hosmer's RBI double to the opposite field. After advancing on Mike Moustakas' grounder to the right side, Hosmer appeared to hold at third base on Salvador Perez's groundout. But Hosmer broke on the throw to first base and scored when Lucas Duda made a wild throw to home plate.
The Royals steamrolled relievers Addison Reed and Bartolo Colon in the 12th to win going away.
Thumbs up: Cain, the Royals' center fielder, blooped a single to right field in the first inning to extend his streak of reaching base safely in the postseason to 20 consecutive games. Cain also stole his fifth and sixth bases of the 2015 postseason, breaking the previous Royals' record of four shared by Alex Gordon, Amos Otis and Willie Wilson.
Thumbs down: The contact-hitting Royals did a lot more flailing than usual against Harvey. After striking out only 26 times in 150 at-bats in the first four games of the Series, the Royals whiffed nine times in eight innings against Harvey. The lowlight came when Harvey struck out Cain, Hosmer and Moustakas in order in the fourth inning.
What's next: The Royals, who suffered an agonizing seven-game defeat to Madison Bumgarner and the San Francisco Giants in the 2014 World Series, didn't leave anything to chance this time. They'll return home to a parade, and then general manager Dayton Moore and his staff will begin the process of reshaping the roster and trying to win a third straight American League pennant in 2016.